June 04, 2025 | News | Research Visit

Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program 2025

© MPIDR/Schulz

The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is organizing the Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program, a three-month research visit (from June 2 to August 22, 2025) for a diverse group of PhD and master students.

The goal of the Summer Incubator Program is to enable discovery by bringing together data scientists and population scientists from around the world to work on focused, intensive and collaborative projects of broad societal relevance.

Students will work in small teams, with support from experienced mentors, towards a common research goal. The focus of the program will be on three main research areas:

• “Climate Change and Mobility” mentored by Risto Conte Keivabu, Ebru Sanlitürk, and Daniela Perrotta;
• “Machine Learning for Life Course Trajectories” mentored by Linda Vecgaile, Bruno Arpino (University of Padova) and Emilio Zagheni;
•  “Mortality in War Settings” mentored by Yvette Young, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Enrique Acosta (Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics -CED) and Irena Chen.

Participating students will be exposed to best practices across the social sciences and data sciences while contributing to a hands-on project experience that will result in a scientific journal article. All participants will also have access to lectures and will be able to participate in other scientific activities taking place at the MPIDR. 

Mentors

Enrique Acosta is a Research Scientist at the Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics (CED) in Barcelona, Spain, and a guest researcher at the Max Planck for Demographic Research (MPIDR). His research focuses on mortality analysis, with a particular emphasis on the demographic impacts of crises, including violence and pandemics. He received a PhD in Demography from the University of Montreal. Enrique has worked on research projects with organizations such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization. His work has appeared in journals such as Demography, International Journal of Epidemiology, Nature, and Science Advances.

Bruno Arpino is a Full Professor of Social Statistics in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Padua, Italy. His methodological research focuses on causal inference and the application of machine learning techniques in the social sciences. Substantively, he works in the areas of social gerontology and social demography, with particular attention to family relationships, the health and wellbeing of older adults, and the use of digital technologies in later life.
For more info see: https://sites.google.com/site/brunoarpino/

Irena Chen is a Research Scientist in the Department of Digital and Computational Demography at MPIDR. Her research interests include Bayesian hierarchical models, correlated time series, and latent variable methods with applications in demography, epidemiology, and precision medicine. She received a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan.

Risto Conte Keivabu is a Research Scientist in the Department of Digital and Computational Demography at MPIDR. Risto holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute. His research interests are in climate change, socio-demographic inequalities and demography. More precisely, in his work he tries to understand the population consequences of climate change and environmental exposures.

Daniela Perrotta is a Research Scientist and the Deputy Head of the Laboratory of Migration and Mobility at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Daniela completed her PhD in Complex Systems for Life Sciences at the University of Turin, with a fellowship at the ISI Foundation in Italy. Her research mainly focuses on harnessing digital trace data and primary data-collection schemes to study human mobility patterns, population migration, infectious disease spread, and human behaviors during health crises.

Ebru Sanlitürk is a research scientist (post-doc) at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Department of Digital and Computational Demography and Laboratory of Migration and Mobility. She holds a PhD from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy in Public Policy and Administration. Her research interests include the use of digital data to assess and analyze migration patterns and migrants’ demographic behavior.

Linda Vecgaile is a Research Scientist in the Department of Digital and Computational Demography at MPIDR. She holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute. Her research focuses on life course trajectories, labor market dynamics, and social inequalities, using longitudinal data and machine learning methods. Her recent work explores how to model individual employment sequences with neural networks while quantifying the uncertainty of future outcomes. She is particularly interested in applications that inform social policy and improve the well-being of vulnerable populations.

Yvette Young is a Research Scientist in the Department of Digital and Computational Demography at MPIDR. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Utah. Her main research interests are related to how armed conflict affects demographic processes and population health. Her work tries to understand how exposure to the events and environs of war, including war-related displacement, shape life-long health and well-being.

Emilio Zagheni is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. He is best known for his research on combining digital trace data, traditional sources, and new forms of data collection, within solid statistical and formal demographic frameworks, in order to advance population science. In his various professional capacities, he has played a key role in favoring collaboration and exchange between demographers, statisticians and computer scientists.

Participating Students

Yanji Du is a second-year PhD student in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on uncovering hidden inequities experienced by marginalized groups in career development, with particular emphasis on how discrimination mechanisms operate in labor markets. She employs innovative methodological approaches in causal effect estimation, machine learning, and survey experiments to reveal bias patterns. Yanji holds an MA in Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences from Columbia University and has collaborated with the American Immigration Council on immigration policy research.

Aitor Garcia is a PhD candidate in the Social Sciences Department of Carlos III at Madrid and a research assistant in the Spanish National Research Council. His main research interests are the social determinants of health from a life course perspective. His thesis explores how early childhood processes of human capital formation may shape health life trajectories and affect health outcomes during late life.

Nanum Jeon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and an M.S. Student in Statistics and Data Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is affiliated with the Inequality Data Science Lab (IDS-Lab) and the California Center for Population Research. Before coming to UCLA, she worked in public policy think tanks, including the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, Japan. She holds an M.P.P. from the University of Tokyo in Japan and a B.A. in Sociology from Ewha Womans University in South Korea. Her research examines how disruptive life events shape social stratification and inequality by applying and developing tools from machine learning and causal inference.

Ting-Syuan Lin is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research lies at the intersection of political demography, family sociology, and social stratification. She examines how macro-political conditions shape private family decisions across East Asia, the United States, and global contexts, drawing on survey data and a life course perspective.

Timothy Low is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, National University of Singapore. His research interests include health disparities, family/social relationships, and aging. He is currently interested in exploring health inequalities amongst older adults in Southeast Asia.

Matt Mason is a PhD student at the University of Liverpool’s Geographic Data Science Lab. His PhD research focuses on using data from social media platforms and natural language processing to study sentiment towards migration and the factors that drive negative attitudes. More broadly, his research interests centre around applying computational methods and digital trace data to study migration, specifically in regards to environmental change and population displacement.

Sara Alcay Mendez is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on health disparities and migration, with particular emphasis on infant health and refugee populations. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from UC Davis and an M.A. in Social and Political Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Rahul Mondal is a PhD candidate at the International Institute for Population Sciences, India. His research focuses on population models to explain stochastic processes in demography. Specifically, he studies demographic response to escalating global changes and their effect on longevity and population dynamics.

Sophia Noel is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Center for Research on Social Inequalities at Sciences Po, Paris.  Her research concerns how environmental hazards, particularly heat and air pollution, may affect demographic outcomes.

Lovisa Rosenquist Ohlsson is a PhD student at Lund University, working with geographical information systems and satellite data. Her research explores climate risk and adaptation in the Middle East, with a particular focus on displaced populations.

Zarmeen Salim is a dual-title Sociology & Demography PhD student at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research broadly studies demographic responses to climate change and how differential vulnerability contexts may shape these relationships.

Wesley Wang is a doctoral student pursuing a dual-title PhD in Sociology and Gerontology at Purdue University. He earned his MPhil in Sociology and Demography from the University of Oxford. His research explores how genetic and environmental factors jointly shape outcomes across the life course, with an emphasis on social inequality and biological ageing. Wesley is particularly interested in identifying biosocial pathways through which early-life adversity contributes to detrimental health outcomes in later adulthood.