2024 Sustainable Development for Thriving Communities Conference

About the Conference

Climate change poses significant threats across various regions, with rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and other environmental consequences affecting diverse populations. Addressing these challenges requires effective policy implementation and strengthened international collaboration. This conference aims to address the pressing issues of sustainable development and climate change by bringing together leading researchers and policymakers for knowledge exchange, policy discussion, and networking.

The 2024 Sustainable Development for Thriving Communities Conference is organised and hosted by the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES) at Monash Business School and Monash University, Indonesia, in collaboration with Monash University, Malaysia, the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific Chief Economist (EAPCE) Research Center, and the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). The conference focuses on sustainable development and climate change challenges.

Selected research papers will be presented at the conference on topics related to sustainable development and climate change, including but not limited to:

Climate change adaptation and resilience
Renewable energy transition
Sustainable agriculture and food security
Green transportation
Inclusive economic development

The conference will be followed by research method workshops on 26 - 27 September 2024, such as:

Running randomised controlled trials: Methods and practical approach (26 September)
Machine learning in social science research (27 September)

Registration is open to those who are not presenting, including industry and government practitioners, think-tank contributors, researchers, and students. Please complete the registration form for the conference and research method workshops below. Kindly contact sdtcindonesia@monash.edu if you require any assistance.

Registration

Conference Registration

Workshop Registration

Meet Our Speakers

Keynote Speaker:

Invited Speakers

Policy Sessions:

Conference AgendaSee Event RundownAccess Now

Post-conference Workshops

Running Randomized Controlled Trials: Methods and Practical Approaches (26 Sept) View

Date: 26 September 2024, 9am – 5pm

In this workshop, participants will discuss the practical issues of running randomized controlled trials. The workshop will cover basic methods and approaches to RCTs.

CDES Director, Professor Asad Islam, and CDES Research Fellow Dr. Armand Sim will discuss their experiences conducting (RCTs) on various issues and in different contexts. The workshop will cover some important lessons on where to start and what you need to know to run experiments yourself. It will cover aspects that students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers should think of in designing RCTs to evaluate different policies and programs.

These topics will be covered using examples from recent RCTs. Plenty of time will also be devoted to interactive sessions with the participants. These sessions will be designed on the basis of the participants’ research and policy interests and prior exposure to experimental designs, which we will collect beforehand from the registered participants.

Facilitators:

Asad Islam, Professor, Monash University Australia.

Asad Islam is a Professor of Economics at Monash University. He is also an affiliated Professor at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research work spans a number of developing countries in Asia and Africa. He has conducted numerous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to understand the efficacy of various interventions on agriculture and food security, natural resources, education, health. His recent research mostly uses RCTs to understand the efficacy of different policies and programs. He has published widely in top economics journals based on his research on education. His work is supported by national and international research and development agencies such as ARC, ESRC, DFAT, ADB, and World Bank.

Armand Sim, Research Fellow, CDES, Monash University Australia. Asad Islam

Armand Sim is a Research Fellow at CDES and a J-PAL invited researcher. He uses experimental and non-experimental methods to investigate topics in development economics, health economics, and public economics, such as the impact of health insurance subsidies on enrolment and utilization in Ghana, local government responses to price shocks in Indonesia, and the effectiveness of financial and non-financial interventions on COVID-19 vaccine promotion in Bangladesh, India, and Indonesia. His research has been published in European Economic Review, Health Economics, and World Development. He received his PhD from Cornell University.

Machine Learning in Social Science Research (27 Sept) View

Date: 27 September 2024, 9am – 5pm

This training is designed to introduce participants to the application of text mining techniques in social science research.

The workshop will cover fundamental concepts in text mining, data science, and machine learning, providing participants with an understanding of how these tools can be utilised to extract valuable insights from textual data.

The training will begin with an overview of text mining and its role within the broader field of data science. Participants will learn about different types of textual data, pre-processing techniques, and the importance of feature extraction in text analysis.

Next, the workshop will delve into machine learning basics, including supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms. Participants will gain an understanding of how machine learning models can be trained to classify and cluster textual data, paving the way for advanced analysis and interpretation.

Throughout the training, participants will engage in hands-on activities and practical exercises to reinforce their understanding of text mining concepts. By the end of the training, participants will be equipped with the basic knowledge and skills to apply text mining techniques in their social science research projects.

Facilitator:

Derry Wijaya, Associate Professor of Data Science, Monash University Indonesia

Derry Wijaya conducts research in natural language processing (NLP), with a focus on machine learning, deep learning, and large language models (LLMs) applications in multilingual NLP. Her studies include machine translation (MT), which demonstrates how to leverage well-annotated languages to improve the translation of less-annotated ones and how images, related tasks, data augmentation, and LLMs can be used to improve the representation and translation of languages with little training data.

Dr Derry also studies methods for automatically learning the meanings of verbs and extracting information for knowledge base population through analysis of diverse information sources. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, Dr Derry has conducted research on the applications of NLP to computational news framing and public health, in detecting and analysing how articles in traditional and emerging media on various public affairs or public health issues are written and framed.

Dr Derry has also conducted research on analysing bias and misinformation, within AI models and in public communications. Derry has a postdoc from University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore.

Venue & BSD Information

Venue View

Accommodation View

Here are some recommended hotels nearby Monash University, Indonesia and Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) city. You can book the hotel directly on their website or via travel apps such as Agoda, Booking, Traveloka, and others.