Only 15 days left for the early registration to the course in Social Network Analysis.
Please have a look at the course description and share with your colleagues.
The course will be held in Tallinn, Estonia September 24-26th 2014.
More information about the course here.
Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Friday, 14 February 2014
Network Analysis Workshop and NOSOVE General Assembly
Update 14.07.2014
Sadly we have had to cancel the course due to lack of registered participants. We hope it will be possible to organize the course at a later date.
Time:
September 24th -26th, 2014
Venue:
Sadly we have had to cancel the course due to lack of registered participants. We hope it will be possible to organize the course at a later date.
Time:
September 24th -26th, 2014
Venue:
Hotel L’Ermitage
Toompuiestee 19, 10137 Tallinn, Estonia
Website: www.lermitagehotel.ee/en/
Instructor:
Rob Christley
Reader in Epidemiology
Department of Epidemiology & Population Health
Institute of Infection & Global Health, and
School of Veterinary Science
University of Liverpool,
UK
Provisional Outline
The course will introduce the terminology, methods and some of the software available to analyse networks. The workshop will be a combination of short lectures, discussions and hands-on analysis (half of each day will be spent completing exercises designed to give participants practical experience of network analysis). By the end of the workshop participants will be able to design and undertake studies appropriate for the collection of network data, and use such data to create network images, describe important features of the network and identify important individuals and subgroups within the network. In addition, we will cover aspects of the statistical analysis of network data and the impact of networks on infectious disease dynamics.
Data will be provided for the practical sessions; however, participants will be encouraged to bring their own data to work on during the workshop. In addition, participants are encouraged to discuss their ideas for network analysis with the group.
The course outline below provides the basic course structure and topics to be covered. This may be subject to some modification.
Requirements:
• Course material with notes, practicals and solutions to the exercises will be provided during the first session of the workshop.
• Participants will be required to bring their own laptop.
• Software required: UCINET. A free trial version will be provided for the course.
Costs for participation:
Participation in the whole programme: 300 EUR (includes teaching all days, teaching material, workshop, AGM, all lunches, dinners and coffe breaks)
Accommodation:
Hotel L’Ermitage; Toompuiestee 19, 10137 Tallinn, Estonia www: www.lermitagehotel.ee/en/
Rooms have been booked for participant in the NOSOVE workshop/course
Per night in a single room: 60 EUR including breakfast
Per night in an advanced single room: 72 EUR including breakfast
Per night in a twin or double room: 60 EUR including breakfast for two (30 EUR per person)
Detailed program and Registration:
Deadline for registration: 30th of May 2014
Monday, 3 February 2014
NOVA Postgraduate course in Advanced Veterinary Epidemiology - Data Quality
New NOVA course in veterinary epidemiology focusing on data quality.
Tallinn, Estonia September 17-23, 2014
Please note that this course is running just before the NOSOVE course, and also in Tallinn! This is an excellent opportunity to get two courses in one run. Do not miss out!
More information about the NOVA course:
Course information and application
NOVA course website
Tallinn, Estonia September 17-23, 2014
Please note that this course is running just before the NOSOVE course, and also in Tallinn! This is an excellent opportunity to get two courses in one run. Do not miss out!
More information about the NOVA course:
Course information and application
NOVA course website
Saturday, 28 December 2013
Invitation to expert elicitation on syndromic surveillance in May 2014, Havanna, Cuba
Dear colleague,
We are contacting you on the basis of your expertise in syndromic surveillance and/or animal disease classification methods.
The lack of standardized recording of animal health data, and the consequent difficulties in setting up harmonized syndromic classification, are challenges often raised when syndromic surveillance is under discussion. We are well aware that a range of classification nomenclatures around animal disease exist, but currently there is little incentive for their adoption, especially considering the labour that would be required to recode data from individual institutions’ vocabularies.
Considering these challenges, we are planning to address the problem by gathering a number of experts interested in exploring potential solutions, and supplementing previous efforts with tools from the fields of computer/information science dedicated to the creation of functional ontologies. For more background on these subjects, please refer to the Semantic Web (http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontology) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/) websites. Additionally, we plan to use machine learning methods to develop tools that will make the proposed ontologies more readily applicable; that is, to provide tools for translation of animal health data into the developed standardized classification system.
The work would consist of a series of iterations between expert knowledge elicitation and the application of machine learning methods. Details are provided in the summary work plan attached. The first instance of expert elicitation is planned to take place in conjunction with the ICAHS2 conference in Havana, Cuba (7-9th, May 2014), as a half-day post-conference workshop (therefore taking place on May 10th, 2014).
If you are interested in this initiative, we kindly ask you to reply to this email (mail to: fernanda.dorea@sva.se) confirming your interest, so that we can keep you on our list of experts for any future activities linked to this project. If, additionally, you will be able to attend the first workshop immediately after the ICAHS2 conference in Havana, in May 2014, please confirm your participation also by replying to this email, and we will send you a confirmation of your workshop registration. Lastly, please feel free to forward this email to any colleagues whose participation in this initiative you judge to be relevant.
