Speakers

Presentation - Latest developments in European statistics

Albrecht Wirthmann worked in the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (DESTATIS) in the then newly created unit on economic and environmental accounting from 1992 to 1999. In 1999, he joined Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, in the domain of regional statistics and geographic information systems, where he coordinated the needs of Commission services for geographic information and contributed to the INSPIRE directive aiming at creating a European spatial information system. Since, 2019, Albrecht is deputy head of unit of "Methodology and innovation in official statistics" where he concentrates on introducing the concept of Trusted Smart Statistics in the European Statistical System, focussing on mobile network data, information in the WWW and trusted smart surveys, integrating smart devices into traditional survey concepts.

Yann-Maël Bideau, Policy Officer, Higher Education Unit of the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC), European Commission

Yann-Maël Bideau is a Policy Officer in the Higher Education Unit of the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, in the European Commission. Among other files, Yann-Maël is currently working on the policy experimentation on a joint European degree label. Before joining the European Commission in 2019, he worked as a language teacher and in the field of university cooperation in France, Czechia, Slovakia and Belgium.

Chloé Maisonnave,Study leader of territorial studies on employment policies

Chloé Maisonnave academic background is multidisciplinary: She went from a prep school focused on literature and social sciences to an engineering school specialized in statistics (ENSAI). Chloe entered this school as a civil servant. Then, she belongs to the Insee body, the French NSI. Since the beginning of her career, Chloe had the opportunity of discovering different aspects of public statistics. She worked as a trainee at the sport ministry's statistical service in France (INJEP), and at the  French Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry's regional statistical service. After her end-of-studies internship at the ECB, where she wrote her thesis on the evolution of a multi-layer inter-bank network, Chloé graduated from an EMOS Master in 2022. Her thesis was awarded at the 2023 Master's thesis competition for EMOS graduates, and she presented her work at the NTTS last March. 

Bisa Ceman, Economic advisor, Ministry of Finance in Luxembourg

Bisa Ceman obtained her Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Economics and Management in July 2020 and started her Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Finance and Economics in September 2020 and graduated in July 2022. During the period of her M.Sc. she followed the EMOS courses and had two internships at STATEC, the national statistical institute in Luxembourg. As part of her studies, she prepared a short thesis on the work she was doing at STATEC. Upon graduation, Bisa started working at the Ministry of Finance. Bisa interviewed for a job to work on national budgetary affairs. When she started the job in September 2022, she worked on European files rather than on national ones.

Jose Vila, Scientific Director, DevStat

Dr. José Vila, Scientific Director of DevStat and Professor at the University of Valencia, has achieved more than 29 year of experience as researcher and international consultant. His field of expertise includes (i) design, implementation, analysis, quality assessment and reporting of quantitative models to support policy-making and (ii) behavioural-experimental economics. He is Research Fellow of the Intelligent Data Analysis Laboratory IDAL (http://idal.uv.es) and the Centre for Research of Social and Economic Behaviour ERICES (www.erices.es).

Pawel Sobik, Chief statistician, Statistical Office in Wrocław

Paweł Sobik holds a PhD degree in Political Science, specializing in International Relations. He is the author of a monographic book on the political activity of Poles

in Lithuania as well as many papers on the political transformation of Central Europe, electoral geography and et and ethnic issues. Since 2017 he has been working as a methodologist at the Territorial Self-Government Centre in the Statistical Office in, being responsible for planning and designing research studies as well as collection, analysis, and dissemination of data on various activities of self-government units.

Thomas Gottron, Principal Data Science Expert, Data Office, European Central Bank

Thomas Gottron is Principal Data Science Expert at the Data Office of the European Central Bank. He leads the Advanced Analytics and Data Quality Team to support data science and machine learning projects in all business areas. Common use cases for these projects address topics such as data analytics, quality assurance, process optimisation and data integration. Furthermore, he coordinates the ECB internal Machine Learning Community, which serves as platform to transfer knowledge and experience across more than 600 colleagues from all business areas. Mr. Gottron has a background in mathematics and business management and received a PhD in computing science in 2008. He has more than 20 years of experience in designing and implementing data science projects in academics, in the private and in the public sector. He authored more than 90 scientific publications on topics related to information retrieval, artificial intelligence, and data integration

Roeland Beerten, Chief Statistician and head of the Statistics Department at the National Bank of Belgium

Roeland Beerten is Chief Statistician and head of the Statistics Department at the National Bank of Belgium. Before that he was Chief Statistician at Statistics Flanders, Belgium, where he established the Flanders Statistics Authority to coordinate the official statistics system for the government of Flanders. Prior to this he worked at the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) in various roles for over 14 years, and as Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the Royal Statistical Society in London. He is a member of several advisory boards, including the Statistics Scotland Advisory Committee and the Advisory Board for the journal Data & Policy (Cambridge University Press).

Katerina Rabova, Account Director, Customer Experience Service Line, Ipsos

Katerina Rabova is Account Director, Ipsos, Prague, Customer Experience service line. She has been with Ipsos for 7 years. She joined the company while working on her Master's degree. Fortunately, Ipsos supports students, so she was able to complete her studies and grow into a skilled researcher and manager. Currently, she leads a team that focuses on customer experience studies. Using data-backed insights, she advises her clients on improving their processes, customer journeys, and products. Until now, she has had the pleasure of serving several clients from the banking, insurance, and utility sectors, often even at an international level.

