WOW2022 Diversity, Diasporas and Digitality: The Worlds of Wikimedia and beyond<https://www.wow2022.net/>. Nov 17-18, University of Sydney, Australia.
Call for papers
The first two decades of the 21st century have brought war, a global pandemic, climate changes and the widespread erosion of culture, as recognised by the United Nations which declared 2022-2032 to be the International Decade of Indigenous Languages<https://en.unesco.org/idil2022-2032>. This conference seeks to investigate the variety of ways that digital media is (or isn’t) meeting these challenges. We invite participants to consider how communities that have been displaced, marginalised or otherwise disadvantaged, may best be served by online platforms and open knowledge movements. We seek submissions that address open knowledge, global diversity, inclusivity and cultural dynamism from a range of perspectives, including digital communication, indigenous knowledge, health communication and Internet studies. We particularly encourage submissions that explore knowledge activism, such as the Wikimedia movement; open platforms, such as Wikipedia; as well as digital methods across different disciplines and fields of knowledge.
Topics may refer to any of the various Wikimedia projects, as well as language and cultural diversity, and could address:
* Internet activism
* Digital diasporas
* Open knowledge
* Indigenous storytelling
* Covid online
* Gender parity
* Cultural resilience
* Decolonizing the Internet
* Digital tools and methods for online diversity and abilities
* Orality and Literacy
* Innovative Case Studies and projects
Please submit abstracts up to 250 words via EasyChair<https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=wow2022> by June 20, 2022. Acceptance of papers by July 11. A selection of papers will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the journal New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia.<https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tham20/current>
Dr Bunty Avieson | Senior Research Fellow | FHEA
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Literature, Art and Media | Department of Media & Communications
Rm N225, John Woolley
The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
T +61 2 8627 0201
bunty.avieson(a)sydney.edu.au<mailto:bunty.avieson@sydney.edu.au> | sydney.edu.au<https://sydney.edu.au/arts/staff/profiles/bunty.avieson.php>
I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. Always was, always will be.
CRICOS 00026A
This email plus any attachments to it are confidential. Any unauthorised use is strictly prohibited.
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Please think of our environment and only print this email if necessary.
Hi all,
The registration for Wiki Workshop 2022 [1] is now open. The event is
virtually held on April 25, 12:00-18:30 UTC and as part of The Web
Conference 2022 [2]. The plenary parts of the event will be recorded
and shared publicly afterwards.
Wiki Workshop is the largest Wikimedia research event of the year (so
far;) that the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation co-organizes
with our Research Fellow, Bob West (EPFL). This year, Srijan Kumar
(Georgia Tech) joined the organizing team as well.:) The event brings
together scholars and researchers from across the world who are
interested in or are actively engaged with research and development on
the Wikimedia projects.
While the details of the schedule are to be finalized and posted in
the coming week, we expect to generally follow the format of 2021 [3].
This year we received research submissions from more than 20 countries
and have accepted 27 research papers whose authors will present the
work as part of the workshop (If you are an author of an accepted
paper: congrats!:) . Our keynote speaker is Larry Lessig [4] and we
will have a panel to reflect on the decade anniversary of SOPA/PIPA,
moderated by Erik Moeller (Freedom of the Press). And of course, all
the music, games, etc. will remain. :)
If you are interested in participating in the live event, please
indicate your interest by filling out [5]. Anyone is encouraged to
register: you don't have to be a researcher. In the registration form,
please explain why attending the live event will support you in your
work on the Wikimedia projects and beyond.
If you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Best,
Leila
[1] https://wikiworkshop.org/2022/
[2] https://www2022.thewebconf.org/
[3] https://wikiworkshop.org/2021/#schedule
[4] https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig
[5] (privacy statement for the Google form survey [6])
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSctlkUv8FasB2Nc4RvThnxAbjPzUwmnxB2…
[6] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Wiki_Workshop_Registration_Priv…
--
Leila Zia
Head of Research
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear All,
TLDR: We have a new research roadmap for the Addressing Knowledge Gaps
program <https://research.wikimedia.org/knowledge-gaps.html>, with new
guiding principles, three main research directions (identify, measure, and
bridge knowledge gaps), and ideas for future research! You can check our
update <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_3_Years_On>
to the original 2019 Knowledge Gaps White Paper
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_Gaps_%E2%80%93_Wikimedia_…>
on Meta (or its pdf version on Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Address_Knowledge_Gaps_Three_Years_…>),
or our diff blog post
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/04/21/a-new-research-roadmap-for-addressing…>
.
