IRIXYS and the AIDA consortium (Artificial Intelligence for Data Analytics) in collaboration Atos International Germany jointly organise a Summer School for PhD students and junior scientists with the title “Big Data and Business: Methods, Technologies and Innovation”.

The Summer School intends to build a strong network of young and experienced scientists for future cooperations. Addressing different approaches in the field of Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things and Machine Learning, the event aims at getting a deeper insight into fundamental research works as well as technological transfer and industrial purposes.

The Summer School particularly targets PhD students. Master students interested in pursuing their academic path in the research field can participate within the number of available places.

During his speech, Ernesto Damiani will introduce the innovation of TOREADOR in the context of Big Data Analytics.

More information on the IRIXIS web site and on the Summer School leaflet.

Prof. Wil van der Aalst, member of TOREADOR Advisory Board,  has been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, nominated by the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) of Aachen.

The award has been endowed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and is the most valuable prize in Germany. It is aimed at attracting top researchers to Germany across all scientific disciplines.

https://www.tue.nl/en/university/news-and-press/news/30-05-2017-wil-van-der-aalst-receives-the-highest-german-award-for-academics/

http://www.rwth-aachen.de/cms/root/Die-RWTH/Aktuell/Pressemitteilungen/Mai-2017/~nuzz/Wil-van-der-Aalst-kommt-mit-einer-Alexan/?lidx=1

Ernesto Damiani has been invited to held a talk at the “Banche e Sicurezza 2017″event organized by the ABI, the Italian Bank Association.

During the speech, he will present the TOREADOR approach, and how Big Data analytics can be exploited to improved bank and finance security.

More information and the full program can be found on the ABI website.

Ernesto Damiani has been invited to held a speech at the “Statistical  Challenges in Big Data & Complex Systems,” to be held the 12th of September at the Università degli Studi di Milano(Italy).

The purpose of the symposium is to take advantage of the presence in Milan of the statistical community attending CLADAG Conference in 2017 and to stimulate cross-discussion between the various disciplines present in the University and who for various reasons are concerned with the theme of Big Data and Complex Systems.

Ernesto Damiani has been invited to held a speech at the conference on Big Data Analytics and Applications to Economics organized by the Birkbeck University of London, Institute for Data Analysis, which will be held the 5th of June 2017.

The talk will address many topics of TOREADOR research and present our view on Big data analytics applied to real economic scenarios.

A 4-day training course started on March 3, 2017 in Milan, at Omnia Comunicazioni (http://www.omniacom.it), has been delivered by the CINI unit. It was aimed at training professionals on new Big Data technologies.

Course modules were: Data Technology, Data Science, Lab activities, Assessment and Evaluation.

In the framework of the TOREADOR Project, Bird & Bird has made an extensive analysis of the EU legal framework related to data ownership in Deliverable D16.2. This work not only fits within the TOREADOR Project but also in the wider context of the European Commission’s strategy towards data. The latter recently published a Communication on “Building a European Data Economy” where it notably suggests that Europe is not tapping into the potential of data for business, research and innovation purposes.

The results of Bird & Bird’s research are aimed at the partners of the Project, but also strive to provide additional evidence to policymakers on the emerging issues of data ownership. For the latter purpose, they presented the results of their research in a White Paper, which notably includes a proposal for a new right in data

Read the summary prepared by Bird & Bird here.
Download the White Paper here.

Ernesto Damiani held a keynote on “Controlling Leakage and Disclosure Risk in Semantic Big Data pipelines” at the Ernesto Damiani @ 13th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Heraklion.

In many Big Data environments, information is made available as huge data streams, collected and analyzed at different locations, asynchronously and under the responsibility of different authorities. It has become common for data analysts to have a mandate for computing Big Data analytics without holding the rights to access the individual data points in the input, as they may contain sensitive information or personal data protected by privacy regulations. This talk discusses the idea that techniques used for semantic enrichment of Big Data (such as semantic lifting to harmonize metadata representation across data collection points and pre-joins at data ingestion time to avoid computing semantic joins on Big Data storage) can be seen as non-linear leakage and privacy risk boosters. Intuition suggests that semantic techniques applied to Big Data representation may have a double impact on security risks: (1) increase leakage risk by increasing the value for the attacker per unit of information leaked (2) increase intrusion risk, making injection attacks (i.e. attacks aimed at poisoning data for subverting the outcome of analytics) more effective per unit of poisoned information injected . However, no clear methodology is currently available for quantifying the impact of these boosters.

The full video is available here.

Companies and organisations in Europe are increasingly becoming aware of the potential competitive advantages timely and accurate big data analytics has to offer. However, when considering to avail of big data analytics, or more generally to get involved in the data economy, one needs to identify the various actors implicated in the collecting, processing, managing and analysing of the data, as well as the different types of data concerned.
This article aims to provide a general overview of those various possible actors involved in big data analytics. It by no means pretends to give a full picture of the complex and evolving data ecosystem, which in general involves many (different types of) actors as well as a myriad of goods, services, technologies and business models.

Full version (link: http://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2016/global/big-data-bigger-contracts)

Debate is rife over the role that competition law could or should play in the world of data. Opinions from authorities, lawyers and economists go in many different directions. There are no competition law rules which deal specifically with the handling of data.
EU Commissioner Margarethe Vestager recently weighed in on the role of Big Data in the field of competition law. During a speech held at the Digital Life Design conference in January 2016, she stated that she was aware of the growing relevance of data in competition law, but that, while keeping a close eye on Big Data, the Commission has not found a competition problem yet.  The Commissioner, however, did not exclude the possibility that problems may arise in the future.
The main questions under consideration are what role data can play in competitive analysis and whether or not European legislation should be developed. If indeed legislation is required, should this entail amendments of existing competition laws, or the creation of sector-specific regulation for online/data-rich sectors?

Full version (link: http://www twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2016/global/big-data-small-problem)