DISA

Centre for Data Intensive Sciences and Applications

KvarkenSat Innovation Challenge 2022 on Sustainable Forestry

2022-02-10

The DISA forestry group invites you to KvarkenSat Innovation Challenge 2022 on Sustainable Forestry that will start in next week with a pre-hackathon followed by the hackathon using space-based data helping to combat climate change!

Acceptance based on submission, the best submissions may be approved early.

The challenges

Climate change brings about major changes affecting us all. Extreme weather events become more frequent and especially the amount of rainfall increases in Northern Europe, one contributor being the warmer winters. New species of both vegetation and animals enter new areas while the existing species might have even major changes in their habitats. These lead to new challenges in the forestry industry. We are looking for ideas and solutions combining existing knowledge and datasets with space-based data and datasets based on satellite measurements, in four particular themes including soil moisture, spruce bark beetles, forest ground damage and the forest value chain.

Who can apply?

The hackathon is open to students, teachers, researchers and start-ups in teams of 3-5 persons. Relevant expertise to participate include: space and satellite data, machine learning and neural networks, computer science, positioning systems, automation, image processing/recognition, engineering, logistics, business/communications and forestry.

Awards

The three best proposals across all of the themes will be awarded a cash prize (over 100 000SEK) and possible continuation/acceleration within start-ups and innovation programs.

Pre-Hack Webinar

To get familiar with the hackathon, meet the mentors and partners, and participate in Q&A-session join our webinar on 15 February at 13.00 (14.00 Finnish time).

Link to the join the webinar: https://bit.ly/KvarkenSatWebinar

More information about the hackathon: https://ultrahack.org/kvarkensat-innovation-challenge-2022

Seminar October 18th – Future Position X

2021-10-01

  • When? Monday October 18th 12-13
  • Where? Online, link will be sent to those who sign up via this link https://forms.gle/NTo7jnysyLkBWaAm8 no later than October 15th

During the seminar Magnus Engström, CTO at Future Position X (FPX) will talk about two clear cases where FPX with data science has contributed to creating the conditions for a viable city center by collecting and combining data from different sources. More specifically, it will be about how we have applied machine learning to be able to predict movements in the city center and how we with a data-driven approach have created an application that helps the University of Gävle to conduct research on how Gävle residents experience their local environment. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A and discussion about potential collaborations with researchers from Linneaus University

Future Position X is an independent Swedish innovation center that works for growth through better health and well-being in the smart, sustainable and vibrant city. FPX contributes both technology and expertise to develop data-driven community solutions.

By initiating projects, creating relationships and building collaborations, FPX contributes to collaboration between business, academia and the public sector. FPX contributes to knowledge development of new technology by creating meeting places and networks around data-driven innovation such as GIS, AI, Internet of Things and blockchain technology. FPX also provides technical solutions, including the Innovation Platform, a data platform that can be used to digitally model societies. We are an important player in the work of strengthening both society and companies to a more sustainable growth.

 

 

Workshop “Critical perspectives on cultural heritage: Re-visiting digitisation” 26 October, 9-12hrs

2021-09-28

Organizers: The workshop is co-organized by Linnaeus University (Centre for Applied Heritage and iInstitute) and Swedish National Heritage Board

Website: https://lnu.se/en/meet-linnaeus-university/current/events/2021/critical-perspectives-on-cultural-heritage-re-visiting-digitisation/

About: Today, the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data are creating new value for the descriptive information in the cultural heritage sector. Libraries, museums, heritage management and archives are seeing new possibilities in sharing by turning their catalogues into open datasets that can be directly accessed, allowing cultural heritage data to be circulated, navigated, analyzed and re-arranged at unprecedented levels. This is supported by research funding bodies, governments and EU policies and numerous political interests, resulting in enormous investment in digitization projects which make cultural heritage information openly available and machine readable. But before deploying this data, one must ask: is this data fit for deployment?

