Igbal Safarov

Igbal Safarov is a data governance and open data expert with more than five years of experience in academia, public and private sectors. He has a background in economics, data governance (DAMA methodology), and information systems. He is a start-up funding competition winner with a basket optimization start-up and has won various awards, including the Enlighten Your Research 2017 award of EaPconnect, funded by the European Commission, and the OECD Youth Research Edge Competition 2019.

He received his PhD in the data governance domain at the School of Governance, Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Prior to this, he worked as a researcher on open data, data governance, and data privacy, including data visualization and analytics, data standards and institutional dimensions of open data. He conducted data ecosystem research in the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden, and Eastern European countries, and also organized and delivered fieldwork such as interviews, focus groups, and workshops. He is skilled in conducting both quantitative and qualitative research, and his expertise includes data governance, business process automation, and data-driven innovations.

Igbal is originally from Azerbaijan and acted as a national researcher for the Global Data Barometer. He has been based in the Netherlands for more than 7 years and holds a position in multinational corporations, specializing in the realm of data governance.