Science and Development Forum, Wednesday, 1 March 2017

Mathematical sciences are an indispensable discipline for basic and applied sciences, which are preconditions for fostering development. Sound statistics play a crucial role in assessing the state of a nation and devising appropriate policy measures.

Data sciences is increasingly important not only for technology development and the private sector, but also to support and complement statistics of the public sector in low and middle income countries as well as in international organisations. One of its applications is monitoring the external page Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations with its 230 quantitative external page indicators.

In many developing countries teaching and research in mathematics does not meet the standards for high-quality professional services. One of the initiatives to overcome this short-coming is external page AIMS, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. AIMS builds a large part of its course on voluntary lecturers from all around the world and is interested in recruiting ETH external page lecturers and external page tutors.

ETH Zurich is well positioned to contribute research partnerships and capacity development in various fields of mathematical and data sciences.

Mathematical and Data Sciences for Development

9:00 Welcome Coffee

9:20 Download Welcome Address
Prof. Dr. Detlef Günther, Vice President Research, ETH Zurich 

9:25 Opening Address
Prof. Dr. Peter Bühlmann, Chair Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich

Session I: Capacity Development

9:30 Download The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (external page AIMS): Success stories, challenges, opportunities
Dr. Barry Green, Director of AIMS South Africa

10:10 AIMS Testimonials

Student opportunities: Past ETH AIMS tutor
Paweł Morzywołek, Graduate of the Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich

Download Teaching opportunities: Past ETH AIMS lecturer
Prof. Dr. em. Werner Stahel, Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich

10:30 Coffee Break

11:00 Download Capacity Development 4.0 for the new Data Ecosystem
Dr. Johannes Jütting, OECD, Manager of external page PARIS21, France

11:40 Download Are emerging markets the new source for data science capacities? An experience report
Peter Münzenmayer, Swiss Re, Switzerland

12:20 Lunch

Session II: Applications of Mathematical and Data Sciences for Development

13:30 Download Big data for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Promises and pitfalls
Prof. Dr. Karsten Donnay, Computational Social Science at Universität Konstanz, Germany

14:00 Download Using R in the development sector in Myanmar and Vietnam: Benefits, challenges, and impacts of open source tools for working with data
Prof. Dr. Ben Marwick, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington Seattle, USA

14:30 Coffee break

15:00 Download Data Analysis for Poverty and Policy Evaluation
Dr. Kenneth Harttgen, Center for Development and Cooperation (Nadel), ETH Zurich

15:20 Download Mathematics and Finance for Development
Prof. Dr. Martin Larsson, Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich  

15:40 Using machine learning for choosing crop varieties (Due to unpublished data the presentation is not available)
Johannes Kirschner, Learning & Adaptive Systems Group, Machine Learning Institute, ETH Zurich
 

16:00 Panel discussion on Challenges and Opportunities

Panelists:

- Barry Green, Director of AIMS South Africa
- Johannes Jütting, OECD, Manager of external page PARIS21, France
- Ben Marwick, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington Seattle, USA
- Paul Embrechts, Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich

Facilitator: Dr. Barbara Becker, ETH Zurich

16:45 Closing
Prof. Dr. Marloes Maathuis, Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich   

17:00 Reception