April Launch of a Visual Analytics Summer School at NUI Galway

This summer, researchers, students and industry professionals can apply to take part in the KDU Visual Analytics Summer School, being held at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway. In addition to contributions from invited world-leading researchers and practitioners, the summer school will draw on expertise present in NUI Galway’s Data Science Institute, Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre, J.E, Cairnes School of Business & Economics, and the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies.

Visual Analytics is increasingly used to help decision-makers who rely on “Big Data” to make their decisions. It supports analytical thinking and reasoning, by combining advances in areas such as Information Visualisation, Data Mining and Big Data. These combined provide users with interactive interfaces and meaningful processing abilities to draw out insights for their analyses.

Invited speaker, Professor Alex Endert of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech said: “The research and development of tools and skills needed to understand data are becoming ever more important in today’s data-driven society. People, businesses, and governments who have technology to understand and use data will have greater opportunities. Visual Analytics occupies an important space in the space of data science and data literacy. In continuing to advance visual analytics as a discipline, we can continue to increase people’s data and analytic literacy.”

Speaking at the announcement of the KDU Visual Analytics Summer School, organiser Heike Vornhagen of NUI Galway’s Data Science Institute said: “Helping people to develop skills in an emerging area that will have a lasting impact on both their research and career prospects is very exciting. It is a fantastic opportunity to spend time learning from how those in other sectors have developed their skills, approach problems, and implement solutions. Our hope is that it becomes a basis for a network of expertise through which future projects can be run”.

Despite the growing importance of Big Data for multinational companies, government agencies and in a wide variety of public and private-sector organisations, there are few opportunities for people to upskill and to learn from others in different fields. Participants in the Summer School will be drawn from fields such as data analysis, visualisation, digital humanities, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), business and IT.

Dr Noel Carroll of Lero said: “We see that visual analytics is an integral part of our industry research collaborations to combine visualisation, human factors, data analysis, and business value insights to better inform decision-making processes.”

The workshop will consist of keynote talks to identify current trends and stimulate thinking, lectures to deepen participants’ understanding of the subject area, and hands-on tutorials to further participation and engagement.

The KDU Visual Analytics Summer School will run from 10-14 June at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway. Further details can be found at http://vass.datascienceinstitute.ie/, or by contacting vass@insight-centre.org

-Ends-