Astrostatistics School Crete

About The Summer School

The goal of the Summer School for Astrostatistics is to guide advanced undergraduates, masters and graduate students, and early postdocs in the use of the most common statistical tools for the analysis of a wide variety of data. Each session includes an introductory class followed by a workshop (hands-on analysis of astronomical data), and poses particular emphasis on the development of coding abilities which will serve as a quick reference for everyday work.

This is the second iteration of a school hosted by the astronomy group of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete (see the previous event).

Due to its very nature of hands-on workshop, this event will require on site attendance: we do not provide an option for remote participation. The Department will provide the computational facilities required by the classes: the attendees do not need to use their personal computers. No previous experience with Python is required.

COVID-19
The school will comply with all the COVID-19 regulations imposed locally (both from the Greek Government and from the University of Crete). These regulations (and relevant variations thereof) will be communicated in due time: please check this page regularly for future important announcements (under the section Venue). Regarding travelling, the participants shall make sure to comply with the rules related to their specific traveling plan.

Where

Department of Physics, University of Crete, Heraklion

When

Monday to Friday
11-15 July 2022

Registration

Registration closed on 02 May 2022.

Topics

Intro to Python and Jupyter Notebook
Classical and Bayesian Statistics
Fitting Methods
Time Series Analysis
Machine Learning Practices
Classification
Clustering
Regression
Introduction to Deep Learning

School Schedule

Please consult the School Schedule

Instructors

Teaching Body

Dr. Jeff Andrews

Northwestern University

Dr. Paolo Bonfini

Ballista Technologies

Dr. Kostantinos Kovlakas

University of Geneva

Dr. Grigoris Maravelias

National Observatory of Athens & FORTH

Teaching Assistants

Dr. Dmitri Blinov

Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH

Raphael Skalidis

Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH

Kyle Rocha

Northwestern University

School Venue

The school is hosted by the Department of Physics of the University of Crete, which will provide the computational facilities required by the classes.

Department of Physics, University of Crete, Heraklion

website

Directions

The Department is about 8 km from the center of Heraklion. There is a regular bus service from/to the city port (bus #20) or or airport (bus #11) to the University (direction Panepistimio / PAGNH). The municipality of Heraklion also provides an oline tool to keep track of the timetable and location of the buses (Iraklio Urban Buses), which is also available as mobile app. A detailed map and driving directions are available from the Department of Physics visitor information.

Heraklion airport is linked to the major European cities via Aegean Airlines, Olympic Air, easyJet, Ryanair, plus seasonal charter flights. Internal (Greece) flights are also provided by Ellinair and Sky Express. Daily ferry services from the Piraeus port in Athens are provided by Minoan Lines and Anek Lines. These ferries reach the port of Heraklion in the early morning, and leave from Heraklio in the late evening. This schedule gives the participants more than aboundant time to reach the School location in time for the first class, and to reach the port after the conclusion of the School.

COVID-19

The venue complies with all the COVID-19 regulations imposed by the Greek Government and by the University of Crete.

As of now, there are no COVID restrictions for traveling to Greece (i.e., there are no testing requirements, green passes, etc.), but make sure to check the requirements of any countries/airports that you are transferring to on your way to Crete. The Greek National Public Health Organization reports all the necessary information for the travelers.

Masks are not mandatory inside the School venue, but be aware that COVID cases are quickly escalating in Greece, therefore you might still consider wearing them inside the labs as a precautionary measure.

If you do get infected by COVID, a self-isolation period of 5 days is expected. In any case, independently on the current regulation, if at any time you contract COVID you shall not physically attend the School and inform us as soon as possible to protect the health of the other attendants. If you have any special health concerns or needs, please reach out to us.

Accommodation

July is considered touristic high season for Crete: attendees are advised to book their accommodation well in advance. To facilitate the search, in our subscription FORM we invite the participants to indicate whether they are prone to share a room.

Ideal locations to seek for an accommodation would be: 1) the old city center within the enceinte of the Venetian walls, or 2) along the line of the city bus route #11 or #20.

Rooms/Apartments

A variety of accommodations are rentable in the form of rooms or private apartments. As of the beginning of April, several options below 50€/night are still available through the common search engines, e.g. Booking or AirBnB, but the ones located in the city center will probably be fully booked soon.

Hotels

The hotels listed below provide an affordable accommodation in the city center. An additional list of hotels can be found on the visitor's page of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete.

Material

Workshop Jupyter notebooks

All the Jupyter notebooks presented at the school are publicly available at our github repository
Follow the instructions in the README file to setup the necessary libraries and download the relevant data sets.