We hosted Alireza Javadian Sabet for a talk at the Network Science Institute. Alireza is a computational social scientist and Ph.D. student in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh’s Resilient Economy Lab (REL).
His talk, Who Can Pivot? Measuring Career Adaptability Across Education, Work, and Migration, presented new methods for understanding the hidden layer of careers: the evolving capabilities behind job titles and degrees. By translating millions of university syllabi into workforce-relevant skill profiles, he compared what institutions teach to what jobs actually demand. He also introduced Career Space, a shared embedding of education and jobs that tracks how occupation compatibility grows or fades as experience accumulates, capturing the difference between pathways that keep many options open and those that build deep, targeted advantage. He closed by examining cross-border mobility and how women’s empowerment reshapes return-versus-stay decisions and knowledge production across countries.
You can find the Alireza’s talk here.