Data Science Summer School for high-school students

Success for the first edition!

The first edition of the Data Science Summer School gathered 12 secondary school students from 19 to 23 July 2021 on Belval campus to learn more about data science. They enjoyed a lot the interactive activities and the exchanges with mathematicians from the University.

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Do you like mathematics? Are you curious about Data Science? Do you want to discover some material beyond school mathematics, which is part of active areas of research?

The Data Science Summer School is a unique opportunity to learn from mathematicians of the University of Luxembourg. You will have interactive classes, and exercise sessions including computer simulations.

WHAT?
A one week workshop about mathematics, with elements of computer science.

WHEN and WHERE?
19 – 23 July 2021
Campus Belval (University of Luxembourg)

FOR WHO?
High-school students aged 15 and over

LANGUAGE?
English

REGISTRATION

Registration are now closed.

SANITARY MEASURES

Please wear an FFP2 mask at all times. We will provide you with hand sanitiser.
We will closely monitor the pandemic situation. Participants will be notified if there will be changes. In case, the school might be postponed to September 2021, or to the summer of 2022.

PROGRAMME

There will be four days with four independent topics, plus a day for recap.

  • Information Theory (with Thierry Meyrath)

Music, videos, emails… a huge amount of data is transmitted over the internet everyday. Robots are sending Earth high resolution pictures from Mars. But networks are just able to transport data using two digits as letters: ‘0’ and ‘1’. How to translate these various data into binary strings? And how to do it in an efficient way, that is, by minimizing the average size of the data files sent through the network?
These problems are part of information theory, a mathematical theory dealing with the transmission of data and information through communication channels. At the end of the day, you will be able to turn a text into a binary string while saving file size as much as possible.

  • Probability and Statistics in Biology/Medicine (with Hélène Halconruy)

For several months now, it is not uncommon to hear politicians proclaim “in view of the forecasts given by mathematical models, we have decided that…”. How do we model the spread of an epidemic such as Covid-19? And to interpret the data from population-based tests? During this day, we will discuss some probabilistic and statistical tools to help answer these questions.

  • Artificial Intelligence in Games (with George Kerchev)

Usually Artificial Intelligence is concerned with correct and/or optimal solutions to a given problem. When applied to games development, however, AI is focused on a fun gameplay experience. In this minicourse we will discuss topics like agent movement, path planning, decision making, goal-oriented behavior, learning, and procedural content generation for a MOBA-like game.

  • Statistical Learning (with Guillaume Maillard)

How can we use data to make accurate predictions about new observations?
To answer this question, it is necessary to make some modelling assumptions about the data generating process. In this course, we will look at some simple models, how to estimate them, and what theoretical guarantees are known about them.

  • Visit to Restena (with Antonella Perucca)

At the end of the first day we will have the opportunity of visiting the Restena facilities (also on Campus Belval). The visit should last 90 minutes, and includes a presentation on the transmission of information in the Luxembourgish network and the coding of data for the fiber-optic cable.

HOW TO FIND THE SUMMER SCHOOL

How to reach Campus Belval?
– by train (five minutes from the station in Esch)
– by bus (from Esch, but also from Luxembourg City and other cities)
– by car (the entrance is no problem, but parking fees apply)

How to reach the Maison du Nombre?
The Maison du Nombre is the brown building in front of to the red skyscraper (on the upper level, so moving further away from the Belval Plaza).

How to reach the rooms of the Summer School?
At the entrance of the Maison du Nombre take the stairs, the rooms are on the first floor (there is also an elevator if you prefer).
The classroom is 1.040, the computer room is 1.030.

SCHEDULE

 – MONDAY 19 JULY 2021

9:00-9:30 Introduction
9:30-10:15 Class
10:30-11:15 Class
11:30-12:15 Class
13:15-14:10 Exercises
14:30-16:00 Visit to Restena

 – TUESDAY 20 TO THURSDAY 22 JULY 2021

09:00-9:45 Class
10:00-10:45 Class
11:00-11:45 Class
13:15-14:00 Exercises
14:15-15:00 Exercises
15:15-16:00 Exercises

 – FRIDAY 23 JULY 2021

09:00-10:00 Class
10:00-12:00 Preparation of Posters, Discussion
13:00-14:00 Preparation of Posters, Discussion
14:30-16:00 Presentations, Discussion
16:00-16:30 Certificate of attendance, Conclusion

CONTACT

Any questions? Feel free to contact us: outreach-datascience@uni.lu