Deep Learning

July 20-July 24, 2026 in Amsterdam

Faculty

Eran Raviv holds a PhD in econometrics from Erasmus University Rotterdam, a master’s degree in applied statistics from Tel Aviv University and a second master’s degree in quantitative finance from Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research has been published in high impact peer-reviewed journals.

Meet the Lecturer

Course

This one-week Deep Learning course covers theoretical and practical aspects, state-of-the-art deep learning architectures and application examples. The lectures will introduce to students the fundamental building blocks of deep learning methods and the weaknesses and strengths of the different architectures. Students will learn how to tailor a model for a particular application. During tutorials students practice the theory using exercises and have the opportunity to ask for additional explanation for those parts of the material perceived as more difficult. Computer lab sessions aim at making the material come alive and train students in how the methods learnt in class can actually be applied to data. The lab sessions are meant to work on the assignments, such that the students automatically keep up with the material.

Topics covered

• Introduction to Deep Learning (High-level definitions of fundamental concepts and first examples)
• Deep Learning components (gradient descent models, loss functions, avoiding over-fitting, introducing asymmetry)
• Feed forward neural networks
• Convolutional neural networks
• Embeddings (pre-trained embeddings, examples of pre-trained models, e.g., Word2Vec)
• Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)
• Advanced architectures (Densely connected networks, Adaptive structural learning)

Level

The summer course welcomes Master’s and PhD students, alumni, professionals in economics and related fields, who are interested in deep learning. The level is introductory, targeted at participants who would like to familiarize themselves with the topic, and acquire a good basis from which to approach deep learning potential applications.

Schedule

The program spans a total of five days, commencing daily at 10:00 AM. The initial segment of each day is dedicated to 2.5 hours of theoretical instruction. Following a one-hour lunch break, the session resumes with a practical application phase.

Admission requirements

Students are expected to have a solid background in calculus, linear algebra, and classical statistics. Familiarity with open source languages such as R or Python is a must.