Data Science & Data Management Training

Duration

2024-2027

Lead institutions

KU Leuven

Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar

Academic partners

Christelle Maeyaert

Fernanda Soliz Torres

Project status

Ongoing

Programme

ITP

Total budget

149,983.90

Summary

Contemporary research – particularly when addressing the most significant, intercultural and transdisciplinary research challenges – cannot effectively be done without a range of data skills. Also the expectation of the research community, research funders, publishers and the public for research to be transparent and responsible, means that researchers need to professionalise their data skills. The range of skills is varied: the principles and practice of Open Science and data management, the use of data platforms and infrastructures, various analysis and programming techniques, visualisation and modelling techniques, software development and data annotation.

This training programme on data science and data management, organised in a multi-institutional partnership, will capitalize on a currently ongoing VLIR project and on well-established data science schools as stepping stones.

An ongoing VLIR project brings together the efforts of six universities in Ecuador to prevent and respond to Gender Based Violence. Starting the data training within this established consortium, and their ongoing social research, enhances data science capacity first within the consortium and then beyond through a train-the-trainer approach. Trainees will become agents of change to teach data skills in their respective institutions and in regional data science schools in subsequent years.

The training curriculum will be developed, and training given, with expertise from the CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science, a partnership of dedicated Open Science and Data enthusiasts with a vision to increase data science and research capacity in institutions and people in Low and Middle Income Countries. They have been running data science schools since 2016, training over 600 people, and have developed a curriculum endorsed by the Research Data Alliance (Shanahan et al 2019). This training programme will provide trained instructors for similar data science schools in Latin America in coming years.