Hilbert Berneys summer school on Logic and Computation, Germany
The Hilbert-Bernays summer school held at the University of Tubingen from 21st to 27th July 2019. This school is more logic and mathematics oriented. I wasn’t very sure of what to expect but the courses that drew me to it were:
- Foundations of Machine Learning (ML) and AI
- Automatic Reasoning in the Automobile Industry.
It turned out that the ML course was geared towards using proof theory and proof assistants for formal verification of AI, which is useful in the growing research area of explanability and interpretability in AI. Fortunately we were allowed to work on projects of our interest which aligned with any of the 4 courses. I worked on the project titled Machine Learning (ML) in the Internet of Things with a colleague. Each group was given 5 minutes to present their project on the final day. On the social side, we visited the prestigious museum of the University of Tubingen in the city. The funding to attend the summer school came from DAAD scholarship and it took care of my travel and accommodation expenses.
29th Jyväskylä Summer School, Finland
The Jyväskylä summer school lasted for two weeks—the longest duration so far—from 5th to 16th of August 2019. There was a variety of courses to select from depending on your interest like chemistry, statistics, computational sciences and cybersecurity.
Week 1 courses
I took the Network and Information Security course taught by Prof. My Thai from the University of Florida. I was expecting it would have some hands-on but it turned out to be more of lectures and discussion. I didn’t mind so much since the course wasn’t in my core research area and I didn’t want something too deep and technical.
The most interesting aspect of the course was the group project. After a brainstorming session, my group chose to work on “Spam detection in online social networks using intelligent techniques “. We proposed using a special type of machine learning algorithm called autoencoders to detect spam users in social network. Each group presented a proposal of their project and had a few weeks after the summer school to submit the coursework.
Week 2 courses
In the second week, I attended two courses – Changing Security and Hybrid Threats and Risk, Performance and Decision Analysis.
I took the first course to raise my awareness of global political, economic and security issues. The course was an eye-opener about the various threats that countries are facing. My group looked at political hybrid threats facing African and European nations.
Risk analysis, taught by Prof. Jiang-Bo Yang of the University of Manchester, was the best lecture for me and aligned well with my interest. It also opened doors to deliver a seminar at the University of Manchester.
Social events
There was a good line up of social activities especially for the first week. We had sauna evening, canoeing/kayaking/SUP, board games, cycling trip and get-together dinner. We visited a small island by boat where we played outdoor games like badminton. I also attended a baking class, saw a volleyball match, and had the chance to visit the nature museum in the city.
Final Remarks:
The Jyväskylä summer school was tuition free but there were no scholarships for travel expenses. Despite having a wide selection of courses, it is tough to combine more than one course in a week as the schedules usually overlap. Jyväskylä is a nice and quiet city with a lot of greenery and nature connectedness. As one of my peers put it, it is devoid of the pretence (fakeness) of the tourist-centred cities like Helsinki. As a quiet city, it is pretty normal to find yourself as a lone passenger in the airport if you arrive too early for your flight.
That’s the end of my summer school account for 2019. Future posts about summer schools will be centred on tips for making the most out of it. Thanks for following me through this journey.