Longer version:
In 2019, the Wikimedia Research team released the Knowledge Gaps White Paper
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_Gaps_%E2%80%93_Wikimedia_…>,
in response to Wikimedia Movement’s 2030 strategic direction. The white
paper included our team’s long-term research plans and priorities for the
Addressing Knowledge Gaps program
<https://research.wikimedia.org/knowledge-gaps.html>. Since 2019, we learnt
and discovered new methods and advancements in our scientific fields, and
developed new models and tools. Today, we share an update
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_3_Years_On> to the
original white paper. With a continued commitment to knowledge equity
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20>, the
update reflects on the past, present, and future of knowledge gaps
research, provides a summary of our research findings and contributions,
and revises the roadmap for the next 3-5 years. The update describes three
main developments:
-
A Set of Principles, guiding our research in knowledge gaps: knowledge
equity as our end goal; a research focus beyond Wikipedia; community-driven
research work; machine-in-the-loop frameworks for automated systems;
inclusivity by default; privacy; and openness.
-
A Consolidated Research Roadmap, consisting of three main directions:
-
identify knowledge gaps by understanding readers and contributors,
and systematically defining knowledge gaps and barriers;
-
measure knowledge gaps by generating and visualizing measurements of
inequality in Wikimedia projects;
-
bridge knowledge gaps, by building tools and models that can help
tag, prioritize, and recommend content to be added to Wikimedia projects.
-
Ideas for Future Research: big research questions, spanning a 5 to
10-year horizon, which include: understanding learning, entity
recognition in images, a model for Wikipedia complexity, and studying new
and external forms of knowledge.
For more in-depth information about our revised roadmap, please refer to
the full update
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_3_Years_On> on
Meta (or its pdf version on Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Address_Knowledge_Gaps_Three_Years_…>),
or our diff blog post
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/04/21/a-new-research-roadmap-for-addressing…>.
Feel free to share suggestions and feedback on the talk
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Knowledge_Gaps_3_Years_On>
page.
This updated paper is the result of a collaborative process with Isaac
Johnson, Martin Gerlach and Leila Zia from Research, consisting of many
hours of discussions, 70 pages of notes, and lots of love. We want to thank
the rest of the Wikimedia Research team, our Research Fellow Bob West, our
contractors and collaborators for their input into brainstorming sessions;
Legal, Machine Learning Platform, Traffic, Comms, and Major Gifts teams for
their help in shaping the final document; and everyone
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_3_Years_On#Acknowle…>
who made our Knowledge Gaps research possible throughout the years. Thank
you all!
Best,
Miriam
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours Tuesday, 2022-06-07. Find your local time here
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1654642800>.
To participate, join the video-call via this link [2]. There is no set
agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the etherpad
[3]. You are welcome to add questions / items to the etherpad in advance,
or when you arrive at the session. Even if you are unable to attend the
session, you can leave a question that we can address asynchronously. If
you do not have a specific agenda item, you are welcome to hang out and
enjoy the conversation. More detailed information (e.g., about how to
attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves available to answer
research related questions that you as Wikimedia volunteer editors,
organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in your projects and
initiatives. Here are some example cases we hope to be able to support you
with:
-
You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
in my wiki?
-
You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
harder to find an answer for during an office hour. However, discussing
them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
-
You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
of you interested more closely in this space.
-
You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you,
Emily, on behalf of the WMF Research Team
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org
[2] https://meet.jit.si/WMF-Research-Office-Hours
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
I’m writing to ask for your help in assessing the quality of a Wikipedia
citation recommendation system created by a research collaboration between
Meta AI, University of Mannheim, University College of London, École
normale supérieure and Inria, with the help of the Wikimedia Research team.
In particular, you can access some citation recommendations using the
following link https://verifier.sideeditor.com and decide which one is more
appropriate for a given claim.
If you think the suggested citation improves the verifiability of Wikipedia
feel free to use the provided information to edit the article.
You can find additional information in the interface, including a link to
all code and models powering the system.
Please don’t hesitate to share feedback and questions.
Thanks a lot,
Fabio
Dear all,
due to several requests we decided to extend the deadlines for the
industry track.