Libraries, museums, heritage management and archives have long histories. Both the collections they house and the language they use(d) to describe said collections are products of that historical legacy, shaped by, amongst others, institutionalized colonialism, racism and patriarchy. Yet descriptive information is now being digitized and shared as if that legacy is not inherent to the collections. Instead, existing units of information are being distributed through new Web 3.0 technologies, bringing with it an outdated knowledge-base. Besides the risk of progressive techniques being applied to regressive content, we may also sacrifice the development of new knowledge in libraries, museums, heritage management and archives aimed at facilitating socially sustainable futures, remediating exploitative historical legacies.

For this workshop, we have invited researchers and practitioners to discuss ways in which digitisation approaches may be set up to change the nature and legacy of cultural collection prior to digital dissemination.

Welcome!

DISA Seminar October 4th on Aggregation as Unsupervised Learning and some of its Applications

2021-09-24

  • When? October 4th 12-13
  • Where? Online – the link will be sent to those who sign up
  • Registration? Sign up via this link no later than October 3rd.

This seminar will be presented by the DISTA research group within DISA, you will meet and listen to Welf Löwe, Maria Ulan, Morgan Ericsson, Anna Wingkvist

Aggregation combines several independent variables to a dependent variable. The independent variables are different, possible mutually dependent observations of a real world. The dependent variable should preserve properties of the independent variables, e.g., the ranking or relative distance of the independent variable tuples, and ultimately the properties of the real world. However, while there usually exist large amounts independent variable tuples, there is no ground truth data available mapping these tuples to the corresponding dependent variable values. This makes aggregation an unsupervised machine learning problem, as opposed to, e.g., regression where data comprises independent variable tuples and the corresponding dependent variable values.

Instances of the problem frequently occur in software engineering, e.g., when trying to assess the quality of software by metrics. Metrics (independent variables) can easily be measured for a lot of software artifacts, but it is hard to measure quality (dependent variable). Instances also occur in many other assessment situations including, but not limited to the assessment of project proposals, financial investments, and human movements.

In our talk, we present
1) aggregation as unsupervised learning including unweighted and weighted approaches
2) ways to evaluate and compare different aggregation approaches including an evaluation of the approaches introduced in 1)
3) applications to software engineering problems applying the evaluation introduce in 2)

The recording of this session and previous recordings will be available at the following link

NEW DISA Seminar Series starting September 6th 12-13

2021-09-02

We are now finally starting a new Seminar series within DISA, even if you are not affiliated with DISA you are welcome to attend.

Aim with the seminar series:
Our research centre now have some 10 different research groups, each comprising a trending research topic. In order to make those different subjects of expertize more known outside of the own group and more accessible to PhD students we now launch a research seminar series.

Out first lunch seminar series will be on Monday September 6th 12-13 with Thomas Holgersson
Link to the seminar: https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/63536937748 (no sign up needed)

Titel: Matrices in different dimensions: high, low and in between
Abstract: I will survey some common methods for statistical analysis of random matrices in fixed and in increasing dimensions. The geometry of high-dimensional objects will discussed from a data-analytic perspective. I will also cover some different modes of asymptotics, with particular focus on scalability.
Keywords: Wishart ensambles, geometry of high-dimensional objects, spectral analysis, Mahalanobis distance, modes of convergence.

Kind regards,
Thomas and Diana

iInstitute / Digital Humanities webinar: The Ethics of Datafication and AI by Geoffrey Rockwell

2021-05-18

Summary – We all want artificial intelligence to be responsible, trustworthy, and good… the question is how to get beyond principles and check lists. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the data used in training machines, especially when it comes to avoiding bias. Further, I will argue that there is a role for humanists and others who have been concerned with the datafication of the cultural record for some time. Not only have we traditionally been concerned with social, political and ethical issues, but we have developed practices around the curation of the cultural record. We need to ask about the ethics around big data and the creation of training sets. We need to advocate for an ethic of care and repair when it comes to digital archives that can have cascading impact.

