It’s that time of the year again! Registrations are open for our 2025 Summer School in Advanced Statistics for the Life Sciences, this year with the theme “Hierarchical Models for the Life Sciences”. From May 5th to May 9th, 2025, we’ll meet at the beautiful Jouvence resort in Orford, QC, to learn from Guillaume Blanchet, Ph.D, and Andrew MacDonald, Ph.D, about hierarchical models with and without constraints (e.g. spatial and/or time) as well as multivariate hierarchical models.
Participants are invited to bring their own datasets, and they should have R installed in their computers, an intermediate level of knowledge in statistics and scientific programming.
Anyone interested in taking part in the summer school must complete this form by March 30, 2025.
The Summer School in Advanced Statistics for the Life Sciences, on the theme of Hierarchical Models, will take place from April 29 to May 3, 2024 at Jouvence, in Mont-Orford National Park, Quebec. Hierarchical models in life sciences refer to statistical frameworks that account for the nested structure of data often encountered in biological research, where observations are organized within multiple levels of hierarchy such as individuals within populations, or repeated measures within individuals. These models allow for the incorporation of both within-group and between-group variability, providing insights into the underlying biological processes while appropriately addressing the complex dependencies within the data.
The intensive course is presented by Pr. Guillaume Blanchet, professor at Université de Sherbrooke and academic member of BIOS2, and Dr. Andrew MacDonald, research professional for BIOS2, CREUS, and QCSB. The course aims to introduce hierarchical models from both a theoretical and practical point of view. Everything will be done using R with an introduction to Stan. Bring your dataset!
Registration
Anyone interested in taking part in the summer school must complete this form by March 20, 2024. Official registration (admission and payment of registration fees) will take place during the week of March 25, 2024
The 2024 edition Summer School in Biodiversity Modelling will be on the theme “Indicators to monitor biodiversity changes“. Biodiversity indicators are metrics used to measure and assess the health, diversity, and distribution of species, ecosystems, and genetic variability within an environment. These indicators provide valuable insights into the status and trends of biodiversity over time, helping to inform conservation efforts, policy-making, and sustainable development practices. By tracking these indicators, scientists and policymakers can monitor changes in biodiversity, identify areas of concern, prioritize conservation actions, and evaluate the effectiveness of conservation strategies.
The main objective of the 2024 Summer School in Computational Biodiversity Science will be to develop a report of the current state of biodiversity for Canada, based on the most recent science on biodiversity indicators and using state-of-the-art technologies in data science.
Presented by Professor Dominique Gravel (Université de Sherbrooke) in collaboration with various leading scientists in the domain, the intensive course will take place from May 13 to 17, 2024 at Jouvence, in Mont-Orford National Park, Quebec.
Date: May 13 to 17, 2024
Location: Jouvence Resort in Orford, Quebec
Registration fee: 600$ (shared room) 800$ (private room)
Price includes course registration, accommodation and meals.
Registration
Anyone interested in taking part in the summer school must complete this form by March 20, 2024. Official registration (admission and payment of registration fees) will take place during the week of March 25, 2024
The BIOS² training program offers an Introductory workshop to Python for R users. The workshop will be presented on May 15 and 16, 2023 by Vincent Beauregard, data specialist at Biodiversité Québec.
The course aims to provide the basics of Python and to familiarize participants with the tools and libraries relevant to computational ecology. Sessions will build on participants’ prior knowledge of the R language to facilitate learning. Topics will include data manipulation with Pandas, data visualization with Matplotlib, and data analysis with Numpy and Scipy. Students will also learn how to break their code into functions and work with classes in Python.
Vincent Beauregard is a technical coordinator, and a specialist in infrastructure, biodiversity data interfaces and spatial data from remote sensing at Biodiversité Québec. He is interested in the automation of data processing schemes.
What: Introductory workshop to Python When: May 15 and 16, 2023 @ 1 pm – 4 pm (your time here) Where: Online and at Université Laval Language: English (bilingual Q&A and discussion) Fees: free – offered only for participants of the Advanced Field School in Computational Ecology. Registration deadline: May 11, 2023 Registration link: https://forms.office.com/r/kWvCrdpbus
The 2022 edition of the summer school, which will take place from August 22 to 26, 2022 at the Centre de Villégiature Jouvence in Orford, will be on the theme: Biodiversity changes and data visualization. The course will take the form of a workshop during which the students, in collaboration with local organizations involved in biodiversity monitoring, will develop a web platform for visualizing biodiversity changes.
The Summer School in Biodiversity Modelling will take place from August 16-25, 2021 under the theme:
Evaluating Models from Ecological Data
Led by Pr. Dominique Gravel and Dr. Andrew MacDonald (Université de Sherbrooke). Training focused on problem solving and guest speakers (Professors Timothée Poisot, Pedro Peres-Neto, Sandra Hamel, Marc Bélisle and others).
Online and Hybrid Training. The format of the intensive summer school has been revised to accommodate COVID’s restrictions on travel and large group activities. Activities will be accessible remotely, but local gatherings may be arranged if the situation allows.
