Conference of Alexandra Dima & Dan Dediu: "Data, methods, outcomes: from linguistic diversity to health behaviors"

The conference will focus on the presentation of the project laureate of the call for projects IDEXLYON Fellowships. This project bridges Université Lumière Lyon 2 and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, and focuses on data science approaches to linguistic diversity and health behaviors.

The first axis tries to understand how extra-linguistic factors, such as climate, ecology and the anatomy of our speech organs, influence the emergence and patterning of the myriad ways in which languages differ. To do so we are using methods borrowed from several disciplines like evolutionary biology, statistics, social networks, and experimental phonetics.

The second axis focuses on determinants of health behaviors and, in particular, on adherence to treatment and modelling healthcare trajectories using a variety of data sources (electronic medical records, interviews with actors in the health system) and methods (estimation of adherence, interactive visualizations, statistical analysis and mixed methods).

The connection between these axes is characterized by a commitment to solid quantitative and computer-driven methods. We also will discuss the pleasures and pains of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional research both in general and in specific to Lyon and France.