NDSU hosted the second annual SICSS@NDSU Summer Institute in Computational Social Science in June. This year, NDSU joined Atlanta and Los Angeles as the only U.S. sites. SICSS institutes were hosted by 29 overall global sites.

Participants come from universities across the U.S. to the NDSU campus to learn about topics ranging from data collection with APIs, classical natural language processing, building their own neural network models and fine-tuning transformer-based AI/Large Language Models. The Institute features a mix of theoretical concepts, hands-on tutorials on code logic and syntax, guest speakers who are experts in various facets of computational social science and group projects.

SICSS@NDSU is co-lead by Shuning Lu, NDSU assistant professor of communication, and Zoltan Majdik, professor of communication.

This year’s event was made possible thanks to generous support from the NDSU Department of Communication and the Office of Research and Creative Activity.