Announcing the 2021 La Serena School for Data Science

There is no question that the new generation of astronomers, as well as researchers in several other disciplines, will lead cutting-edge research by taking advantage of the increasingly large datasets that are becoming available online. In preparation for this new scenario, the La Serena School for Data Science (LSSDS) seeks to provide late-undergraduate and early-graduate students with the statistical and computational tools to succeed in this quest.

Hosted annually at the AURA campus in La Serena, the school has gained popularity steadily since it was first launched in 2013. In 2019, it received about 250 applications, mainly from students in the US and Chile. While the school was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be hosted fully online—for the very first time—this year, 2-13 August, because of the continuing uncertainty regarding the pandemic.

As in previous years, the 2021 curriculum is being carefully crafted by the Scientific Organizing Committee based, in part, on the content of previous, successful schools and feedback from former participants. The 2021 school will retain its usual hands-on focus, with lectures from international experts—on topics such as Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning, High Performance Computing (HPC), Databases, Statistics and Deep Learning—as well as the valuable “Group Projects”, in which interdisciplinary and diverse groups of students can apply the tools they have learned by solving problems under the guidance of a professor. The online format will include daily (limited) synchronous and asynchronous sessions over the 10-day program.

Thanks to funding from the NSF and other international partners, applications from students in US, Chilean, and Ecuadorian (members of CEDIA) institutions are eligible for full scholarships covering all school expenses. Participants from disciplines such as Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Statistics, Math and any other data-intensive fields are welcome to apply. Applications will be accepted until 2 April 2021.

Please, visit http://www.aura-o.aura-astronomy.org/winter_school/ to submit applications or to find further information about the school.