Unai Fischer Abaigar

Faculty Fellow

I am an incoming Faculty Fellow at the NYU Center for Data Science, where I study the foundations of prediction systems used to guide resource allocations in the public sector. A core theme of my research is thinking holistically about decision-making systems, examining not just the predictive algorithms themselves but how they are designed, deployed, and integrated into broader decision-making processes. I completed my PhD in Statistics at the University of Munich (LMU) as a member of the Social Data Science and AI Lab, advised by Christoph Kern and Frauke Kreuter, and supported by the Konrad Zuse School for Excellence in Reliable AI and the Munich Center for Machine Learning.

In Fall 2024, I was a visiting fellow at Harvard, hosted by Cynthia Dwork and Juan Carlos Perdomo. In Spring 2026, I visited MIT, hosted by Sendhil Mullainathan.

I hold a BSc and MSc in Physics from Heidelberg University in Germany, where I specialized in dynamical systems, networks, and statistical machine learning for time series. Before my PhD, I worked as a research associate at the Hertie School Data Science Lab in Berlin, where I worked as a research associate on machine learning in public policy and governance.