Martina Otavova

Hello, and thank you for visiting my website!

I am a Research Scholar at the Sustainable Service Systems (S3) Research Group in Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Demographic Research (DEMO) at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain).

My research lies at the intersection of demography, epidemiology, and statistics, with a strong focus on health inequalities and the social and environmental determinants of health. Much of my work has examined cause-specific mortality and lifespan inequalities in Belgium. I am also interested in how environmental factors, when combined with social inequalities, shape population health, with a special emphasis on heat-related mortality as an increasing concern in the context of climate change.

More recently, I have worked on population projections for Belgium consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), and at IIASA I have begun collaborating on a project that quantifies the future burden of disease across SSPs.

My research has been published in journals including the  International Journal of Public Health,  BMC Public Health, Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, and the Journal of Transport & Public Health. 

If you are interested in my work or would like to explore potential collaborations, please do not hesitate to contact me.