Istanbul as a regional computational social science hub

Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) Istanbul was originally conceived in Oxford and Helsinki. Our co-organizer, Akin Unver, and the principal data scientist tutor, Ahmet Kurnaz of SICSS-Istanbul met at Oxford University in 2017 during their joint research project on how best to use data science to gather data from hard-to-access regions such as disaster areas or war zones. From this project arose the need to launch a data science summer school in Istanbul. Our teaching assistant (Yunus Emre Tapan) was then a participant at the SICSS-Helsinki, run by our other co-organizer, Matti Nelimarkka, and also discussed the possibility of launching an Istanbul chapter. Later in 2018, Akin and Emre met at the International Studies Association annual meeting for the first time and agreed to launch SICSS-Istanbul.