The new dates are as follows:
Paper Submission Deadline: June 7, 2022 (11:59 pm, Hawaii time
- originally May 30)
Notification of Acceptance: June 13, 2022 (11:59 pm, Hawaii time)
Camera-Ready Presentation: August 15, 2022 (11:59 pm, Hawaii time)
To address the needs and interests of industry SEMANTICS invites
enterprise solutions that deal with semantic processing of data and/or
information in areas like Linked Data, Data Publishing, Semantic Search,
Recommendation Services, Sentiment Detection, Search Engine Add-Ons,
Thesaurus and/or Ontology Management, Text Mining, Data Mining, and any
related fields. All submissions have a strong focus on real world
applications beyond the prototypical status and demonstrate the power of
semantic systems!
For details please go to: https://2022-eu.semantics.cc/cfp
Looking forward to your submissions! Stay tuned and stay safe!
With kind regards,
Florian Bauer, Marco Brattinga & Christian Dirschl
-- Industry Track Chairs --
Hi everyone!
I have a question concerning the relevance search on wikipedia articles, and Robert West from EPFL pointed me to this mailing list as the best chance to answer it. I have been checking the elasticsearch query performed by the wikipedia api when it runs a basic search on the articles. More precisely, I am talking of the following api call:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&format=json&srl…
The actual elasticsearch query is available with the cirrusDumpQuery parameter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&format=json&srl…
There are many things going on in that query, but my question is related with the rescoring of the results that gives the final score. In particular, with the clause
{
"sltr": {
"model": "enwiki-20220421-20180215-query_explorer",
"params": {
"query_string": "architecture mathematics"
}
}
}
I understand that the results are passed together with the keywords to a stored machine learning model whose name is enwiki-20220421-20180215-query_explorer. This, as far as I understand, is done using the LTR plugin for elasticsearch (https://github.com/o19s/elasticsearch-learning-to-rank). My question is the following: Is this model openly available anywhere? If so, could you point me where? If not, do you know why is it not openly available and yet used by Wikipedia?
I posted this as part of a question on stackoverflow some days ago. Please check https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72213203/elasticsearch-query-for-wikipe… for more context and some more related questions.
I thank you all in advance, have a nice day!
Aitor Pérez
Machine Learning Engineer
EPFL Graph - CEDE - EPFL
aitor.perez(a)epfl.ch
The Third Wikidata Workshop
Call for Papers
Co-located with the 21st International Conference on Semantic Web (ISWC
2022).
Date: October 23 or 24, 2022
The workshop will be held online, afternoon European time.
Website: https://wikidataworkshop.github.io/2022/
== Important dates ==
Papers due: *Friday, *29 July 2022
Notification of accepted papers: Friday, September 23, 2022
Camera-ready papers due: Monday, October 3, 2022
Workshop date: October 23/24, 2022
== Overview ==
Wikidata is an openly available knowledge base, hosted by the Wikimedia
Foundation. It can be accessed and edited by both humans and machines and
acts as a common structured-data repository for several Wikimedia projects,
including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikisource. It is used in a variety of
applications by researchers and practitioners alike.
In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number of publications
around Wikidata. While there are several dedicated venues for the broader
Wikidata community to meet, none of them focuses on publishing original,
peer-reviewed research. This workshop fills this gap - we hope to provide a
forum to build this fledgling scientific community and promote novel work
and resources that support it.
The workshop primarily seeks original contributions that address the
opportunities and challenges of creating, contributing to, and using a
global, collaborative, open-domain, multilingual knowledge graph such as
Wikidata.
We encourage a range of submissions, including novel research, opinion
pieces, and descriptions of systems and resources, which are naturally
linked to Wikidata and its ecosystem or enabled by it. What we are less
interested in are works that use Wikidata alongside or in lieu of other
resources to carry out some computational task - unless the work feeds back
into the Wikidata ecosystem, for instance by improving or commenting on
some Wikidata aspect, or suggesting new design features, tools, and
practices.
This year, we also added a track for already published work. To foster
conversations around the topic of Wikidata, we invite authors of papers
published at other conferences to submit their papers to present at the
workshop. These will not be included in the proceedings but gives a chance
for authors to interact with the community.
We welcome interdisciplinary work, as well as interesting applications that
shed light on the benefits of Wikidata and discuss areas of improvement.
The workshop is planned as an interactive half-day event, in which most of
the time will be dedicated to discussions and exchange rather than oral
presentations. For this reason, all accepted papers will be presented in
short talks and accompanied by a poster. All works will be presented
online.
