Successful First International School in Computational Social Sciences in Uruguay 

October 2023. With enthusiastic participation from the students who joined the activity, the International School of Computational Social Sciences was held in Uruguay, organized jointly by the Millennium Institute de los Datos (IMFD-Chile), the Interdisciplinary Center for Data Science and Machine Learning (CICADA-CSIC/Udelar) and the Data Access and Methods Unit (UMAD-FCS/Udelar). 

This is the first time that the IMFD has organized an international activity outside the country to provide training and raise awareness of the work being done in Chile at the forefront of data science at the institute. "It was very interesting for us, as we had a group of students with a lot of work experience who were very interested in learning and asking questions about their areas, which led to a very enriching and challenging interaction for those of us who participated, "says Juan , alternate director of the IMFD and professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

The IMFD researchers who traveled to Montevideo to participate were Juan ; Juan Luna, an academic at the Institute of Political Science and the School of Government at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile; Magadalena Saldaña, academic at the Faculty of Communications of the Pontifical Catholic University, alternate director of the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Politics, Public Opinion, and Media in Chile (MEPOP); Sebastián Valenzuela, from the School of Communications at the Pontifical Catholic University; and Felipe Bravo, academic at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chile.

TheInternational School of Computational Social Sciences was held at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic of Uruguay.Thirty-nine students from various fields participated in the lectures, workshops, and presentations developed by IMFD researchers and academics from CICADA and UMAD.

At the school's opening ceremony, the following took place: the discussion "Relevance and challenges of the use of computational tools and data science for social research," in which the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the Republic, Carmen Midaglia, He said that social research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and requires training in data analysis to begin to increase the accumulation of knowledge about the fundamentals and methods applied to address complex social issues. "Today more than ever, dialogue with other disciplinary fields such as engineering or computing is needed to address old and new problems in novel ways." He pointed out that the training objective set by the School can be a source of innovation in the teaching of methodologies and their application in faculty research. 

"This school also allows us to showcase the work of the IMFD internationally and position ourselves as the leading hub for data science development in Latin America, as well as raise awareness of how research is conducted andpromote scientific development in Chile," says Juan .