Page 4 – UWC eResearch Office

7 March 20227 March 2022

Training Opportunity: SKIES Registration is Open

The SKIES (SKilled, Innovative and Entrepreneurial Scientists) training workshop (4-8 April, 2022) is now open for registration. SKIES is a training and mentorship program, and this workshop is aimed at South African based astronomy PhD candidates and young researchers**, and focuses on career development, open science and entrepreneurship.

The event will take place on April 4-8, 2022 at the UCT Graduate School of Business Conference Center in Cape Town (but it will also be possible to attend online). The programme features hands-on exercises, external speakers to showcase career opportunities, and the possibility to interact with astronomy alumni.

Participants will learn about the basics of innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as how to improve creativity and develop a business model. All materials have been developed by astronomers, for astronomers.

The workshop registration is free and all lunches will be covered (note: dinners, accommodation and travel are NOT covered). Each participant will get a certificate of attendance at the end of the programme.

There are a maximum of 40 places to this training workshop (we can accommodate a maximum of 30 in-person attendees and the rest should be online). We recommend in-person attendance if possible.

Registration closes on March 25th, 2022.

You will receive a confirmation of acceptance for participation in the event by latest 29 March. For any questions please contact Dr Lucia Marchetti: lucia.marchetti@uct.ac.za

**This program will prioritise PhD and early career post-doc/researchers, but if you are a Masters student and you would be interested in joining this training workshop, please send an email to lucia.marchetti@uct.ac.za and we will keep you posted if there will be any available space closer to the date.

2 March 20222 March 2022

CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science – South Africa

The volume and variety of data that researchers and students are required to work with continues to grow. In order to work effectively with large datasets, data skills are becoming increasingly important, and can be enormously empowering.

The Department of Information Science of the University of Pretoria, in collaboration with DIRISA, SADiLaR and NeDICC, presents the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science. This school is aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers, and teaches foundational data science skills. The material covered by the programme is fundamental to all areas of research, and thus open to researchers and professionals from all disciplines that deal with significant amounts of research data. The goal is to provide a practical introduction to these topics with some theory and extensive hands-on training.

Topics covered include:
– Open Science
– Introduction to Unix Shell
– Introduction to Git
– Open and Collaborative Research
– Research Data Management
– Data Cleaning – using Open Refine
– Data Analysis and Visualisation – using R
– Data Intensive Social Science
– Author Carpentry
– Information Security
– Machine Learning and Neural Networks
– Research Computational Infrastructure

Please refer to the document below or the website (http://datascienceschools.co.za/) for more information. The deadline for applications is 31 March 2022.

Flyer-Data-Science-summer-school-May-2022-Final-1 Download

1 March 20222 March 2022

Figshare awarded grant to further enhance functionality for the research community

Figshare, the organisation behind UWC’s institutional repository, Kikapu, has been awarded an NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) grant. GREI is led by the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) and provides funding for repositories to grow their functionality and better meet the needs of research communities and the NIH Desirable Characteristics for Data Repositories.

The award granted to Figshare will support ongoing efforts to advance Figshare’s repository infrastructure to make research data better documented for findability and reuse. Figshare also plans to expand their support for metadata standards to enhance discoverability and tracking of open research, and broadening their metadata support for research funders and grants.

Open Science Stakeholder workshop on the South African Open Science Policy

The Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), in partnership with the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and Universities South Africa (USAf), hosted an online Stakeholder Workshop on 22 February to facilitate broad-based consultations in order to successfully develop the South African Open Science Policy.

The workshop included inputs and presentations from various stakeholders, as well as a Q&A session.

Watch the recording.

21 February 202221 February 2022

Seminar Series in Digital and Public Humanities

The Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDHP) hosts a series of seminars which are opportunities to present research projects related to Digital and Public Humanities.

The series includes a fascinating selection of research topics. Previous seminars include We Need a Database! Digitization Practices in Contemporary Art Ventures and Emergent Trends and Principles of Cyberarchaeology, and upcoming seminars include Computational Methods for Tracing Word Meaning Across Time. The next seminar will be Advanced Imaging to Support the Digital Humanities on 3 March.

