News
| 2025-06-19 |  | Book chapter published in Compendium of Urban Complexity (Springer) on Urban Mobility. |
| 2025-05-22 |  | My PhD student Ane Rahbek Vierø defended her thesis Network analysis of Denmark’s bicycle infrastructure. See also the NERDS News. |
| 2025-05-19 |  | Paper published in Geographical Analysis on Network Analysis of the Danish Bicycle Infrastructure. See also the project page. |
| 2025-04-28 |  | Paper published in Scientific Reports on CoolWalks for active mobility in urban street networks. |
| 2025-03-31 | | My PhD student Anastassia Vybornova defended her thesis Urban Data Science for Sustainable Mobility. See also the NERDS News. |
| 2025-03-04 |  | Paper published in PNAS on Urban highways are barriers to social ties. |
| 2025-02-05 |  | Paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface on Cohesive urban bicycle infrastructure design through optimal transport routing in multilayer networks. |
| 2024-12-19 |  | Paper published in Geoforum Perspektiv on Teaching spatial data science. See also: Course materials |
| 2024-10-22 |  | Correspondence published in Nature on explaining AI's Physics Nobel prize with data. |
| 2024-08-14 |  | Paper published in Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) superblockify: A Python Package for Automated Generation, Visualization, and Analysis of Potential Superblocks in Cities. See also: superblockify.city |
| 2024-04-05 | | Paper published in Geographical Analysis on How Good Is Open Bicycle Network Data? A Countrywide Case Study of Denmark. |
| 2024-01-22 |  | I won the EU Horizon grant JUST STREETS together with 31 partners. See also the NERDS News. |
| 2023-09-15 |  | Review paper published in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems on Sidewalk networks. |
| 2023-06-21 |  | Paper published in Environment and Planning B on BikeDNA: A tool for bicycle infrastructure data and network assessment. See also the project page. |
| 2023-04-19 |  | Paper published in EPJ Data Science on Revealing the determinants of gender inequality in urban cycling with large-scale data. |
| 2023-02-21 |  | New affiliation at AI Pioneer Centre |
| 2022-12-01 |  | Paper published in Transport Findings on Computational Desire Line Analysis of Cyclists on the Dybbølsbro Intersection in Copenhagen. |
| 2022-11-18 |  | Mastodon instance datasci.social set up, to provide a platform for researchers in human-centric data science. |
| 2022-11-03 |  | GrowBike.Net was shortlisted at the 2022 CityVis competition, category "Research". |
| 2022-10-22 | | Paper published in Environment and Planning B on Data-driven micromobility network planning for demand and safety. See also the project page. |
| 2022-07-20 | | Paper published in Environment and Planning B on Multimodal urban mobility and multilayer transport networks. |
| 2022-06-02 |  | Our research group NERDS won the Research Environment of the Year 2022 award. See also the Forskerforum article (in Danish). |
| 2022-04-28 | | Paper published in EPJ Data Science on Identifying urban features for vulnerable road user safety in Europe. See also the blog post. |
| 2022-04-26 | | Paper published in Scientific Reports on Growing urban bicycle networks. See also the project page. |
| 2022-03-22 | | Paper published in Geographical Analysis on Automated Detection of Missing Links in Bicycle Networks. See also the project page. |
| 2021-11-01 |  | New affiliation at ISI Foundation |
| 2021-07-07 | | GrowBike.Net released |
| 2021-06-07 |  | Paper published in ICWSM 2021 on Multilayer Graph Association Rules for Link Prediction. |
| 2021-05-26 | | Paper published in Nature on The universal visitation law of human mobility. See also the project page. |
| 2021-01-06 |  | Taxonomy of Urban Bicycle Network Approaches released |
| 2020-12-16 | | Paper published in Royal Society Open Science on Data-driven strategies for optimal bicycle network growth |
| 2020-10-01 |  | Promotion to associate professor at ITU Copenhagen |
| 2020-06-10 | | Paper published in Transport Findings on multiplex transport networks |
| 2019-12-12 |  | Published editorial and completed Special Issue in International Journal of Geo-information: Human-Centric Data Science for Urban Studies Editors: Resch, Szell |
| 2019-09-05 |  | What the Street?! added to Futurium's permanent exhibition |
| 2019-08-07 | | Joined editorial board of International Journal of Geo-information |
| 2019-08-01 | | New affiliation at ISI Foundation |
| 2019-05-09 | | Postdoc wanted at NERDS |
| 2019-04-24 | | New research group founded: NEtwoRks, Data, and Society (NERDS) at ITU Copenhagen |
| 2019-02-01 | | New position at ITU Copenhagen |
| 2019-01-08 |  | Paper published in Nature Reviews Physics on taking census of physics |
| 2019-01-07 |  | Call for papers at PLOS ONE: Science of Stories Submission deadline: 2019-06-14 |
| 2018-11-01 |  | Paper published in Nature Physics on interdisciplinarity and the Nobel Prize |
| 2018-10-17 | | What the Street!? visualization won the City Vis 2018 competition in Art & Advocacy |
| 2018-03-29 | | Paper published in Urban Planning |
| 2018-03-14 |  | Tribute to Stephen Hawking published |
| 2018-01-09 |  | Joined Editorial Board of Complex Systems |
| 2017-12-15 | | Joined Editorial Board of PLOS ONE |
| 2017-12-05 | | Call for papers at International Journal of Geo-information: Human-Centric Data Science for Urban Studies Editors: Resch, Szell Submission deadline: 2019-04-30 |
| 2017-05-04 | | Call for papers at EPJ Data Science: Individual and Collective Human Mobility: Description, Modelling, Prediction Editors: Simini, Ghoshal, Pappalardo, Szell, Hövel Submission deadline (extended): 2018-01-31 |
Current research
Watch my keynote to learn about my current research:
Bio
Michael Szell is associate professor in Data Science at the NEtwoRks, Data, and Society (NERDS) research group that he co-founded at IT University of Copenhagen, external faculty at the Complexity Science Hub, and affiliate at the Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence. He has an interdisciplinary background in mathematics, network science, and complex systems. Currently, Michael is quantitatively researching bicycle networks and sustainable mobility following an urban/geospatial data science approach. Along the way he develops methods and open-source tools for sustainable transport planning. His research strives for transport justice, rejecting car-centrism, towards a human-centric, livable future. For that goal, Michael is also co-developing interactive data visualization platforms such as What the Street!?. Apart from these efforts, he is co-developer of the award-winning massive multiplayer online game Pardus.
Research interests
- Primary: Urban/Geospatial Data Science, Sustainable mobility, Bicycle networks
- Secondary: Network science, Complex systems, Social networks, Data visualization
Research highlights
| Highway Barriers  2025 |
Bicycle Networks  2022 |
Human Mobility  2021 |
Nobel Prizes  2018 |
Citation Networks  2015 |
Taxi Sharing  2014 |
Social Networks  2010 |
Data visualization highlights
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Education
| 2012 / 03 |  | Ph.D. in Physics, University of Vienna Ph.D. Thesis
Advisors: Stefan Thurner, Christoph Dellago |
| 2007 / 10 |  | M.Sc. in Technical Mathematics with focus on computer science, Vienna University of Technology M.Sc. Thesis |
Current positions
| since 2020 / 10 | | Associate professor, Data Science Section, IT University of Copenhagen |
| since 2023 / 02 | | Affiliate, Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence |
| since 2017 / 04 |  | External faculty, Complexity Science Hub |
| since 2006 / 09 | Founder and manager of Bayer & Szell OG | |
| since 2004 / 07 |  | Developer and administrator of the Massive Multiplayer Online Game Pardus |
