SICSS Chile 2023: Collaboration between social science and computer science

August, 2023 - Knowing more tools than are used in a specific research area and combining resources to advance research and learning: interdisciplinary work is becoming increasingly key to the ongoing development of knowledge in all areas. The Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS) is an international event that seeks to broaden knowledge in computational social science, promoting interdisciplinary participation between computer science and social science, and was held for the first time in Chile.

With two intensive weeks of presentations, workshops and tutorials, SICSS was held at the San Joaquín campus of the Catholic University of Chile, and was coordinated by Hernán Sarmiento, researcher at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data (IMFD). "This was an incredible experience, especially because of the diversity of disciplines that participated. Something that we lack a lot from the area of engineering and computing, and which is at the basis of the IMFD, is to generate this interdiscipline around the study of data, so having such diverse areas as sociology, psychology, education, data scientists, among others, gave us a super good and super encouraging opportunity that we can continue doing things in Chile and Latin America", says the organizer. 

Among the activities that took place were presentations of research and papers that combine the use of computer science tools in social problems, such as the analysis of thick data, the use of machine learning and its challenges in ethics and biases. 

For Pedro Seguel, part of the SICSS organizing team and PhD candidate at McGill University, Canada, the event was "a very good instance where people from many different disciplines participated, with very different interests. The event allowed us to share and try to understand the new challenges of using digital tools in social environments". In the activities, "Collaboration is collaboration is encouraged, which sometimes is not easy, not only to teach how to use a tool, but also to understand concepts and be able to share them with others and that this learning makes sense with a different discipline", he emphasizes.

SICSS is an initiative of the Social Science Research Council, created to provide training to a new generation of researchers working at the intersection of social science and data science, with the goal of incubating cutting-edge research.with the goal of incubating cutting-edge research.

For SICSS in Chile, more than 60 people applied, of which 20 were selected based on gender parity criteria. Nine disciplines were present in the activities, including sociology, statistics, data scientists, philosophers, among others. Twelve institutions were represented, including the University of Chilethe P. Catholic University of ChileUniversidad Católica de Chile , Universidad de Chile , Universidad de Santiago de Chile University of Santiago de ChileUniversidad de Santiago de Chile, the Universidad del Desarrollo, Universidad del Desarrollo, Universidad Alberto Hurtado Universityinternational universities such as Columbia University (USA), Lingnan University (Hong Kong), Monash University (Australia); research centers and studies such as the Center for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion (COES), Choose to Educate and the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data (IMFD).