Tilburg University has appointed Dr. Katrijn Van Deun of Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (TSB) as professor of "Data Science for the Social and Behavioral Sciences" effective Nov. 1, 2023. "This chair, specifically for the social and behavioral sciences, focuses on the development of methods that allow us to critically contribute to complex data developments within our society.
The digital transformation within society and science is having a major impact on the social and behavioral sciences. It affects not only human behavior, but also the way individuals are studied and methods used for this purpose by scientists. Therefore, this chair focuses on developing methods for social and behavioral scientists who deal with complex data. "There are many developments going on in the field of collecting complex data, involving, for example, new measurement tools that allow you to look at thousands of variables simultaneously," Van Deun said. "Within this chair, we are working on methods and tools that meet the needs of social and behavioral scientists."
One of those needs and ambitions of the chair is to make researchers critically aware of the risks and opportunities of using data. "I am glad that Tilburg University is committed to digital sciences and data science as a broad discipline with this chair. It is important that we can contribute critically to all the developments going on in the field of data science and digitization within our society." In addition, there is a need to integrate knowledge and work multidisciplinary through data science: "This should help psychologists, for example, to determine, using data on both environmental factors and a patient's biology, which treatment is most effective. Understanding the big picture is important."
Within the chair, not only are students trained to become the data professionals of the future, but researchers are also trained so that they can take full advantage of the potential of digitally acquired data and learn to deal with the methodological challenges associated with such large amounts of data. "Getting to work with those huge amounts of data is a big challenge. Based on that large amount of information, we want to be able to explain why people as individuals or in groups behave in a certain way, or develop a certain disease, for example. Ultimately, you want to get a handle on very complex problems."
