IIASA researcher Dilek Yildiz will serve on the steering committee of a new international scientific panel exploring how artificial intelligence (AI), digital technologies, and emerging data sources are transforming demographic research and our understanding of population change.
Established by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), the Scientific Panel on Digital Demography, AI, and Open Science began its four-year term on 1 November 2026. It aims to build a rigorous, open, and equitable international research community for digital and computational demography.
As AI, digital platforms, and new forms of data increasingly shape how people form families, move, work, and stay healthy, they are also changing how researchers study these processes. The panel will examine AI both as a driver of demographic change and as a research tool, promoting its responsible use alongside established demographic methods and data sources.
The panel's work will address emerging opportunities and challenges, including the reliability and potential biases of digital data, the use of large language models and AI in demographic research, privacy-preserving methods, and computational approaches such as microsimulation and agent-based modeling. Particular attention will be given to open and reproducible science, ethical data use, and inequalities in access to data, computing resources, and AI infrastructure across world regions.
Yildiz, a researcher in the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program, brings expertise in statistical demography, migration research, and the application of big data and machine learning methods to the study of population dynamics.
Co-chaired by Aliakbar Akbaritabar of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the University of Rostock, and Francesco Rampazzo of the University of Manchester, the panel brings together international experts and builds on more than a decade of IUSSP initiatives in digital and computational demography.
Over its 2026–2030 term, the panel will foster international collaboration and knowledge exchange through webinars, training workshops, conference sessions, and mentorship opportunities for early-career researchers. Its activities will begin with an online launch webinar in 2027, inviting researchers from all regions and career stages to engage with the initiative.
Read the original announcement by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
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