About the speaker – Geoffrey Rockwell is a Professor of Philosophy and Digital Humanities, Director of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study and Associate Director of AI for Society signature area at the University of Alberta. He publishes on textual visualization, text analysis, ethics of technology and on digital humanities including a co-authored book Hermeneutica from MIT Press (2016). He is co-developer of Voyant Tools (voyant-tools.org), an award winning suite of text analysis tools. He is currently the President of the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities.

INVITATION: Applications for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) 2021

2021-05-11

If you work within the research areas of data intensive research and are interested in spending one or two years as a researcher at the Linnaeus University Centre for Data Intensive Sciences and Applications (DISA, https://lnu.se/en/disa), you are welcome to submit a proposal for participating in a DISA effort. DISA researches open questions in collection, analysis and utilization of large data sets applied to thematic areas such as astrophysics, mechanical engineering, construction, eHealth, social sciences, and the humanities, see details below. With its core in computer science, it takes a multidisciplinary approach and collaborates with researchers from all faculties at the university.

The effort is supported by our Grants and Innovation Office (GIO) and should lead to an application for funding from MSCA-PF, allowing you to conduct a PostDoc research project and participate in the DISA activities.

We welcome all proposals within our core and thematic research fields, but are especially interested in applications that address data intensive research conducted in or together with one of our thematic areas.

A few important:

  • May 23th 2021 – Deadline for submitting initial proposals.
  • June 4th 2021 (a.m.) – Online MSCA-PF information. Presentation of important points and formalities.
  • June 27th 2021 – Deadline for submitting first drafts of full MSCA-PF applications
  • July 1st – Feedback session between supervisors and the applicant
  • Preliminary 15 September, 5 pm (Swedish time) – Deadline for submitting MSCA-PF applications to the European commission.

The European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships are open to researchers moving within Europe, as well as those coming in from other parts of the world, as long as one has not lived or worked in Sweden for more than 12 months during the last 3 years (preliminary reference date: 15 September 2021). If the application is approved, you must move to Sweden. The applicant should be an experienced researcher, meaning that she or he should hold a doctoral degree (or receive such a degree before 9/2021). There is also an upper age limit: eligible researchers have a maximum of 8 years full-time equivalent experience in research, measured from the date of award of the doctoral degree. Years of experience outside research and career breaks (e.g., due to parental leave) are deductible, similarly years outside Europe (for European citizens and long-term residents).

Läs resten av detta inlägg»

Meet Keynote Virginia Dignum: Responsible AI: from principles to action

2020-11-09

During the Big Data Conference on December 3-4, 2020 we will have several interesting Keynote speakers, one of them is Virginia Dignum, who is a Professor of Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Umeå University, Sweden and the director of WASP-HS.

She will talk about that every day we see news about advances and the societal impact of AI. AI is changing the way we work, live and solve challenges but concerns about fairness, transparency or privacy are also growing. Ensuring an ethically aligned purpose is more than designing systems whose result can be trusted. It is about the way we design them, why we design them, and who is involved in designing them. If we are to produce responsible trustworthy AI, we need to work towards technical and socio-legal initiatives and solutions which provide concretise instructions, tools, and other means of dictating, helping, and educating AI practitioners at aligning their systems with our societies’ principles and values.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to listen to her and take part of the conference by signing up here by November 25th.

Virginia Dignum (photo: Mattias Pettersson(photo: Mattias Pettersson)

More information about Virginia Dignum, Professor of Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Umeå University, Sweden and associated with the TU Delft in the Netherlands. She is the director of WASP-HS, the Wallenberg Program on Humanities and Society for AI, Autonomous Systems and Software. She is a Fellow of the European Artificial Intelligence Association (EURAI), a member of the European Commission High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, of the working group on Responsible AI of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), of the World Economic Forum’s Global Artificial Intelligence Council, of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Initiative on Ethically Alligned Design, and a founding member of ALLAI-NL, the Dutch AI Alliance. Her book “Responsible Artificial Intelligence: developing and using AI in a responsible way” was published by Springer-Nature in 2019.