SOCKS Events

Medium

Alan Alda Communicating Science Workshop
Thursday, January 9th, 2025 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Vermont EPSCoR is happy to offer an online Alan Alda Communicating Science Workshop. There are 20 total available slots available for this three-hour workshop. This is open to all SOCKS participants, and there is no cost to attendees.
SOCKS Speaker Series - Dr. Mirta Galesic
Friday, December 6th, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
 
Please join us for a presentation by Dr. Mirta Galesic. More details to follow soon.

SOCKS Workshop with Terry Barrett - Llama-3 LLM on the VACC
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024 3:300 PM to 5:00 PM
SOCKS conference room at 440 College Street
and on Teams

 
New to large language models on the VACC? Join Terry Barrett of the Research Computing Team for a workshop on how to set up and run the on-prem Llama-3 LLM on the VACC. Terry will demonstrate how to fine-tune models to better perform for a particular area of interest, while pointing out challenges and pitfalls to consider.
 
To attend, please provide your interest and NetID to Terry tcbarret@uvm.edu. There will be shared instructions and code on the meeting chat before the workshop so you can try it out and bring your questions.
Workshop Slides (PDF)    Workshop Code   Workshop Video
SOCKS Speaker Series - Dr. Joshua Garland
Friday, October 18th, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
UVM Alumni House Silver Pavilion
61 Summit Street
Burlington, VT 05405

 
Information warfare manifests in diverse forms, from targeted disinformation campaigns to the strategic manipulation of local narratives by both foreign and domestic actors. In contrast to traditional warfare, information warfare intricately weaves technology with societal and psychological tactics to effectively pollute the information environment in order to manipulate the target audience. Addressing this complex sociotechnical challenge requires a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach. In this talk, I will present a curated selection of our ongoing research projects in this field, with the aim of sparking meaningful discussion and fostering collaboration.
 
For more information, email epscor@uvm.edu
SOCKS Speaker Series - Dr. Brooke Welles
Friday, September 20th, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
UVM Alumni House Silver Pavilion
61 Summit Street
Burlington, VT 05405

 
The decade spanning 2012-2022 social media platforms, especially Twitter, created opportunities for historically excluded people and groups to platform their ideas and create meaningful social change. Research suggests that hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo profoundly shifted not only how we think about racial and gender justice in the United States, but also helped to usher in lasting policy and structural reform. In this talk, I will explore various mechanisms that allowed Twitter activism to be so successful and reflect on the continued capacity of social media for social change in a post-Twitter world.
 
Brooke Foucault Welles is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and a core faculty member of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University. Combining the methods of computational social science and network science with the theories of communication studies, Dr. Foucault Welles studies how online communication networks enable and constrain behavior, with particular emphasis on how these networks enable the pursuit of individual, team, and collective goals. She has contributed several critical pieces about computational methods and is the co-editor of a book on computational communication research titled The Handbook of Networked Communication.
 
For more information, email epscor@uvm.edu
SOCKS Talk: "Using Digital Techniques to Provide Collective Insights into the Experiences of Australian World War I Soldiers" with Ashley Dennis-Henderson
Wednesday, July 31th 2024 12:00 PM
 
Please join us for a presentation by Ashley Dennis-Henderson at Innovation. 425. Here is the Teams link for those who are unable to attend in person (please try to be in person if you can).
 
Ashley is visiting from the University of Adelaide where she is a PhD student in Applied Math(s) and Statistics. Her advisor is Lewis Mitchell, who was a postdoc in the Computational Story Lab from 2011 to 2014. Ashley is here for the week and we will be looking to set up individual meetings. Please contact Peter Dodds (peter.dodds@uvm.edu) for arrangements.
Randall Harp, SOCKS Co-PI, upcoming talk for Philosophy Week! How Should We Punish?
Monday, April 15th, 2024 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
 
Venetian Soda Lounge 266 Pine Street, Suite #122 Burlington, VT, 05401 United States
 
Annual lively series of discussions, talks, tastings, and screenings, aimed at fostering thoughtful reflections on life's most meaningful questions. Continually updating with new events as they take shape, so be sure to revisit this space for the latest updates.
 
For the full schedule visit:
https://www.publicphilosophyweek.org/
https://www.publicphilosophyweek.org/2024-events/how-should-we-punish
2024 SOCKS All Hands Meeting
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024 8:30 PM to 3:35 PM
 
UVM Alumni House, 61 Summit Street, Burlington VT
 
Please join us for discussions on the research behind the projects and aims for the future.
SOCKS Speaker Series - "Parler Games: Conspiracy Theory, Conspiracy, and Insurrection" with Timothy Tangherlini, PhD
Friday, March 29th, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
 
Please join us for a presentation by Timothy Tangherlini, PhD, on Friday, March 29th at 12:00 PM in the UVM Alumni House Silver Pavilion. Dr. Tangherlini will present “Parler Games: Conspiracy Theory, Conspiracy, and Insurrection.”
 
Timothy Tangherlini is Professor of Folklore at the University of California Berkeley, where he also serves as graduate advisor in the Folklore program and the associate director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. He has developed computational approaches to stories and storytelling over the past three decades.
 
Event Video    Event Slides (PDF)
Lecture with Chris Danforth - Measuring the Happiness, Health, and Stories of Society through Social Media
Monday, November 13th, 2023 4:30 PM
 
WATERMAN MEMORIAL LOUNGE
85 South Prospect St. - Room 338
 
Professor of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Vermont, Chris Danforth serves as the Director of the Vermont Advanced Computing Center and co-leads the Computational Story Lab research group at the Vermont Complex Systems Center. He has extensive experience in chaos theory applied to weather forecasting and current research on socio-technical systems and is the co-inventor of hedonometer.org, an instrument that measures daily happiness based on social media use. Danforth has also developed algorithms to identify predictors of depression from Instagram photos.
“Computational Narrative Understanding” with Dr. Andrew Piper, PhD
Friday, November 3rd, 2023 12:00 PM
 
Please join us for a presentation by Andrew Piper, PhD on Friday, November 3rd at 12:00 PM in the Williams Family Room of the UVM Davis Center. Dr. Piper will present “Computational Narrative Understanding.” Lunch will be provided.
 
Dr. Piper is a Professor of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University. He completed his PhD in German Literature in 2005 at the University of Columbia and is also an Associate Member of McGill's Department of Art History and Communication Studies.
Slack Tutorial with Juniper Lovato
Wednesday, October 18th, 2023 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
 
Attend via Zoom.
 
Tutorial on using the Slack space for SOCKS members presented by Juniper Lovato.
Event Video
2023 SOCKS Strategic Planning Meeting
Thursday, August 24th, 2023 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM
Reception 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Friday, August 25th, 2023 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM

 
Burlington Hula Lakeside, 50 Lakeside Avenue.
 
Two day Strategic Planning Meeting for all SOCKS members.