Rate My Professor Nik Lomax

Professor Nik Lomax is Professor of Population Geography in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He earned his PhD in Population Geography from the University of Leeds in 2013, along with an MA in Planning and Development and a BA in Human Geography. Previously serving as a University Academic Fellow in Data Analytics for Population Research, Lomax has advanced to his current professorial role. He is a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and Co-Director of the ESRC-funded Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC), where he leads the methods workstream. His career includes principal investigator roles on major projects and contributions to interdisciplinary consortia across universities, government, and practice organizations.

Lomax's research specializations encompass demography, population projection, microsimulation, internal migration, and international migration. He employs existing and emerging data sources, including machine learning and big datasets, to generate high-resolution estimates and projections of population and demographic characteristics at small area levels. Key projects under his leadership include SPENSER, a Synthetic Population Estimation and Scenario Projection Model using dynamic microsimulation; CDRC work on housing and mobility patterns, health, and lifestyle data; SIPHER for systems science in public health and health economics, covering inclusive economic growth, adverse childhood experiences, housing, and mental health; ITRC MISTRAL for multi-scale infrastructure systems analytics with demographic projections; PigSustain predicting impacts of intensification and climate change on the UK pig industry; and New Ethpop for ethnic population projections. Notable publications include 'An Open-Source Model for Projecting Small Area Demographic and Land-Use Change' (2022), 'Defining distance thresholds for migration research' (2021), 'Ethnic internal migration: The importance of age and migrant status' (2018), and 'A mass-market appraisal of the English housing rental market' (2019). Lomax has presented on high-resolution demographic projections for infrastructure planning and population scenarios under Brexit, influencing policy and urban infrastructure efficiency.