February 16, 2026 | News | New Faces at MPIDR

Welcome, Mallika Snyder!

Mallika Snyder is a new research fellow at the MPIDR. © MPIDR/Schulz

The Lab of Population Dynamics and Sustainable Well-being welcomes Mallika Snyder as a new team member. Mallika joins MPIDR after spending over two years at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in New York, where she worked as an applied demographer developing subnational population projections to inform UN humanitarian action. She is a graduate of the UC Berkeley Ph.D. program in Demography and the M.A. program in Statistics. The title of her dissertation was "Mortality Crises as Experienced by Their Survivors: Computational Approaches to the Study of Bereavement."

Which question is the most important one for you in your research?
I am keenly interested in how we can develop better methods for population estimation and projection in limited-data settings, especially countries experiencing humanitarian crises. How can we leverage available data from the official statistical system, alongside non-traditional sources, to strengthen our understanding of population dynamics in these contexts? And how can we better measure and communicate associated uncertainty to the policymakers and humanitarian decision-makers relying on these estimates?

Why did you choose MPIDR as your new employer?
I have worked closely with MPIDR researchers Emilio Zagheni and Diego Alburez-Gutierrez for many years now, and visited the institute as part of my PhD research in 2022. The mentorship and support I received from Diego and Emilio was vital to my PhD journey, and I am delighted to return to a place that I have long considered my second academic home. I am especially looking forward to learning from my colleagues, and the diverse array of research interests and perspectives represented at MPIDR.

Where are you from? What do you miss most about?
I am originally from Berkeley, California, in the United States. I mostly miss hiking in the hills nearby, and spending time with my feline and human family.

What do you like about Rostock?
Rostock is such a beautiful, historical, and walkable city. I love being able to see the river from my desk at the institute, and to go for long walks on the beach on the weekend.

What is your favorite and what is your least favorite part about work?
I love the creative thinking, careful population accounting, and thoughtful data quality assessment involved in developing a population estimate or projection. I am less fond of revising papers, but it has to be done!

What are you obsessed with at the moment besides demography?
I have been rediscovering my love of badminton and knitting, which are both perfect winter activities. The institute also has a very active table tennis community, so it has been fun trying to figure out how to score the occasional point against the great players here!