In the next months, several new employees will start at ODISSEI tasks. The Portal Team, the NTR team, and the Benchmarking team are all welcoming new members.

Elena Beretta
Postdoc, VU Amsterdam
Portal

Elena Beretta is a postdoctoral researcher at VU Amsterdam, where she is currently collaborating on the ODISSEI portal as an internal VU coordinator. She is additionally involved in the implementation of the FAIR guidelines. Elena is also a member of the User-Centric Data Science group (VU). She received her Ph.D. degree in Computer and Control Engineering from Polytechnic University of Turin in May 2021, with a thesis entitled ‘Algorithms for Social Good: A Study of Fairness and Bias in Automated Data-Driven Decision-Making Systems’. Her research and fields of interest include: Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning and Automated Systems, Ethics of AI, Statistics and Computational Social Science. She has a passion for promoting a fairness-aware-technologies development and for the proliferation of science. She pro bono co-leads the Algorithmic Decision-Making cycle at the Institute for Internet & the Just Society, an open platform that connects civic engagement with interdisciplinary research focused on fair artificial intelligence, inclusive digital governance and human rights law in digital spheres. She is co-founder of YGA Italy, a non profit organization that aims to disseminate science among children.

Camiel van der Laan
Postdoc, VU Amsterdam
National Twin Registry

In August Camiel will start as an ODISSEI postdoc at the VU/NTR. His focus will be on running parallel analyses within multiple ODISSEI data collections on the ODISSEI Secure Supercomputer (OSSC), and on developing algorithms and procedures to define a dynamic and comprehensive network of nuclear family structures in the Dutch population, including classifications of the genetic resemblance between individuals. Camiel has a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, and a master’s degree in Child Development and Education. In his doctoral research he studies genetic and environmental influences on aggressive and rule-breaking behaviour. In his time at ODISSEI he hopes to contribute to making genetically sensitive research designs more accessible and viable for Dutch scientists across multiple disciplines. 

Paulina Pankowska
Postdoc, VU Amsterdam
Benchmarking

Paulina Pankowska is joining ODISSEI as postdoctoral researcher at the VU in July, 2021. She will be working on the benchmarking task, which is a part of the ODISSEI Hub. This task focuses on the design and set-up of a benchmarking challenge for social sciences that addresses a currently researched, real world problem. In November 2020 Paulina defended her PhD dissertation titled: ‘Measurement error: estimation, correction, and analysis of implications’, which investigated the feasibility of using hidden Markov models (a latent variable modelling technique) to account and correct for measurement error in survey and administrative data. The project was conducted in collaboration with Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Next to her work in ODISSEI, Paulina is involved in the development of an online participant recruitment platform for social science and humanities research in the Netherlands. She is also a senior quantitative methodologist in the BAM: Becoming a Minority Project, which studies the lives of people without a migration background, who are living in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods.