Held regularly since 2001, the ADA – Astronomical Data Analysis – conference series has been focused on algorithms and information extraction from astrophysics data sets. It became a strongly interdisciplinary forum where researchers from diverse fields such as Astronomy, Statistics, Mathematics and Computing could interact. This conference series has been characterized by a range of innovative themes, including multi-scale geometric transforms such as the curvelet transform, compressed sensing and clustering, always remaining closely linked to front-line open problems and issues in Astronomy.
Along many of its editions, the ADA conference series included hands-on tutorial sessions on various topics of advanced data processing. In the era of large astronomical surveys that are grappling with unsolved methodological and data challenges, transforming Data into Science is a huge, and exciting, problem, and a large fraction of modern Astronomy depends on this. Nevertheless, postgraduate courses can hardly cope with the pace of development of the modern data analysis methods and tools that may enable researchers to make the best use of their data. This is the main focus of the ADA8 2016 Summer School: to present advanced data analysis methods and algorithms and to demonstrate how to use publicly available codes to improve knowledge extraction from astronomical datasets, enabling a better Science.
These tutorials are not intended exclusively for an audience with background in Astrononomy, and are aimed mainly aimed for young researchers at MSc, PhD and postdoc levels, albeit any researchers are welcome to attend. Moreover, this year ADA will take place on the days preceding the COSMO21 conference, both event take place at the same venue and the inscription in COSMO21 includes the possibility to participate in the ADA8 Summer School.