Open NetSci Hackathon 2019
To promote open research practices in Network Science.
Anyone registered for the NetSci 2019 School and Satellites can join, free of charge!
The Open NetSci Hackathon is an event sponsored by PLOS. It is part of the extended program of the 14th International School and Conference on Network Science (NetSci 2019).
The goal of the Hackathon is to promote open research practice in Network Science. For the first edition, the theme will be open code and data.
We hope to make the hackathon a perfect venue for getting together, and hacking away at fun projects in a laid-back, friendly environment.
We are excited to hold the Open NetSci Hackathon at the Generator Maker Space, in Burlington, Vermont. The Generator Maker Space is a combination of artist studio, classroom, and business incubator at the intersection of art, science, and technology. It hosts the Reckless Idea Lecture Series, a Vermont Complex Systems Center initiative.
Anyone registered for the NetSci 2019 School and Satellites can join the Hackathon, free of charge! Reserve your spot by registering for the event. Prearranged teams and solo participants are both welcomed.
Please refer to the NetSci website for housing and transportation. Light breakfast and snacks will be served at the event. Lunch on Saturday will be at the discretion of participants. There are inexpensive lunch options close to the venue.
The Open NetSci Hackathon consists of one day and a half of low pressure hacking, on Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th of May, the weekend that precedes the NetSci 2019 conference. We will stop early on Sunday so that participants may also attend the SYNS Warm-up event.
If you want to lead a project, send us your description via email at apatania@iu.edu. We will add it to the list and reserve a time-slot for your pitch on the first morning of the hackathon.
The Open NetSci Hackathon is committed to providing a safe and comfortable environment and harassment-free experience for everyone. All participants must agree to and follow the Hacker Code of Conduct.
| 08:00 AM | Light breakfast and registration |
| 09:00 AM | Opening |
| 09:15 AM | Keynote: Cassidy Sugimoto |
| 10:00 AM | Project pitches |
| 10:30 AM | Group assembly |
| 11:15 AM | Hacking setup |
| Noon | Lunch break |
| 01:30 PM | Hacking |
| 08:00 PM | End of official hacking period |
| 08:30 AM | Light breakfast |
| 09:00 AM | Hacking |
| Noon | Project presentation |
| 12:30 PM | Closing statements |
Network embedding methods are widely used and investigated in Network Science, yet very few are implemented in standard libraries such as networkx, graph-tool or igraph. The goal of this project is to integrate a few well-known embedding methods into standard libraries.
Standard network libraries, algorithms, open source workflow.
Organizers
The vast majority of software developed by network scientists takes the form of small standalone code bases, distributed across researcher's homepages, hosting services, and code sharing site like GitLab, Bitbucket or GitHub. This practice encourages algorithm duplication, reduces reproducibility and favors a fragmentation of the research community. A good way of addressing these issues would be to create a large, searchable index of code bases, perhaps in the spirit of ICON or networkrepository
Database, front-end development
Organizers
Accurate disease surveillance datasets are needed to make precise forecasts of how epidemics evolve on real networks. Health organizations often share their surveillance data via many disparate and intricate PDF files. The goal of this project is to digitize as much data as possible, to validate these datasets, and to make them widely accessible.
Automated text extraction, dataset management, statistical methods
Samuel V. Scarpino
Games have been used to great success as a teaching tool, but scientific concepts have also been used to spawn popular games. Look no further than the widely acclaimed Pandemic games, which incorporate elements of disease modelling and sandpile cascades on networks, for a successful gamification of scientific models. Several other models --- such as synchronisation, k-core decompostion, navigability, or voter models --- might also lend themselves to interesting gamification. Worst case scenario: A potential teaching tool. Best case scenario: The next big hit!
Game programming, front-end web development
Samuel Rosenblatt, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne
Would you like to make a network science technique available to everyone? Do you want to dedicate two days to learning and coding this method?
The goal of projects in this category is to create an open versions of closed software presented in a paper that you like, and to reproduce its results.
Send your ideas to apatania@iu.edu!
Are you fluent in more than one programming language? Would you like to see one of them more widely used?
The goal of projects in this category is to translate NetSci software to popular or optimzed languages.
Send your ideas to apatania@iu.edu!
Cassidy Sugimoto
Associate Professor of Informatics, Indiana University
