Announcing the New Cohort of Event Fund Grantees!

Code for Science and Society is happy to announce our second cohort of Event Fund grant recipients! The Event Fund is a community-advised fund to support inclusive and accessible events in data science, including machine learning, open data, and artificial intelligence. We appreciate the enthusiastic response to our request for proposals from members of the data science community and the time and effort that applicants spent on their proposals.

Grantees were selected based on the proposed event’s alignment with the mission of the fund and their plans to create inclusive and accessible spaces for their communities. We also aimed to support a diverse range of communities, including established and emerging organizers and events.

This program is made possible through award number GBMF8449 from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (https://doi.org/10.37807/GBMF8449). We thank the Event Fund Advisory Committee, Selection Committee, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their guidance in developing this community-advised fund to support research-driven data science communities around the globe.

Please join us in congratulating the second cohort of event fund grantees and stay tuned for our next RFP, which will go live in November! To stay up to date, join our mailing list.

2021-2022 CS&S Event Fund Grantees

Decolonizing Open Science: A Design Sprint for Inclusive Knowledge Infrastructure

Grantee: Leslie Chan (Director, Knowledge Equity Lab)

Aim: As part of efforts towards implementing recommendations by UNESCO’s global consultation on open science, the Knowledge Equity Lab (KEL) at the University of Toronto Scarborough has been conducting a mapping exercise to better understand the implementation challenges of sustaining open knowledge infrastructure faced by regional research communities. Building on the analysis, this event will serve as a venue for ideas about open infrastructure to take root and flourish. We will be inviting participants from diverse communities to co-design concrete, actionable strategies and ways to sustain local and interoperable infrastructures that are free from corporate control and technical standards often imposed by institutions in the global north. We anticipate event outcomes will include a number of use cases, along with potential funding support, partnership and sustainability plans. Learn more here. Amount: $16,768

LA-CoNGA Physics Hackathon: Latinoamerica en Open Data

Grantee: Reina Camacho Toro (Researcher CNRS, France/Deputy coordinator LA-CoNGA Physics)

Aim: During this 4-day hackathon, university students and early career scientists from Latin America will be matched with local companies and institutions to work on a project using physics data. Under the motto “Learn-Build-Innovate-Share”, this hackathon aims to strengthen the academia-industry-society link and to promote the open science and open education principles in the region. LA-CoNGA physics is a consortium that fosters international cooperation among European and Latin American research and academy institutions in advanced physics. We create virtual learning experiences in international collaborative environments supported by open resources and shared infrastructure. Learn more here. Amount: $13,000

Data Umbrella: Contributing to scikit-learn Open Source

Grantee: Reshama Shaikh (Statistician, Founder of Data Umbrella)

Aim: This “sprint” is a hands-on hackathon where participants learn to contribute to scikit-learn, a widely-used Python open source, machine learning library. In June 2021, we hosted a Data Umbrella Latin America scikit-learn sprint where a total of 40 contributors attended from across 9 different countries in Latin America. Read the event report from our prior grant here. This iteration of the sprint will encourage returning contributors from Africa and the Middle East to scikit-learn to foster long-term sustainability. Learn more about the upcoming event here and more about Data Umbrella here. Amount: $5,000

MetaDocencia: An Online Community for Better Teaching

Grantee: Nicolas Palopoli (Core Team member of MetaDocencia, Adjunct Researcher at CONICET & Universidad Nacional de Quilmes)

Aim: MetaDocencia is a non-profit organization that nurtures a community of Spanish-speaking educators by teaching concrete, evidence-based, and student-centered educational methods. We collaboratively develop open, reusable, and accessible resources to foster effective training practices. This event series expands MetaDocencia’s efforts to sustain an inclusive and collaborative community of trainers. A series of events will be held over 15 weeks, including development of new resources and hosting of training workshops to help Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking educators to incorporate technical skills for teaching open, reproducible and effective lessons. Learn more about MetaDocencia here. Amount: $10,000

Empowering Researchers with Skills and Tools in Open Science and Bioinformatics

Grantee: Caleb K. Kibet (Bioinformatics researcher, educator, and Open Science Advocate at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE))
Core Team:
BHKi (bhki.org): Festus Nyasimi, Michael Kofia, David Kiragu, Margaret Wanjiku, Karega Pauline | OpenScienceKE: Kennedy Mwangi

