Speakers Seminar 04-02-21

Vincent Buskens

Vincent Buskens is professor of Sociology at Utrecht University. He was trained as a mathematician as an undergraduate and moved to sociology for his PhD. His work in sociology focuses, among other things, on effects of social networks on social phenomena as cooperation and trust. His work consists of the development of (often formal) theoretical models as well as empirical tests of these models using experimental as well as survey data. Recently (but starting before the COVID-19 epidemic), he also links his modelling efforts and empirical work to research on social aspects related to disease epidemics.

Frank Pijpers

Frank P. Pijpers received his PhD in astrophysics at the University of Leiden in 1991, although the research was joint work between Leiden University and Utrecht University. From 1991 to 2006 he worked at Queen Mary University of London (UK), Uppsala University (SE), Aarhus University (DK), and Imperial College London (UK). He is currently senior methodologist at Statistics Netherlands (in Dutch: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek / CBS) and programme manager for the methodology research programme. His research covers inverse problems, time series analysis, statistical data analysis of spatio-temporal point processes, dynamical systems and complex networks. He is the author of 42 refereed research papers and a monograph, as well as numerous technical reports. He has co-supervised 3 PhD students and supervised 4 MSc students.

From Jan. 2021 he will hold a professorship by special appointment (part-time) on “Complexity for Official Statistics” at the Korteweg-de Vries Institute of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and will also be collaborating closely with the Institute of Advanced Study of UvA.