David De Wachter

David De Wachter graduated in 2005 from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel as a sociologist. He started working as a demographer at Interface Demography at the same institution. There he pursued a PhD focusing on the longitudinal analysis of fertility and family formation using Belgian census data. He also worked on research projects about the harmonization of the Belgian Generations and Gender Survey, capacity problems of schools, and the representation of women in top jobs. He obtained his joint PhD in 2013 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Universiteit Antwerpen. Afterwords he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Population, Family and Health at the Universiteit Antwerpen where he focused on socio-economic differentials in fertility, family formation and pension protection. Subsequently he worked as a data analyst at the ‘Instituut voor Functieclassificatie’ focusing on the construction of a new salary model for the private hospitals in Belgium. In 2017 he started working as a data science consultant at Ordina. He was assigned to the Financial Services and Markets Authority where he worked as an analytics developer. Subsequently he was assigned to UCB Pharma and then to VDAB where he mainly focused on the development of automatic solutions for time series forecasting and analysis. Since 2022 he works as a senior data scientist for Vlaanderen Connect. He is currently assigned to VDAB where he focuses on analyzing career paths and forecasting trends in the demand for occupations and related skills.