13th ANR-Lab Summer School "Network Analysis and Contemporary Decision Sciences"

From August 1 to September 3, the 13th summer school of the International Laboratory for Applied Network Research "Network Analysis and Contemporary Decision Sciences" was held. More than 50 people took part in the school. The program was based on the courses "Introduction to Social Network Analysis", "Advanced Social Network Analysis" and "Contemporary Decision Science". The classes were taught by professors from Ljubljana, Vladimir Batagelj and Luka Kronegger, as well as ANR-Lab employees Dina Yakovleva and Daria Maltseva.

The school was attended by students and staff of the HSE University, as well as external participants. We talked to some of them to gather impressions about the school. 


Vasilisa Vashchenko, 4th year student of the program “Sociology” at the HSE University, Social Studies teacher at the School of the Center for Teaching Excellence and research assistant at ANR-Lab.

– Vasilisa, please share your impressions of the school.
– I really liked the deep content and a varied list of topics. The school is well immersed in context and gives an impressive arsenal of network analytics methods.

– What new skills have you acquired?
– For me, the main discovery was the software – Pajek, before that I did not use it, but many network methods, indeed, are best implemented in it. I especially liked the course on modern methods of data analysis, here almost everything related to the practical application of the methods studied was new to me.

– How do you assess the organization and format of the school?
– The school required full-fledged daily involvement, it was difficult to combine with work and study. It's good that the classes were held in a remote format – it is also very convenient for showing the teacher's screen, allowing you to share code and show how certain programs work. 



Olga Cherchenko, a research fellow at the FGBNU "Directorate of Scientific and Technical Progress", in her work uses the methods of bibliometrics and patent analytics for the examination of scientific projects. 

– How did you find out about the school? Why did you decide to participate?
– For the first time I learned about ANR-Lab at the XXIII Yasin International Scientific Conference on the Problems of Economic and Social Development and I was so impressed by the speeches on bibliometric network analysis that I subscribed to all the social networks of the laboratory and the master's program. I learned about the school from the HSE Master's VK group "Network Analysis" just a day before the deadline. Despite independent attempts to understand the methods of network analysis, I often did not have time to devote enough time to this. Therefore, I perceived the summer school as a unique opportunity to quickly and with the support of professionals immerse myself in what I wanted to competently apply in my work.

– Olga, please share your impressions about the school.
– Most of all I liked the way the material was structured and presented. The basic concepts were analyzed in detail, therefore it was possible to understand a lot in almost all complex methods. I really liked that many slides can be used as a guide to action or a training manual. It was a great pleasure to see how the laboratory staff answered questions with great enthusiasm and involvement, told something additional on the topics and helped the participants.

– How do you plan to apply the acquired knowledge?
– I have already started working with a dataset of several thousand scientific publications on one broad topic, built several one-mode and two-mode networks, and thanks to the methods learned at the summer school, I hope to highlight the most important parts in them. At the same time, I had about a dozen new ideas, some of which I managed to think over and fix in an essay at the end of each summer school course.


The school was useful and interesting. We will be glad to see you among the participants next year!