Tag: Information Science

Confidential Information: Storage, Sharing & Publication

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This class focuses on the tools and good practices for storing confidential data, sharing data for collaboration, and publishing data or derivative results for broad use.  Topics covered in this class include: an overview of information security standards and frameworks; information security core practices (credentials, authentication, authorization, and auditing); information partitioning and secure linking; file, disk, and network encryption tools and practices; cloud storage practices for confidential information; data “de-identification” tools and practices; statistical disclosure limitation approaches and tools; and data use agreements.

Event Details
Location: E25-401
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The course will be presented in a half-day format. Individual consultations may be scheduled with Micah Altman by contacting Kelly Hopkins at khopkins@mit.edu.

Discussant Bio: Micah Altman, PhD, is Director of Research and Head/Scientist, Program on Information Science for the MIT Libraries, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Altman is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Prior to arriving at MIT, Altman served at Harvard University for 15 years as the Associate Director of the Harvard-MIT Data Center, Archival Director of the Henry A. Murray Archive, and Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences.

Altman conducts work primarily in the fields of social science, information privacy, information science and research methods, and statistical computation—focusing on the intersections of information, technology, privacy, and politics; and on the dissemination, preservation, reliability and governance of scientific knowledge.

July 19, 2016 12 - 3pm

Can Computers be Feminist? Procedural Politics and Computational Creativity

Gillian SmithJoin the Program on Information Science for a brown bag talk, Can Computers be Feminist? Procedural Politics and Computational Creativity. Discussant Gillian Smith will examine how computers are increasingly taking on the role of a creator — making content for games, participating on Twitter, and generating paintings and sculptures. These computationally creative systems embody formal models of both the product they are creating and the process they follow. Like that of their human counterparts, the work of algorithmic artists is open to criticism and interpretation, but such analysis requires a framework for discussing the politics embedded in procedural systems. In this talk, we will examine the politics that are (typically implicitly) represented in computational models for creativity, and discuss the possibility for incorporating feminist perspectives into their underlying algorithmic design.

Gillian Smith is an Assistant Professor in Art+Design and Computer Science at Northeastern University, where she performs research and teaches in the game design program. Her research interests are in computational creativity, computational craft, and gender in games and technology.

Event details
Location: E25-401
Lunch is provided. Please bring your own beverage.
More information

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consists of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.  

June 14, 2016 12 - 1 pm

Brown Bag: The Visual Component

Join the Program on Information Science for our May Brown Bag with Felice Frankel, research scientist in the Center for Materials Science and Engineering here at MIT. She will discuss visual representation of all kinds as it becomes more important in our ever growing image-based society, especially in science and technology, and how there has been little emphasis on developing standards in creating or critiquing those representations.

Frankel will consider images as more than tangential components of information, discuss ways to seamlessly search for accurate and honest depictions of complex scientific phenomena, show her own process of making visual representations in sciences and engineering, and make the case that representations are just as “intellectual” as text.

Event details:
Location: E25-401
The Information Science Program will provide lunch, please bring your favorite beverage and plenty of questions.
More information

 

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consist of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social, and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.  

 

May 11, 2016 12 - 1pm