Aim: This series of events includes an open science symposium, bioinformatics workshops, instructor training events, hackathons for collaborative mini-projects, and a conference, with goals of blending open science and bioinformatics and training researchers to conduct open, reproducible, and collaborative science. The project is spearheaded by BHKi and OpenScienceKE in collaboration with H3ABioNet and hosted by the international centre of insect physiology and ecology. We apply the model "sensitize, train, hack and collaborate" to build capacity and create networking opportunities for early career researchers in Kenya and Africa. Find more on Open Science KE here. Amount: $18,779

CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science

Grantee: Marcela Alfaro-Córdoba (Co-chair of Schools for Research Data Science | Teaching Assistant Professor at University of California, Santa Cruz)

Aim: This 10-week short course will bring research data science to a virtual audience, with high participation from Low-to-Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). The primary goal of the CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science is to teach foundational Data Science skills to Early Career Researchers in LMICs, with a related goal of regionalizing training capacity by growing a community of alumni, instructors, classroom helpers, and hosting institutions. This train-the-trainer approach and growing community of regional instructors reduces the cost of the events for the local hosting institutions and increases the number of events that can be run. Learn more here. Amount: $11,508

MORE: Mentored, Open Research Experiences

Grantee: Claire Gordy (Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University)

Aim: Mentored Open Research Experience (M.O.R.E.) aims to teach technical skills and provide authentic research experiences to students who are negatively impacted by bias selection and often ineligible to apply for federally funded research programs. Ten undergraduate students in the United States will participate in training, code of conduct development, and discussions around open science practices and social aspects of data science. Students will work with faculty mentors and near-peer graduate student mentors to carry out research that bridges biology and data science and share their findings openly. Learn more here. Amount: $16,000

Lessening the Gap: Nurturing Access for Young Researchers in Eastern Indonesia to Analyze Molecular Data

Grantee: Ni Kadek Dita Cahyani (Research Scientist, Yayasan Biodiversitas Indonesia)

Aim: This event is a four-week long course on molecular ecology in Eastern Indonesia, with goals of teaching, increasing inclusivity, and community-building. The course will expose participants with a myriad of tools and online resources to do molecular ecology related research with particular emphasis on analyzing sequence data, creating a phylogenetic tree and being introduced to the R environment for data analysis. Most importantly, the course will act as a networking venue for young and senior researchers involved in the program to nurture future research, exchange ideas and experiences and minimize barriers in scientific understanding.  Learn more here. Amount: $7,500

Evidence Synthesis and Meta-Analysis in R Conference 2022 (ESMARConf2022)

Grantee: Neal Haddaway (Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute)

Aim: This virtual conference will foster multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration in open source tools for conducting rigorous and transparent evidence syntheses. The conference focuses on R as a coding environment, with interactive sessions for researchers wanting to conduct evidence syntheses and meta-analyses. The objective is to stimulate the production, validation and awareness of evidence synthesis technologies, showcasing new and established coding packages as well as providing training in evidence synthesis and package development in R. For ESMARConf2022, we aim to increase accessibility by providing bursaries for care-providers and those working in resource-constrained contexts to support broader attendance. Learn more about the upcoming event here. Amount: $17,000

Empowering Black Data Science Leaders from PhD to Policy - Symposium in the BlackInX Inaugural Conference

Grantee: Samantha Theresa Mensah (PhD Candidate, UCLA Chemistry)

Aim: This series of events is proposed by a group of graduate students from the United States and has three main goals: 1) empower Black data scientists by providing them effective science communication and advocacy tools; 2) demonstrate the importance of conducting scientific outreach with black communities; 3) develop and solidify the network of black scientists to address issues of exclusion in STEM. Learn more here. Amount: $15,000

Data Viz Accessibility Education Event for the #TidyTuesday Twitter Learning Community

Grantee: MiR Community

Aim: The MiR Community seeks to promote the visibility and leadership of R users from marginalized races, genders, and the disabled community through community-led efforts that support professional development. This week-long event hosted by the MiR Community aims to enhance the accessibility of shared visualizations for a wider audience, and increase awareness among data visualization creators of the benefits of these practices using modern tools available within the R programming ecosystem. The event will teach and promote a variety of accessibility practices that can be implemented in the design, creation, and sharing of data visualizations so that data-driven insights can be communicated as inclusively and effectively as possible. Learn more about the MiR Community here. Amount: $10,000

Featured Image Photo by Jesse Bauer on Unsplash