December 8 – 10, 2014, World Bank, Washington DC: INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION HUNTERS ALLIANCE (ICHA) – Network analysis for detecting fraud

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THIRD BIENNIAL MEETING OF THE WORLD BANK GROUP’S

INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION HUNTERS ALLIANCE (ICHA)

ENDING IMPUNITY FOR CORRUPTION

December 8 – 10, 2014, World Bank, Washington DC

I will speak about the value of a network perspective for the discovery of fraud and corruption in financial data at the December 9th session of the World Bank’s upcoming meeting of the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative.

“The World Bank Group’s International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA) brings together heads and senior officials of corruption investigating bodies and prosecuting authorities, anti-corruption experts, academics, and representatives of international organizations from over 130 countries. The 2014 meeting of the Alliance will focus on fighting corruption – and the vast illicit outflows generated by corruption – by sharing know-how and experiences in the use of both traditional and alternative corruption fighting approaches.”

All financial transactions create a network as one person transfers money from one account to another.  A list of transactions creates a web of connections with an emergent shape or pattern.  Within these patterns are key positions occupied by people with special power in the network.  Mapping these transaction networks can reveal the hidden traces of financial crime.

November 6 and 7, 2014: University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) symposium on The Future of Big Data in Lincoln, Nebraska

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I will speak at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) at a symposium on The Future of Big Data in Lincoln, Nebraska, on November 6 and 7, 2014.

The event will feature presentations from academia, government, and the private sector, and workshops/lectures on topics related to big data. This event is open to the public.

Students and postdoctoral researchers are welcome to attend. The event should bring together people working in the computational sciences, federal agencies, and industry experts specializing in data management, analytics, and the future of information.

Agenda: Thursday, November 6

8:30 a.m. Welcome

8:45 a.m. Tim Hesterberg, Google
9:30 a.m. Valinda Scarbro Kennedy, IBM Academic Initiative, Relationship Manager
10:15 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. Jeffrey Gerard, The Climate Corporation
11:30 a.m. Jerry Roell, John Deere
12:15 p.m. Lunch; Tsengdar Lee, Project Manager, NASA
1:30 p.m. Two Concurrent Sessions:

Ag & Natural Resources

1:30 p.m. Adina Howe, Argonne National Lab Soil Microbiome
2:15 p.m. Natalia De Leon, Wisconsin
3:00 p.m. Heuermann Reception Lecture on Future of Agriculture
3:30 p.m. Heuermann Lecture on Future of Agriculture

Physics/Engineering/Social Sciences/Libraries

1:30 p.m. Carl Lundstedt, UNL/CERN
2:15 p.m. Heidi Imker, Ullinois (Libraries)
3:00 p.m. Break
3:30 p.m. Marc Smith, Social Media Research Foundation

5:00–7:00 p.m. Poster Session and Reception

Friday, November 7

8:30 a.m. Adam Glynn, Emory University, and Konstantin Kashin, Harvard; Big Data and Social Sciences
9:15 a.m. Jennifer Thoegersen, UNL Data Curation Librarian
10:00 a.m. Panel with representatives from federal agencies to discuss funding opportunities:

  • Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D., Associate Director for Data Science, NIH
  • Ian Foster, Ph.D., Director of the Computation Institute & Argonne Distinguished Fellow, Argonne National Lab
  • George Strawn (Director, Networking and Information Technology Research & Development; NITRD)

12:00 p.m. Lunch and Keynote Speaker (Animal Sciences)

1:00 p.m. Todd Mockler, Danforth Center
1:45 p.m. Henry Neeman, HPC, University of Oklahoma
2:30 p.m. Adjourn

March 16, 2014: PAWCON Workshop: The Big Picture on Big Data: Proven Methods You Need to Extract Big Value

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I will present a workshop at Predictive Analytics World in San Francisco on March 16, 2014.

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Workshop: The Big Picture on Big Data: Proven Methods You Need to Extract Big Value

Date and Time: Sunday, March 16, 2014, Full day: 9:00Am – 4:30pm

Intended Audience: Managers, decision makers, practitioners, and professionals interested in a broad overview and introduction

Knowledge Level: All levels

Attendees will receive an electronic copy of the course notes and materials.

Workshop Description

“Big Data” is everywhere.  The topic is impacting every industry and institution.   Big excitement about big data comes from the intersection of dramatic increases in computing power and data storage with growing streams of data coming from almost every person and process on Earth.  The pressing question is, how do we best make value of all this data – what should we do with it?

Working with big data effectively depends on understanding the sources of data and the issues in storing and analyzing it:

  • Where does big data come from?
  • How do you manage, store, and compute on big data?
  • What qualifies as “big”?

This one day workshop reviews major big data success stories that have transformed businesses and created new markets.

Dr. Smith will cover these revealing stories in order to illustrate the key concepts, tools, and value-proven applications driving the big data revolution.

“Big data” is a open buzzword – it could be defined as any amount of data you can’t afford to handle – but the big, newfound value achieved by computing at scale is no fad.

What you will learn:

  • Where does big data come from: Common sources of big data.
  • What makes data big: Velocity, Variety, and Volume!
  • How can we leverage it: Open tools and platforms for storing and analyzing big data.
  • The new paradigm: Today’s shift from hypothesis testing to a broad exploration for correlations is a revolutionary change in the way data is explored.
  • Best practices for analyzing big data: Key methods in data science, predictive analytics, and text analytics to analytically learn from data.
  • Social Data: Finding key connections in webs of people and events.
  • Applications of big data insights to business.
  • Future directions in big data: bigger, bolder, and better.

Schedule:

Workshop starts at 9:00am
First AM Break from 10:00 – 10:15am
Second AM Break from 11:15 – 11:30am
Lunch from 12:30 – 1:15pm
First PM Break: 2:00 – 2:15pm
Second PM Break: 3:15 – 3:30pm
Workshops ends at 4:30pm

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