Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program 2026

Aliakbar Akbaritabar

Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali) is an Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science at the Institute of Sociology and Demography of the University of Rostock and a Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Ali is a computational social scientist with a background in sociology. His work focuses on themes related (but not limited) to science of science, scholarly and high-skilled migration, social networks, collaboration networks, and computational social science.

Andrés Castro

Andrés Castro is a sociologist, demographer, and computational social scientist. He leads the Science and Technology Studies unit at the Computational Social Science and Humanities Laboratory of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (CSSH - BSC). His research focuses on global inequalities in knowledge production, bibliometric analysis, and research assessment. As a demographer, he does research on family dynamics with a focus on global South immigrants in global North locations.

Irena Chen

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.

Huilin Ge

Huilin Ge is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University. Her research uses large-scale bibliometric data and quantitative methods to study international researcher mobility, scientific collaboration, and inequalities in the global research system. In her PhD project, she examines how researchers move across countries, how international mobility is linked to prior collaboration and sustained ties with countries of academic origin, and how global mobility patterns have changed across regions and income groups.

Linda Hoffmann

Linda Hoffmann is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Siegen and a doctoral researcher at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB). Her research focuses on spatial mobility in educational and early career trajectories, examining how social and regional inequalities shape individual decision-making.

Andrea del Pilar Montaño Ramírez

Andrea del Pilar Montaño Ramírez is a Chancellor's Excellence Fellow and PhD Candidate in Management of Complex Systems at the University of California, Merced. Originally from Colombia, her research combines computational social science, network science, and causal inference to study the dynamics of scientific collaboration and knowledge production at a global scale. More specifically, in her work she investigates how digital technologies, international collaboration networks, and large-scale social systems influence scientific integration, inequality, and the diffusion of knowledge across countries.

Marco Monteverde

Marco Monteverde is a PhD student in Computer Science at University of Genoa, Italy. Consistent with his interdisciplinary background, his research focuses on the subtle intersection between data visualization, artificial intelligence and sociopolitical aspects, applied to the Science of Science.

Carolina Coimbra Vieira

Carolina Coimbra Vieira is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Previously, she was a PhD Student in Computer Science at Universität des Saarlandes also affiliated to the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. Carolina’s research focuses on interdisciplinary topics at the intersection of computer science and the use of digital trace data to study migration, culture, inequalities, and algorithmically-mediated user engagement on social media platforms.

Megan Evans

Megan Evans is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. She obtained her PhD in Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University. Her research investigates the social processes that perpetuate place-based inequalities and shape racial disparities, with a particular focus on how race, space, and technology intersect to reinforce social stratification. By integrating advanced computational methods and big data with social science theory, her research bridges micro-level cognitive and behavioral patterns to macro patterns of spatial inequality, advancing our understanding of how technology and institutional practices shape contemporary urban inequality.

Nkechi S. Owoo

Nkechi S. Owoo is a Professor of Economics at the University of Ghana, with over a decade of research and mentorship experience in gender economics, labour markets, and economic inclusion across Africa. She holds a PhD in Economics from Clark University, M.A., U.S.A.

Emilio Zagheni

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.

Diyang Lin

Diyang Lin is a PhD student in Development Studies at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the impacts of emerging technology on education and work, with particular attention to inequality and the socially sustainable adoption and transition of technology.

Nnaemeka Ohamadike

Nnaemeka Ohamadike is a senior data analyst at Good Governance Africa and a PhD researcher in applied data science at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His doctoral research develops computational methods for detecting social bias in language, with a particular focus on the South African context. More broadly, his work uses data science to examine socio-political issues like social biases, human development, governance, and disinformation. He has published in scholarly journals including EPJ Data Science, the Journal of Computational Social Science, Politeia, and the Journal of Social Development in Africa.

Mehedi Zaman

Mehedi Zaman is a second-year PhD student in Information Science at the School of Communication & Information (SC&I), Rutgers University - New Brunswick. His research is situated at the intersection of Human-AI Interaction and Computational Social Science, with a focus on the privacy implications of Generative AI. Previously, Mehedi worked as a research intern at the AI Institute of University of South Carolina (AIISC), where he developed methods for hallucination detection and mitigation in Large Language Models (LLMs). He holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Islamic University of Technology (IUT), Bangladesh.

Neil Sehgal

Neil Sehgal is a third-year PhD student in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a Masters of Engineering in Computational Science & Engineering from Harvard University and an AB in Computer Science from Brown University. His research sits at the intersection of computational social science and public health, with a current focus on designing dialogue systems that promote health behavior change.