Thank you for your attention, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Fernanda C. Dórea, National Veterinary Institute-Sweden
Céline Dupuy, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety-France
Ann Lindberg, National Veterinary Institute-Sweden
Crawford Revie, Canadian Veterinary Epidemiological Research-Canada
Flavie Vial, Veterinary Public Health Institute-Switzerland
Link to work plan
We are contacting you on the basis of your expertise in syndromic surveillance and/or animal disease classification methods.
The lack of standardized recording of animal health data, and the consequent difficulties in setting up harmonized syndromic classification, are challenges often raised when syndromic surveillance is under discussion. We are well aware that a range of classification nomenclatures around animal disease exist, but currently there is little incentive for their adoption, especially considering the labour that would be required to recode data from individual institutions’ vocabularies.
Considering these challenges, we are planning to address the problem by gathering a number of experts interested in exploring potential solutions, and supplementing previous efforts with tools from the fields of computer/information science dedicated to the creation of functional ontologies. For more background on these subjects, please refer to the Semantic Web (http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontology) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/) websites. Additionally, we plan to use machine learning methods to develop tools that will make the proposed ontologies more readily applicable; that is, to provide tools for translation of animal health data into the developed standardized classification system.
The work would consist of a series of iterations between expert knowledge elicitation and the application of machine learning methods. Details are provided in the summary work plan attached. The first instance of expert elicitation is planned to take place in conjunction with the ICAHS2 conference in Havana, Cuba (7-9th, May 2014), as a half-day post-conference workshop (therefore taking place on May 10th, 2014).
If you are interested in this initiative, we kindly ask you to reply to this email (mail to: fernanda.dorea@sva.se) confirming your interest, so that we can keep you on our list of experts for any future activities linked to this project. If, additionally, you will be able to attend the first workshop immediately after the ICAHS2 conference in Havana, in May 2014, please confirm your participation also by replying to this email, and we will send you a confirmation of your workshop registration. Lastly, please feel free to forward this email to any colleagues whose participation in this initiative you judge to be relevant.
Thank you for your attention, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Fernanda C. Dórea, National Veterinary Institute-Sweden
Céline Dupuy, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety-France
Ann Lindberg, National Veterinary Institute-Sweden
Crawford Revie, Canadian Veterinary Epidemiological Research-Canada
Flavie Vial, Veterinary Public Health Institute-Switzerland
Link to work plan
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
13th Crane Seminar: Risk assessment – improving public health and animal welfare in food production
[Information copied from the course website, please visit for additional information]
Seminar and postgraduate course (3 ECTS)
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Skara, Sweden, 31 March - 4 April 2014
Risk assessment is used increasingly as a science-based method to describe and quantify risks in human and animal populations, and to identify important determinants of such risks. This seminar addresses the application of risk assessment concepts and methods to improve public health and animal welfare in food production. The seminar includes 5 days on campus in Skara, Sweden.
The Crane Seminar is both a seminar open to anyone, and a postgraduate course (3 ECTS credits) for students on a PhD or residency programme in medicine, veterinary medicine, animal science, or biology. In case of a large number of applicants, PhD students will be given priority on a first-come, first-served basis.
Crane Seminars are recurrent interdisciplinary events organised by the Department of Animal Environment and Health every 2nd-3rd year to connect human and animal sciences under current themes of high societal relevance. Needless to say, the seminar includes an excursion to Lake Hornborga, host of thousands of Cranes at this time of the year.
Welcome to Crane Country in March!
Seminar and postgraduate course (3 ECTS)
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Skara, Sweden, 31 March - 4 April 2014
Risk assessment is used increasingly as a science-based method to describe and quantify risks in human and animal populations, and to identify important determinants of such risks. This seminar addresses the application of risk assessment concepts and methods to improve public health and animal welfare in food production. The seminar includes 5 days on campus in Skara, Sweden.
The Crane Seminar is both a seminar open to anyone, and a postgraduate course (3 ECTS credits) for students on a PhD or residency programme in medicine, veterinary medicine, animal science, or biology. In case of a large number of applicants, PhD students will be given priority on a first-come, first-served basis.
Crane Seminars are recurrent interdisciplinary events organised by the Department of Animal Environment and Health every 2nd-3rd year to connect human and animal sciences under current themes of high societal relevance. Needless to say, the seminar includes an excursion to Lake Hornborga, host of thousands of Cranes at this time of the year.
Welcome to Crane Country in March!
Friday, 28 June 2013
Future NOSOVE course - Social Network Analysis
The conclusion of local preferences of the future NOSOVE course in Estonia is that the course will be on Social Network Analysis.
The course will be in the summer of 2014. More information will follow on the blog.
The course will be in the summer of 2014. More information will follow on the blog.
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Syndromic Surveillance – monitoring animal health data to detect temporal aberrations in near real-time using free software
[Proposal for next NOSOVE course in June 2014, please vote in the poll]
Course specifications
Workshop Content
Teacher: Dorea Fernanda
Syndromic surveillance can be characterised as a process involving the continuous analysis of health data to provide immediate feedback.
Syndromic surveillance can be characterised as a process involving the continuous analysis of health data to provide immediate feedback.