== Topics ==
Topics of submissions include, but are not limited to:
- Data quality and vandalism detection in Wikidata
- Referencing in Wikidata
- Anomaly, bias, or novelty detection in Wikidata
- Algorithms for aligning Wikidata with other knowledge graphs
- The Semantic Web and Wikidata
- Community interaction in Wikidata
- Multilingual aspects in Wikidata
- Machine learning approaches to improve data quality in Wikidata
- Tools, bots, and datasets for improving or evaluating Wikidata
- Participation, diversity, and inclusivity aspects in the Wikidata
ecosystem
- Human-bot interaction
- Managing knowledge evolution in Wikidata
- Abstract Wikipedia
== Submission guidelines ==
We welcome the following types of contributions.
= Track 1: Novel Works =
The papers in this track will be peer-reviewed by at least three
researchers. Accepted papers will be published as open access papers on
CEUR (authors can also waive this). We invite the following types of papers:
- Full research paper: Novel research contributions (7-12 pages)
- Short research paper: Novel research contributions of smaller scope than
full papers (3-6 pages)
- Position paper: Well-argued ideas and opinion pieces, not yet in the
scope of a research contribution (6-8 pages)
- Resource paper: New dataset or other resources directly relevant to
Wikidata, including the publication of that resource (8-12 pages)
- Demo paper: New system critically enabled by Wikidata (6-8 pages)
Submissions must be as PDF or HTML, formatted in the style of the Springer
Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). For
details on the LNCS style, see Springer’s Author Instructions.
Papers have to be submitted through easychair (Please add “[NOVEL]” in the
beginning of the title on the submission page so we know that you are
submitting to this track):
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=wikidataworkshop2022
= Track 2: Published works =
This track welcomes papers previously published at a peer-reviewed research
venue, to be presented and discussed in the workshop. They do not have to
follow the formatting and page limit instructions from Track 1, and can
instead be submitted in the original format.
Previously published papers will be reviewed by the organising committee in
terms of topical fit and prominence of the publication venue. They will not
be published as part of the proceedings. We invite the following types of
papers:
- Full research paper: Previously published research contributions
- Resource paper: Previously published datasets or other resources that are
important or interesting to the community
- Demo paper: Presenting a previously published system critically enabled
by Wikidata
Papers have to be submitted through easychair (please add “[PUBLISHED]” in
the beginning of the title on the submission page so we know that you are
submitting to this track):
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=wikidataworkshop2022
== Proceedings ==
The complete set of papers from the Novel Works Track will be published
with the CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org).
== Organizing committee ==
Lucie-Aimée Kaffee, University of Copenhagen, lucie.kaffee[[(a)]]gmail.com
Simon Razniewski, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, srazniew[[@]]
mpi-inf.mpg.de
Kholoud Alghamdi, King's College London, kholoud.alghamdi[[(a)]]kcl.ac.uk
Gabriel Maia Rocha Amaral, King's College London, gabriel.amaral[[@]]
kcl.ac.uk
== Programme committee ==
Seyed Amir Hosseini Beghaeiraveri, Heriot-Watt University
Houcemeddine Turki, Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit,
University of Sfax, Tunisia
Filip Ilievski, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern
California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
Mahir Morshed, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Daniel Garijo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrdid
Niel Chah, University of Toronto & Microsoft
Alasdair Gray, Heriot Watt University
Thomas Pellissier Tanon, Lexistems
John Samuel, CPE Lyon
Dennis Diefenbach, The QA Company
Heiko Paulheim, University of Mannheim
Cristina Sarasua, University of Zurich
Pavlos Vougiouklis, Huawei
Pierre-Henri Paris, Télécom Paris
Lydia Pintscher, Wikimedia Deutschland
Isaac Johnson, Wikimedia Foundation
Alessandro Piscopo, BCC
Luis Galárraga, Inria
Danai Symeonidou, INRAE
Andrew D. Gordon, Microsoft Research and University of Edinburgh
David Abián, King’s College London
Elisavet Koutsiana, King’s College London
--
Lucie-Aimée Kaffee
++++ apologies for cross-postings ++++
* A satellite event of the Conference on Complex Systems 2022<https://www.ccs2022.org/index.php>
* Date of Event: October 19-20, 2022 (half-day session)
* Submissions Deadline: June 19, 2022
* Venue: Palma De Mallorca, Spain (and virtual)
* Previous event: MIMODE2021<https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_events_6123/news_press_releases_4630/news…>
* Contact: mimode2022(a)easychair.org<mailto:mimode2022@easychair.org>
The recent availability of massive amounts of digital data have profoundly revolutionized research on migration and mobility, enabling scientists to quantitatively study individual and collective mobility patterns at different granularities as generated by human activities in their daily life. Harnessing such digital data offers many new opportunities to study migration and mobility and fill in the gaps left by traditional data. At the same time, such innovative data sources also come with several limitations, biases, and challenges, which have led to diverging research methodologies and frameworks, requiring even greater effort in their operationalization and communication to stakeholders and policy makers.
