Research that could transform the study of migration will be carried out by a Southampton academic thanks to European funding.
Dr Jakub Bijak, Associate Professor in Demography at the University, will lead the team exploring methods to enhance knowledge and understanding of migration processes.
Jakub was one of 314 top researchers in Europe selected by the European Research Council (ERC) to share in a total of €605m funding.
Jakub was awarded €1.45m for the four-year project ‘Bayesian Agent-based Population Studies (BAPS): Transforming Simulation Models of Human Migration’.
BAPS will build on Jakub’s previous research into migration modelling and forecasting. It aims to use the concepts of intelligent agents and social networks to develop a ground-breaking simulation model of international migration. The simulations will see the agents (migrants, states and institutions) interacting in a way that will mimic the trends observed in the real world.
Led by Jakub, the team will also develop a bespoke, intuitive programming language to help deal with the project’s computational challenges.
Jakub commented:
I am absolutely thrilled to receive the ERC grant for this project. Migration is a top priority EU policy area and one of the key social challenges in contemporary Europe. We need to better understand the processes and decisions that underpin it, so this project will look at developing and testing innovative methods for modelling migration which we hope will offer a step change in the how migration is understood, predicted and managed.
The team will also include Southampton colleagues Professor Peter Smith, Professor Jonathan Forster and Dr Philip Higham.
The project is due to start in summer 2017.
