Thomas Gaskin
Department of Methodology & Data Science Institute
London School of Economics and Political Science
Deep learning
global migration
A novel and detailed view of international migration flows between all countries since 1990, estimated using deep learning on social, economic, and political covariates.
Deep learning four decades of human migration (2026). Forthcoming in Nature; preprint available here. Towards a Unified Theory of Hybrid Neural models (2026). ICML 2026 submission; preprint available here. Modelling global trade with optimal transport (2026). Nature Communications 17, 2947. Neural parameter inference for large-scale multi-agent systems. (2025). PhD thesis. Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository. Populist narrative power in a globalised infosphere: a cross-language analysis (2025). Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, 1593. Neural parameter inference and uncertainty quantification for epidemic forecasting (2024). PLoS ONE 19 (10), e0306704. Inferring networks from time series: a neural approach (2024). PNAS Nexus 3 (4). Neural parameter calibration for large-scale multi-agent systems (2023). PNAS 120 (7).
Education
- 2021–2025: PhD Mathematics, University of Cambridge
- 2019–2020: MSc Physics, Heidelberg University, Germany
- 2018–2019: One-year Mandarin language programme at Peking University, Beijing
- 2015–2018: BSc Mathematics, Heidelberg University
- 2014–2017: BSc Physics, Heidelberg University
Research positions
- 03/2024–08/2024: Visiting fellow at Zuse Institute, Berlin, Germany. Research on computational epidemiology and opinion dynamics.
- 11/2023–04/2024: Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute and the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), working on demand headroom estimation for the UK low-voltage power grid.
- 09/2023–12/2023: Research assistant at Imperial College London. Research on inverse optimal transport.
- 01/2023–07/2023: Visiting researcher at Imperial College London. Research on applying machine-learning based parameter calibration and network inference
- 03/2021–08/2021: Visiting researcher in the Network Dynamics group, Institute of Theoretical Physics, TU Dresden. Research on Kronecker graphs and network generation algorithms.
- 11/2020–02/2021: Research assistant in the Complex and Chaotic Environmental Systems group, Institute of Environmental Physics, Heidelberg University. Tasks include coding and maintaining the Utopia framework (doi.org/10.21105/joss.02165) and building its website (utopia-project.org).
- 08–10/2016: Research intern at CERN-CMS, Geneva, and École Polytechnique, Paris, working on scale factors for Monte Carlo simulations of leptonic Higgs decays.
Scholarships
- 10/2021–07/2025 Cambridge University VC award: 4-year full scholarship for a PhD at the University of Cambridge.
- 03/2020–07/2020: Full scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation for research stay at TU Dresden.
- 08/2018–08/2019: Full scholarship from the German Academic Foundation and China Scholarship Council for a one-year language programme at Peking University, including language preparation training throughout the preceding year.
- 2017–2021: scholar of the German Academic Foundation
- 2016: full scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service for a three-month research internship at CERN/École Polytechnique de Paris.
2026
- Accepted participant at the Artificial Intelligence Humanities sandpit, UKRI/SSHRC, Montreal
- Invited speaker at the Workshop on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore; host: Li Qianxiao.
2025
- Invited guest lecturer for the European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations programme, University of Oldenburg, Germany.
- ENUMATH 2025 minisymposium speaker; host: Andrea Zanoni & Grigorios Pavliotis.
- CRC Colloquium speaker, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, FU Berlin; host: Stefanie Winkelmann.
- Research visit to Peking University; host: Zhou Peijie.
- Invited speaker at HKU Journalism and Media Studies Center; host: Fu King-wa.
- Invited speaker at Computational Social Science Laboratory Seminar, University of Hong Kong.
- Research visit to University of Hong Kong; host: Guy Abel.
2024
- Roundtable on Trade Data and Supply Chain Resilience speaker, UK Department of Business and Trade (DBT). Hosts: Behzad Hezarkhani and Guven Demirel.
- March–August: visiting fellow at Zuse Institute, Berlin; hosts: Christof Schütte & Tim Conrad.
- New Directions for Stochastic Differential Equations and Machine Learning workshop speaker, ICMS Edinburgh.
2023
- January–June: Visiting fellow at Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London; host: Grigorios Pavliotis.
- Rough Paths Interest Group invited speaker.
- ICIAM 2023 minisymposium speaker; hosts: Fei Lu & Mauro Maggioni.
- Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction research talk.
- January: Research visit to Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Johns Hopkins University; host: Yannis Kevrekidis.
- Oct 2023–April 2024: Co-supervision of MSc and second-year BSc projects, Department of Mathematics, Imperial Collge London
- Jan–Mar 2022: Supervision for Statistical Physics, DAMTP, University of Cambridge
- Jan–Mar 2022: Supervision for Vector Calculus, DAMTP, University of Cambridge
- Oct–Dec 2021: Supervision for Algebraic Topology (Mathematics Tripos Part III course), DAMTP, University of Cambridge.