Events

(R) Shiny Days

April 28-29, 2021

Virtual

OVERVIEW
AGENDA
SPEAKERS

The Development Economics Impact Evaluation and Development Data Group departments will jointly host a two-day event to demonstrate to World Bank staff how R Shiny can be used in the context of Bank projects. Shiny is a free and open-source software package that allows users to build interactive web apps using R. The event will include activities for both data scientists and project managers interested in using dashboards. The objective is to both demonstrate potential use cases and to build capacity inside the Bank to implement.
What is R Shiny? Economists, statisticians, and data scientists with knowledge of R statistical software can use the Shiny package to present results in a visually compelling and interactive format. World Bank teams can host apps, R Markdown documents, and dashboards in the Bank’s RStudio Connect Server. These apps allow R users to combine data analysis and dissemination in customized web apps and offer opportunities for clients to easily interact with data and monitor project development.
Lightning talks
Lightning talks will highlight current uses of Shiny dashboards within the World Bank, focusing on how they can inform and add value to Bank operations. This session will consist of 6 minute talks where teams will discuss their use cases, the gaps that dashboards can fill and the process of creating them. The goal of this session is to inform TTLs about what dashboards can do for projects and how teams can approach creating their first dashboard.
Keynote
Carson Sievert, a software engineer at RStudio working on the Shiny team, will discuss cutting-edge developments and best practices to take dashboards to the next level and make them faster and easier to maintain. The target audience for this session consists of current shiny users who want to make their deployed dashboards more efficient.
Workshops
Through interactive workshops, participants with intermediate R skills will learn how to build apps and current shiny users will learn how to polish their dashboards. Workshop sessions will include a 45 minute lecture and 45 minutes of assisted hands-on exercises. Workshops are targeted to staff with previous familiarity with R. If you are not sure whether you have enough background to benefit from these workshops, take this quiz.

April 28, 2021
9:30 – 11 AM (EST)	Beginners workshop — How to build a Shiny app	Shiny tutorial video Slides and exercises
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM	Lightning talks — How the World Bank is using Shiny apps Share your work with the world: RstudioConnect (opening remarks) — Tony Fujs Sampling simulation with Shiny — Michael Wild Institutional assessment — Serena Cocciolo Traffic police reports in Nairobi — Robert Marty Spatial targeting with Shiny: Application in Madagascar — Alexandra (Sasha) Jarotschkin & Takaaki Masaki A Geospatial Mapping for Financial Inclusion in Yemen — Fabian Reitzug Living a Life of Labor in Bolivia — Rui Su & Carla Solis
12:45 – 2:15 PM	Intermediate workshop — How to customize reactions	Shiny tutorial video Slides and exercises
April 29, 2021
9:30 – 11 AM	Advanced workshop — How to customize appearance	Shiny tutorial video Slides and exercises
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM	RStudio keynote — Tools for making faster and better looking Shiny apps Carson Sievert	Slides
12:45 – 2:15 PM	Advanced workshop — Shiny in production: maintenance and speed	Slides and exercises

Carson Sievert

Keynote Speaker
Carson Sievert is a software engineer at RStudio working on R packages such as shiny, shinymeta, and plotly. His book "Interactive data visualization with R, plotly, and shiny", published by CRC Press, is also freely available online at plotly-r.com.

Divyanshi Wadhwa

Instructor
Divyanshi Wadhwa is a Junior Data Scientist with the World Bank’s Development Data Group (DECDG). Her work focuses on improving the dissemination of development statistics through the World Development Indicators (WDI) and Gender Statistics, and by employing innovation in data visualizations. Most recently, she was an editor for the SDG Atlas 2020 publication.

Luíza Andrade

Instructor
Luíza Andrade is a Junior Data Scientist with the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation department (DIME). Her work focuses on promoting research transparency and reproducibility practices through trainings and code review. She also works across DIME's portfolio of impact evaluations to incorporate non-traditional data sources such as high-frequency crowdsourced and web-scraped data.

Rob Marty

Instructor
Rob Marty is a Research Analyst with the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation department (DIME). He works on impact evaluations of transport corridors and road safety. In particular, his work focuses on leveraging innovative data sources for impact evaluations, such as satellite imagery, crowdsourced data and private sector data sources.

Tony Fujs

Instructor
Tony Fujs works as a Data Scientist with the World Bank’s Development Data Group (DECDG). His goal is to shorten the path from data to insight by making data easier to find, access, combine, and understand. He leverages open-source software to scale analytics, streamline reporting, and improve data visualizations.

Lightning talks

Carla Solis

Data Science consultant
Carla Solis Uehara currently works as a data science consultant at the GFDRR Analytics team, where she assesses Disaster Risk Management responses and impacts of hazards on livelihoods. She holds an MS in computational analysis and public policy and a B.S. in Economics.

Rui Su

Consultant
Rui Su is a consultant at the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the Social Sustainability and Inclusion (SSI) GP. She conducts data analytics on social resilience & inclusion and grounds the findings in qualitative narratives. She holds a Master in Urban Planning degree and has experience in community organizing before joining the Bank.

Fabian Reitzug

Research Consultant
Fabian Reitzug is a research consultant in IFC’s Applied Research and Learning team, based in Dakar, Senegal. In his work, he leverages survey analysis, data visualization, and statistical analysis to support financial inclusion efforts of financial institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Serena Cocciolo

Young Professional-Economist
Serena Cocciolo is a Young Professional-Economist in the Governance-Procurement Global Unit. Her work has been focusing on data analytics and research on public procurement, institutions and governance. Serena joined the World Bank after completing her Ph.D. in Economics from Stockholm University, with a dissertation on community participation in development projects and field applications in the water and education sector.

Takaaki Masaki

Economist
Takaaki Masaki is an Economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. His current work focuses on developing the applications of GIS and big data analytics in improving poverty estimation at a geographically granular level, informing spatial targeting of investments, and understanding the distributional impact of policy interventions. Prior to joining the Bank, Taka worked as a Senior Research Analyst at AidData, a development research lab at the College of William and Mary. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Cornell University.

Alexandra Jarotschkin

Economist
Alexandra (Sasha) Jarotschkin is an economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. She has been working on issues pertaining to measurement of welfare, with a focus on women economic empowerment, forced displacement, high-frequency data collection and feedback loops for greater development effectiveness. Since joining the World Bank she has worked in East and Central Africa, particularly in Madagascar, Burundi and the DRC. Sasha is a German national, originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and has a background in development economics. She holds a PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics, where she studied episodes of forced displacement to understand the long-term impact on host communities regarding gender norms, female labor market participation, as well as public goods provision and attitudes.

Michael Wild

Survey and Sampling Expert
Michael Wild is a survey and sampling expert in the Survey Unit of the Development Data Group (DEC-DG), at The World Bank. He has joined the unit in 2014, whilst still holding a tenure track position at the Department for Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton, UK. Before that he has worked as an adviser and senior adviser in several statistical agencies in developing and transition countries. His main research interest is on Data quality in official statistics in developing countries as well as the promotion of evidence based policy making.