The aim of this satellite session is to bring together researchers from different fields and practitioners from around the world to facilitate a conversation on the use of innovative digital data sources, new methodologies, empirical findings, and critical challenges of studying migration and mobility in the digital era.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
1. New data sources for mobility and migration research, challenges and opportunities
2. Internal and international migration, short- and long-term mobility
3. Modeling and predicting human mobility patterns
4. Machine learning and AI methods for studying mobility
5. Longitudinal analyses and empirical studies of mobility and migration
6. Socio-economic and environmental drivers of migration
7. Integration and segregation of migrant populations
8. Measuring the impact of natural disasters, conflicts, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic on migration
9. Access to mobility data, open science, and privacy concerns
10. Evaluation and development of migration policy
Call for Abstracts
We welcome submissions of abstracts on ongoing or published work that fit the topics of the event. The submissions must be a single PDF-file of maximum 2 pages in English including the title, list of authors and affiliations, abstract text, descriptive figure or table, and references (optional). The abstracts can be in any format or style as long as they do not exceed the page and word limits. Alternatively, authors can use an abstract template (click here<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1odthFs5v8a4-PIveHQE_L_5ImBFuHivD/edit?u…> to view our optional formatting template).
Abstracts must be submitted electronically by June 19, 2022, through the Easychair platform at the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mimode2022
All submissions will be evaluated by the Program Committee on the basis of quality and fit to the satellite theme.
Oral presentations will be allocated about 12 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. Please note that the presenting author must register to the main conference as announced on CCS2022<https://www.ccs2022.org/index.php> website.
Important Dates
June 19, 2022 - Deadline for abstract submissions (midnight CEST)
July 11, 2022 - Notification of abstract acceptance for oral presentation
July 25, 2022 - Deadline for early bird registration
October 19-20, 2022 - MIMODE 2022 satellite (half-day session)
Registration & Venue
MIMODE 2022 is a satellite of the Conference on Complex Systems CCS2022<https://www.ccs2022.org/index.php>, and will take place in Palma de Mallorca, Spain (and online) on October 19-20, 2022.
Satellite participants (with or without abstract submission) will have to register following the procedure described in the CCS2022 conference website: https://www.ccs2022.org/index.php/registration/registration-fees
Presenting authors can indicate their availability to travel to Spain in October 2022 in the submission platform. We will consider researchers' needs and organize our satellite event accordingly as we approach the date of the event. More details will follow soon.
The conference venue will be the Auditorium of Palma de Mallorca Convention Center located in: Paseo Marítimo 18, 07014, Palma de Mallorca, Illes Balears (Spain).
To know more about the venue, please visit the conference website: https://www.ccs2022.org/index.php/general-information/venue
Program
TBA
Invited speakers
TBA
Program Committee
TBA
Organizers
Jisu Kim, Research Scientist, Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography, MPIDR.
Jisu holds a PhD in Data Science from Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy. She has worked on exploring and establishing novel methods to improve relevant statistics of international migration using social media data. Her research focuses on the intersection of migration sciences, economics of migration, complex social networks, statistical models and data-driven algorithms.
Daniela Perrotta, Research Scientist, Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography, MPIDR.
Daniela Perrotta completed her PhD in Complex Systems for Life Sciences at the University of Turin with a fellowship at the Laboratory of Digital and Computational Epidemiology at the ISI Foundation in Italy. Her research focuses on harnessing innovative data-collection schemes and computational methods for modeling human mobility and disease spread.
Contact the Organizers
mimode2022(a)easychair.org<mailto:mimode2022@easychair.org>
--
This mail has been sent through the MPI for Demographic Research. Should you receive a mail that is apparently from a MPI user without this text displayed, then the address has most likely been faked. If you are uncertain about the validity of this message, please check the mail header or ask your system administrator for assistance.
+++ Apologies for cross-postings +++
The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is inviting applications from qualified and highly motivated students for a PhD student position in the Lab of Digital and Computational Demography<http://demogr.mpg.de/en/laboratories/digital_and_computational_demography_5…>.
The MPIDR is one of the leading demographic centers in the world. It is part of the Max Planck Society, a network of more than 80 institutes that form Germany’s premier basic-research organization. Max Planck Institutes have an established record of world-class research and they offer a unique environment that combines the best aspects of an academic setting and a research laboratory.