Panel discussion – Expanding collaboration and strengthening cohesion in the EMOS network

Dishani Sen, Data Consultant, Dataroots

Dishani Sen holds a Master's degree in Statistics and Data Science from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a Triple Major bachelor's degree in economics, Mathematics, and Statistics from Christ University in India. Dishani is passionate about digital trace data, and machine learning, and is focused on using these tools to make a positive impact.

Dishani has won the Best Master Thesis Award by the European Commission (2023) and represented India at the World Bank's South Asia Economics Students' Conference in 2020. She is also a published author of various research articles on digitisation in India and modelling social media using graph theory. Dishani is passionate about addressing public policy challenges through innovative research using data and cutting-edge data science methodologies.

Antonio Grosso, Information Analyst at the Italian Agency for Territorial Cohesion, National Strategy for Inner Areas

Mr. Antonio Grosso graduated from Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in Statistical Science. He is currently completing a European Master in Official Statistics at “Sapienza University” in Rome. His academic journey was enriched by two impactful exchange experiences: a 6-month Erasmus study program in Poland at Warsaw University of Life Sciences and a three-month internship at the Hellenic National Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), focusing on data analysis, sampling, and GDPR. In his professional career, he began working for the Italian Public Administration in 2021. Currently, he continues to serve as an Informatic Analyst for the 'Agenzia Nazionale per la Coesione Territoriale' and is transitioning to the Area Interna Fortore in his home territory of Molise. His work remains dedicated to advancing the National Digital Transition strategy and supporting regional development initiatives.

Sofie De Broe, Leading Official of the Health Data Agency for Belgium, Sciensano Belgium

Sofie De Broe is leading official (ad interim) of the Health Data Agency for Belgium from within Sciensano, the Belgian public health institute. She also has a visiting chair at the University of Maastricht in Smart Statistics for Policy Design. Between 2015 and 2021 Sofie was head of methodology and scientific director of the Centre for Big Data statistics (CBDS) at Statistics Netherlands. CBDS was set up to innovate official statistics using big data sources and new methods in data science. She has a PhD in social statistics/reproductive health from the university of Southampton, UK. She previously taught at the universities of Southampton and Duisburg-Essen (Germany) and worked at the Office for National Statistics in Titchfield (UK) as a researcher.

Roberto Cerina, Assistant Professor in Humane and Social AI, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam

Roberto Cerina is an Assistant Professor in Social and Humane AI at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. Roberto works with social media data, and design Hierarchical Bayesian models to approximate `strange’ data generating processes. He applies his research to various topics, from terrorism to elections and exposure to disease or toxic metals. Roberto completed his PhD in Sociology at Nuffield College, Oxford University, in November 2020. He has spent the last three years at Maastricht University, at the Department of Data Analytics and Digitalisation, teaching around applied data science. Roberto holds an MSc in Statistics, and a BSc in Statistics and Economics, from University College London. In his spare time he reads comics, meditates on Japanese literature and Futurist Art, and has opinions about mixed-martial-arts.

Pietro Gennari, Senior Consultant in Official Statistics and SDG monitoring, Editor-in-Chief Statistical Journal of the IAOS (SJIAOS) , and Visiting professor of the European Master in Official Statistics at La Sapienza University in Rome.

From 2008 until 2023, he served as Director of the Statistics Division and as Chief Statistician at FAO. In this role, he coordinated the FAO statistical system by leading the monitoring work for the SDG indicators under FAO custodianship, by fostering the quality and harmonization of FAO statistical processes and by ensuring the implementation of corporate and international statistical standards across the Organization.

Between 2013 and 2017 he served as Chair of the Chief Statisticians of the UN system, co-Chair of the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities and Chair of the Committee on Agricultural Statistics of the International Statistical Institute. Pietro played a key role in the advancement of the coordination of the global statistical system, leading the preparation of the joint UN contribution to the selection of the list of global SDG indicators.

Roberta Varriale, Assistant Professor and EMOS programme coordinator, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’

Roberta Varriale has been Assistant Professor at La Sapienza University of Rome since November 2022. She is currently the coordinator of the European Master in Official Statistics (EMOS).After obtaining her PhD in Applied Statistics at the University of Florence in 2008, she worked as a researcher at the University of Tilburg and the University of Florence. Since 2011, she has been a researcher in methodology and statistics at the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). At Istat, she mainly worked on data editing and imputation and on the design of multi-source statistical processes for the development and support of the integrated system of statistical registers. In her research, Roberta Varriale has developed methodologies using latent variable models, both for the production of statistics using different data sources and for the editing, imputation and estimation phases.

Caterina Giusti, Associate Professor of statistics and EMOS programme coordinator, University of Pisa

Caterina Giusti is Associate Professor of Statistics at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pisa and member of the Tuscany Interuniversity Centre on Advanced Statistics for Equitable and Sustainable Development ‘Camilo Dagum’. Her research interests include small area estimation methods, the definition and estimation of indicators of poverty, educational poverty and living conditions. She was involved in several projects funded by the European Commission under the FP7 and H2020 programmes. She is currently responsible for the University of Pisa of the coordination activities with Eurostat in the framework of the European Master in Official Statistics.

Jan Pablo Burgard is associated Professor at the Trier University. His research fields lie in the area of official and survey statistics, data science and econometrics. He teaches statistics courses in the master of applied statistics and the master of data science at Trier University.