Michael Szell

Michael Szell is an Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), affiliated with the Data Science Networks, Data, and Society Center for Climate IT. He holds external positions including Affiliate at the Danish Pioneer Centre for AI (since Feb 2023), External Researcher at the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation (2019–2024), and External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub (since 2017).

Research Interests: Social networks, human mobility, computational social science, data science, urban sustainability, network science, and infrastructure design. His work focuses on urban systems, bicycle networks, mobility patterns, and data-driven strategies for sustainable urban planning.

Awards: Received the Årets Forskningsmiljø 2022 award for contributions to research environments.

Projects: Currently leads projects like NADanBI (Danish Road Directorate, 2022–2025) and JUST STREETS (European Commission, 2024–2027), focusing on bicycle infrastructure analysis and spatial justice in urban mobility.

Publications: Over 50 peer-reviewed papers, including high-impact work on bicycle network growth, universal visitation laws in human mobility, and urban superblock modeling. His research bridges data science, urban planning, and computational modeling to address sustainability challenges.

Contributions: Developed tools like superblockify and BikeDNA, and contributed to datasets on urban mobility and bicycle networks. Engages in media discussions on cycling infrastructure and urban policy.