The Lab of Digital and Computational Demography, headed by MPIDR Director Emilio Zagheni, is looking for candidates with strong quantitative and programming skills and with research interests in human mobility, health, and disease ecology.
Short Description of the PhD Project
Human mobility is a key process in health and disease ecology, shaping the mixing patterns that facilitate the spread of both pathogens and vectors. The successful candidate is expected to contribute and advance a project that uses novel techniques to study human mobility and its implications for disease dynamics and inequality. Particular attention would be devoted to links between mobility and mosquito-borne diseases, including the analysis of multiple sources of mobility data and mosquito surveillance as a way to better inform models of mosquito risk and epidemiological patterns.
Supervisory Team
This project will be supervised by an interdisciplinary team of renowned scholars that includes Daniela Perrotta (MPIDR), Emilio Zagheni (MPIDR), John Palmer (Universitat Pompeu Fabra - UPF), and Frederic Bartumeus (Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes – CEAB-CSIC). The PhD student is expected to be in residence at the MPIDR and enrolled in the PhD program of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UPF. Additionally, the PhD student will receive support for research visits at UPF and CEAB-CSIC, in order to complete mandatory coursework and to have further scientific exchange with the research team in Barcelona.
For questions and additional information regarding the PhD project, please contact Daniela Perrotta (perrotta(a)demogr.mpg.de<mailto:perrotta@demogr.mpg.de?subject=Application%20%2F%20Inquiry%20PhD%20Student%20Position>).
The PhD studentship offers an excellent opportunity for motivated students to work with a highly international team of researchers, to take advantage of the interdisciplinary intellectual environment at the MPIDR, as well as substantial support for travel, research training and data acquisition.
The admitted student is expected to be part of the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS) that merges demography, epidemiology and data science. IMPRS-PHDS equips doctoral students not only with advanced knowledge of the theory and methods of demography and epidemiology (broadly defined as ‘population health’), but also with strong technical skills in statistics, mathematical modeling, and computational and data management methods (broadly referred to as ‘data science’). PHDS supports strong interdisciplinary research training and exchange within a network of universities in Europe and the US. The research school offers a core training program in Rostock, extensive networking opportunities across partner sites, and high-quality supervision across at least two institutes. For more information on the IMPRS-PHDS curriculum please see www.imprs-phds.mpg.de<https://www.imprs-phds.mpg.de/>.
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted online via this portal<https://survey.demogr.mpg.de/index.php/633483?lang=en> by June 17, 2022 and include as a single pdf file, in English:
Curriculum Vitae, including a list of your scholarly publications.
1. A motivational statement (maximum two pages) explaining why you applied, how your research interests fit with the project; how the MPIDR could foster your career development; and describing your technical skills and areas of expertise.
2. Copies of transcripts of undergraduate and master’s degrees. Applicants should hold a master’s degree or equivalent at the time of starting the PhD.
3. Names and contact information for 2 academic referees.
4. One writing sample.
The starting date is flexible, but no later than November 1, 2022. The PhD student is offered a 3-year contract with remuneration based on the salary structure of the German public sector (Öffentlicher Dienst, TVöD Bund) currently starting at 34,295.22 € gross a year. Online interviews will be held on July 11-12, 2022.
The MPIDR is an equal opportunities employer. Our work atmosphere includes respectful treatment of each other, with gender, nationality, religion, disability, age, cultural origin, and sexual identity playing no role. We aim to have an institutional culture that enables everyone to develop their individual skills and competencies.
The Max Planck Society offers a broad range of measures to support the reconciliation of work and family. These are complemented by the MPIDR’s own initiatives. The Society has been awarded the certificate “Work and Family” which is granted to institutions committed to establishing a family-friendly corporate culture by binding target agreements. The MPIDR collaborates with a network of local day-care centers that provides childcare places for the children of Institute staff. The Max Planck Society has contracts with a private family service company that offers services such as arranging child care on short notice in various cities in Germany for parents who attend conferences, care services for children of school age up to 14 years, and support for those caring for family members and relatives. The MPIDR also practices flexible working-time models, which include at least one home office day per week, and scheduling meetings only within core working hours. To help accompanying spouses and partners find appropriate work at their new location, the MPIDR works in close cooperation with Dual-Career Partners in regional networks.
Our Institute values diversity and is keen to employ individuals from minorities.
The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals. Furthermore, the Max Planck Society seeks to increase the number of women in those areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply.
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