Last week we, Michael Szell and Anastassia Vybornova, together with Rafael Prieto Curiel from Complexity Science Hub Vienna, held a workshop on sustainable mobility in Vienna, Austria, featuring some of the top local experts on the topic: Vienna’s cycling coordinator Martin Blum, and the researchers Anita Graser, Barbara Laa, Ulrich Leth.

The event featured 7 talks (2 from NERDS) and many thought-provoking discussions, see a nice summary here: https://www.csh.ac.at/sustainable-mobility/

The workshop covered the following aspects:

Why are politicians so reluctant to invest into bicycle infrastructure and pedestrianization given it is the most efficient investment towards sustainable and livable cities? What are the technical and political bottlenecks that keep society in the stranglehold of car dependency, and what are the implications of sustained delay? Which data are we missing, how should we grow network infrastructure, and how to speed up the sluggish political process? The climate crisis demands pressing answers, which we explore here with state-of-the-art insights in Data/Network/Complexity Science and Urban Planning.

This workshop brings together researchers and policymakers from Vienna and Copenhagen who work on understanding the best pathways towards sustainable mobility with focus on cycling, or who are developing tools/methods supporting that aim. Our speakers will cover: Mobility and infrastructure data quality, bicycle network planning, politics & activism, systemic complexity approaches.

Copenhagen’s third DataBeers edition was held this wednesday, more than 3(!) years after the first two editions before COVID-19. The event was once again a smashing success, with around 90 participants, 5 excellent speakers from academia and industry, one surprise data rapper, and a large number of hoppy beverages consumed.

Huge thanks to the wonderful new team of DataBeersCPH organizers, including  Silvia de Sojo Caso, Jonas Juul, NERDS-member Sandro Sousa, and many more! Their hard work paid off – the location and vibe were absolutely amazing.

DataBeers is a global not-for-profit initiative (currently in 31+ cities), that brings data scientists and data enthusiasts from industry, government, academia and the arts to knowledge share. The DataBeers teams organise events and invite speakers to tell their experience with data: analysis, visualisations, applied data, data journalism etc., always in an informal and agile manner.

This last Copenhagen edition was sponsored by ITU and DTU. We are always happy about sponsors, especially for beer – talk to us at databeers.cph@gmail.com
The next DataBeers Copenhagen is scheduled for Spring 2023. Follow us at @databeers_cph for updates. Stay tuned, and cheers! 🍻

It is conference season, where NERDS are known to travel to southern wintering grounds to catch some rays of sun and to mingle with NERDS of a feather. Our regular seasonal movements will bring us to several places this year:

• CRBAM 2022: Ane and Anastassia will present their research on bicycle networks/data at the 6th Annual Meeting of the Cycling Research Board in Amsterdam tomorrow, Oct 6
• DS’2022: Luca will give a keynote at the International Conference on Discovery Science 2022 in Montpellier on Oct 11 on Coloring Social Relationships
• WiNS: Roberta will talk about her Pathways in Network Science at the Women in Network Science Seminar on Oct 18
• Complex Networks 2022: Michele will hold a tutorial on Node Vector Distances, and Marilena will talk about Estimating Affective Polarization on a Social Network, on Nov 7-8 in Palermo

Finally, you will also be able to catch Sandro at CCS 2022 (Conference on Complex Systems), who will represent us in Mallorca from Oct 17-21.

Be sure to check out our event calendar to be up to date on our travel / talk patterns – see you around and safe travels!

Copenhagen will host the 9th edition of the International Conference of Computational Social Science (IC2S2) in July 2023, brought here by NERDS & Co!

IC²S² is the premier annual meeting bringing together researchers from different disciplines interested in using computational and data-intensive methods to address societally relevant problems.

The event will be organized jointly between the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and the University of Copenhagen (KU). NERDS will have a crucial role in the organization: Luca Aiello will be General Co-Chair, Roberta Sinatra will be Program Co-Chair, and NERDS will be heavily involved in organization and connecting conference participants. The event will take place at the Maersk Tower, a fabulous venue in the heart of the city.

The Maersk Tower in Copenhagen

All previous editions of the conference have been a great success, with hundreds of participants, and we’ll work hard to go above and beyond with the next edition. The conference will feature around 10 keynote talks, 6 tutorials, 200+ contributed presentations, and a 3-day poster session.

Busy attendees during the last two in-presence conferences in Amsterdam and Chicago.

We’re looking forward to welcoming you in Copenhagen next year!

For the last week, several of us NERDS have been visiting Turin, Italy, and our friends at ISI Foundation for a truly hearty scientific and social interchange.

Yesterday, ISI held a workshop in which our research groups exchanged know-how and learned from each other about all things data science, and how to apply it to the social good. We learned about topics as diverse as AI-based pdf crawlers, algorithmic bias, bicycle networks, or how to survive in a big research group.

Here some visual impressions of the workshop:

And of course, also many extracurricular activities were to be had!

We are having a great time in Turin but every party must come to an end, and most of us will leave back to our home in Denmark soon. Some of us are more lucky though and will stay a few more weeks, keeping enjoying this amazing city with our wonderful friends.