Expert in Residence

Dr. Yigit Aydede is a Professor of Economics at the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada. His research focuses on machine learning applications in social sciences, unconventional data analysis, disease surveillance systems, and genomics. Dr. Aydede teaches data analytics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence in the Master of Business Analytics program.

He is the author of "Machine Learning Toolbox for Social Scientists: Applied Predictive Analytics with R," published in September 2023. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Dr. Mutlu Yuksel, titled "Causal Machine Learning for Econometrics," is under contract with Taylor & Francis and is expected to be published in February 2025. Dr. Aydede co-founded the Research Portal on Machine Learning for Social and Health Policies (MLPortal), which organizes scholarly activities such as summer schools and workshops. His recent research includes identifying regional drivers of influenza-like illness in Nova Scotia using dominance analysis, published in Nature's Scientific Reports in 2023.

In recognition of his contributions, Dr. Aydede was appointed as a Scientific Affiliate (Research) at the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub in March 2024. He also serves as the Department Chair of Economics at Saint Mary's University. Since July 2021, Dr. Aydede has held the Sobey Professorship in Economics, a five-year appointment acknowledging his expertise and contributions to the field.