Thom Volker

Thom Volker

Statistician • Data Scientist • Sociologist

PhD Candidate in Methods and Statistics

Utrecht University

About me

I am a PhD candidate at the Methods and Statistics department of Utrecht University, researching different techniques for creating privacy-preserving synthetic data sets, under the supervision of Dr. Erik-Jan van Kesteren, Dr. Peter-Paul de Wolf and Prof. Dr. Stef van Buuren. I aim to work at the intersection of social-scientific research and cutting-edge statistical techniques, to get the most out of expensively collected research data.

In the past, I worked on several projects on evidence synthesis, aiming to aggregate evidence over heterogeneous studies that do not allow for meta-analysis. Together with Irene Klugkist I outlined and evaluated the methodology, while I applied it on a set of heterogeneous, sociological studies with Vincent Buskens and Werner Raub. Additionally, I worked on several projects in a broad range of topics (multiple imputation of missing data, unsupervised text analysis and hypothesis evaluation using information criteria).

Besides research, I teach graduate and post-graduate level courses in data science techniques and multiple imputation of missing data.

Interests

  • Causal Inference
  • Bayesian Statistics
  • Multiple Imputation
  • Evidence Synthesis

Education

  • MSc in Methods and Statistics for the Behavioural, Biomedical and Social Sciences, 2022

    Utrecht University

  • MSc in Sociology and Social Research, 2022

    Utrecht University

  • BA in Liberal Arts & Sciences, 2019

    Utrecht University