The increasing
amount of health data recording in electronic format presents extra challenges
for data analysis, but also new opportunities to extract information from data
in real and near-real time. In this course participants will have a chance to
learn, through several hands-on exercises, how to use freely available software
to set up automated, autonomous routines of data analysis.
The theory and exercises will cover all the basic steps
to successfully develop, evaluate and implement a syndromic surveillance system
capable of detecting temporal aberrations (which may indicate the occurrence of
outbreaks) when monitoring cases load from a given animal health data source,
such as laboratory submissions, clinical cases, etc. These steps can be summarized
as:
- basic text mining
methods for automated classification of records into syndromes;
- retrospective evaluation
of data to create baseline profiles following the removal of excessive
noise and aberrations, and the identification of temporal effects;
- prospective evaluation
of detection algorithms; and finally
- real-time monitoring and implementation.
As all software
used are freely available, participants will be able to readily apply the
skills learned into their work or research.
Course specifications
Participants are expected to have a basic
knowledge of biostatistics. No previous knowledge of the software to be used is
expected.
The course exercises will use the statistical programming environment R,
and RapidMiner,
the world-leading open-source system for data mining available freely from
Rapid-I (http://rapid-i.com/content/view/26/84/).
Participants will receive download and installation instructions upon
registration, and they should bring their own laptop computer. Datasets will be
provided as part of the course, but participants are welcome to bring a dataset
of their own to explore some of the techniques learned.
Workshop Content
Day 1 – Introduction
to the tools: Basics of using R and
Rapid Miner.
Day2 – Syndromic
surveillance, Step 1: Automated classification of records into syndromes. Participants
will learn the basics of text-mining and will practice implementing supervised (rule-based)
and unsupervised (naïve Bayes, Decision Trees) machine learning methods in
order to create automated routines to classify records into syndromes.
Day3 – Syndromic
surveillance, Step 2: Retrospective evaluation of data available. Basic concepts of time
series analysis will be covered. Participants will practice on a dataset in
order to learn how to identify statistical characteristics of the time series
which can impact aberration detection, in special temporal effects such as day
of week and seasonal patterns. Step 3: Prospective evaluation of data. Participants will practice the use
of basic temporal aberration detection algorithms, such as control charts
(cumulative sums, Shewhart type control charts and Exponentially Weighted
Moving Average). More advanced methods (such as Holt-Winters exponential
smoothing and removal of temporal effects using regression models) will then be
employed to deal with specific characteristics that can be found when
monitoring different data sources.
Day4 – Syndromic
surveillance, Step 4: Implementation.
Participants will learn how to combine tools (Rapid Miner and R) in order to
implement a syndromic surveillance system, from data acquisition to final
reports.
Network Analysis Workshop
[Proposal for next NOSOVE course in June 2014, please vote in the poll]
Rob Christley
Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology
Head of Epidemiology & Public Health
School of Veterinary Science
University of Liverpool,
UK
Provisional Outline
The course will introduce
the terminology, methods and some of the software available to analyse
networks. The workshop will be a combination of short lectures, discussions and
hands-on analysis (half of each day will be spent completing exercises designed
to give participants practical experience of network analysis). By the end of
the workshop participants will be able to design and undertake studies
appropriate for the collection of network data, and use such data to create
network images, describe important features of the network and identify
important individuals and subgroups within the network. In addition, we will
cover aspects of the statistical analysis of network data and the impact of
networks on infectious disease dynamics..
Data
will be provided for the practical sessions; however, participants will be
encouraged to bring their own data to work on during the workshop. In addition,
participants are encouraged to discuss their ideas for network analysis with
the group.
The
course outline below provides the basic course structure and topics to be
covered. This may be subject to some modification.
DAY 1
a.m.
|
Theory
|
INTRODUCTION
-
What is a network?
-
The network paradigm
-
History
-
Veterinary
-
Other applications
|
p.m.
|
Practical
|
FROM
DATA TO ILLUSTRATION
|
DAY 2
a.m.
|
Theory
|
FROM
ILLUSTRATION TO ANALYSIS
§ Analysis of individual nodes
- Centrality
§ Analysis of a network
- Cohesion
§ Analysis of groups and regions
- Components, cohesive sub-groups
- Structural & regular equivalence, blockmodelling
|
p.m.
|
Practical
|
FROM
ILLUSTRATION TO ANALYSIS
§ Analysis of individual nodes
§ Analysis of networks
§ Analysis of sub-groups
|
DAY 3
a.m.
|
Theory
|
FURTHER
TOPICS IN NETWORK ANALYSIS
§ Network data collection
§ Networks and disease dynamics
§ Discussion session
- Presentation of research ideas or data by the participants (if
they choose)
|
p.m.
|
Practical
|
FURTHER
TOPICS IN NETWORK ANALYSIS
§ Brief overview of other network software
§ Statistical analysis of network data
§ Continue working on exercises from day 1 and 2
§ Work on your own data
|
Requirements:
·
Course material with notes,
practicals and solutions to the exercises will be provided during the first
session of the workshop.
·
Participants will be required
to bring their own laptop.
·
Software required: UCINET. A
free trial version will be provided for the course.
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