Register at https://www.unive.it/data/agenda/2/56627. All previous seminar recordings are available at https://vedph.github.io/seminarseries/ and published on VeDHP’s YouTube channel.

31 January 202231 January 2022

Quantum Computing Research Funding Opportunity

The Research Office at Wits University and SA QuTI (the South African Quantum Technology Initiative) have successfully raised funds to support the Quantum Initiative, and have extended an invitation to final year students to apply for funding. Students (from any faculty), engaged in a quantum project may apply, and mentorship and/or collaboration with existing quantum hubs is encouraged but is not essential.

For more information, contact Taariq Surtee: Taariq.Surtee@wits.ac.za

24 January 2022

Data Carpentries Workshop Opportunity

CPUT’s Centre for Communication Studies is hosting a Data Carpentries workshop for participants interested in learning about research data skills in the humanities.

See more here: https://annajiat.github.io/2022-02-07-CPUT-ONLINE.

The workshop is free and delivered by the Carpentries, co-ordinated locally and affiliated with the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SaDiLAR) based at NWU. It will be held online between 9am and 1 pm on Mondays in February, and there are some spaces available. Anyone interested should register on the google form before end of day Thursday this week: https://forms.gle/SvSCVaqVW9BuS3Me9

14 January 202214 January 2022

Africa Women in Data Science: Online Event

DARA Big Data (Development in Africa through Radio Astronomy), in partnership with the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD), IDIA (Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy) and SARAO (South African Radio Astronomy Observatory) is hosting a free 3-day Africa Women in Data Science online event. The event will coincide with International Women’s Day 2022 and will also mark the one year anniversary of the publication of the SARAO Women in Data Science report.

The event organisers hope to help build a thriving African community of female data scientists and promote skills development for women who are interested data science careers. Registration for the event closes January 31 2022.

The event will take place from 8-10 March 2022, which coincides with International Women’s Day. It aims to increase African women’s participation in the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) to build a prosperous, resilient Africa of the future. The integral role of African women for the 4IR will be discussed and various opportunities will be showcased for young women hoping to get into the field of data science.

Africa Women in Data Science is free to attend and will be split into a conference on Day 1 (March 8) and a hackathon on Days 2 and 3 (March 9-10). The conference will feature inspiring female panel discussions, presentations from leading industry experts and question and answer sessions. Day 1 is open to anyone across Africa with a keen interest in data science. To register for the conference, only complete the first section of the registration form.

Enquiries can be emailed to linzi.stirrup@manchester.ac.uk

6 October 20216 October 2021

Carpentry Connect South Africa 2021 in Review

Last month’s Carpentry Connect South Africa took place completely virtually, and was attended by more than 120 attendees and volunteers (i.e. trainers, instructors and helpers) from 28 countries worldwide, including 16 countries in Africa. The event included 2 Carpentries workshops, 1 Carpentries instructor training event, 2 networking events, 1 learning session and 1 opening address.

The main goal of CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 was to build capacity for workshops through instructor training and bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and develop strategies for building strong local communities around digital and computational literacy in Africa.

Support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation‘s Event Fund allowed for, among other things, 300 GBs of mobile data bundles to be provided to 71 attendees over 19 African network providers. This enabled participation to those who would have otherwise not been able to attend such a virtual and mobile data intensive event. Often, even “free” events” cannot be attended due to the high costs of streaming video of such an event. This is particularly noticeable in contexts where Internet is pre-paid (credit is purchased in advance of service use).

Open Science Fair Symposium

BHKi (The bioinformatics hub of Kenya) and OpenScienceKE are proud to announce a new project, Empowering Researchers with Skills and Tools in Open Science and Bioinformatics.

This will consist of a series of events that will bring together researchers enthusiastic about bioinformatics and open science. The first virtual event is the Open Science FAIR symposium from October 11th-15th, 2021. The event aims to sensitise participants on FAIR open data science practices such as project planning and organisation, collaboration, licensing and data sharing. It exposes participants to use open science tools that facilitate these practices.

The organisers are also looking for presenters who have used open science practices to present their work and methods to fellow researchers. Register here to share your work.