Iuliia Rytck-Molodykh
Applied statistician and urban data scientist, PhD candidate at Universitat Politècnica de València. I turn heterogeneous urban data into indicators that cities can act on.
- irytck@upv.es
- GitHub
- Tableau Public
- ORCID
- Valencia, Spain
About
I work at the intersection of urban sustainability, tourism and spatial analysis.
My PhD models urban mobility flows within an urban-entropy framework, using machine learning and spatial statistics: how diverse a city's movement is in where people go, which modes they use and when they travel, with the Valencia Metropolitan Area as a case study. In the EU-funded Zentropy MICE project I build traceable data pipelines and indicators to measure how conferences and large events affect the city.
A background in public policy and several years in business roles help me turn statistical results into evidence that decision-makers can use. I'm open to research collaborations and consulting on urban indicators, accessibility analysis and data-driven tourism and sustainability projects.
Research interests: urban analytics, composite indicators, spatial statistics, urban mobility, sustainable tourism and events, machine learning, data visualisation.
Experience
Research Scientist, Zentropy MICE
Universitat Politècnica de València, research partner of an EU-funded project (European Urban Initiative) led by València City Council
- Traceable data pipelines that integrate, clean and standardise survey, energy and mobility data from surveys, building management systems, APIs and open data
- Simple and composite indicators, built with multivariate methods, to estimate the resource footprint of events at the venue and across the city
- Contribution to the design of legacy indicators and how to measure them
- Mapping of urban flows with spatial analysis in QGIS and Python
- Survey design, statistical analysis, technical reports and presentations to municipal and academic partners
Data Analyst Intern, NearCity project
Universitat Politècnica de València. I remain a member of the NearCity research team.
- Accessibility indicators to essential services using the 2SFCA method
- Composite indicators to evaluate urban infrastructure and service provision
- Spatial weights, spatial autocorrelation, clustering, regionalisation and point pattern analysis
- Spatial analysis and machine learning applied to urban planning, using open data from València City Council's Geoportal and INE
- Interactive Tableau dashboards to communicate results to non-specialists
Research Assistant Intern
Universitat de València
- Structured biographical database of political officeholders, with coding protocols and consistency checks
- Statistical analysis of elite recruitment and career trajectories
Earlier career in operations, sales and administration
Organisations in Spain and Russia
- Business Administrator, Nail Design Academy SL, Valencia (2020 – 2021): set up a salon and distribution centre, built a CRM system and ran market research
- Sales Executive, Stem Fuels SL, Valencia (2019 – 2020): consultative B2B sales of marine fuel
- Research Project Assistant, European Confederation of Political Science Associations, Valencia (2017 – 2019): administrative and basic research support for survey projects. This is where my interest in statistics began.
- Logistics Manager and Secretary, RDTEX, Moscow (2008 – 2014): client and supplier account management, contracts and documentation, courier coordination, software licence tracking
Publications and conference presentations
- Rytck-Molodykh, I., Roncero-Tarazona, M., Gómez-Navarro, T., & Carot-Sierra, J. M. (2026). Beyond the conference hall: building a traceable data pipeline to measure urban entropy in MICE. Proceedings of ZCBE 2026, Lisbon. Oral presentation. Extended version invited to Energy and Buildings (special issue, in preparation).
- Roncero-Tarazona, M., Gómez-Navarro, T., Rytck-Molodykh, I., & Carot-Sierra, J. M. (2026). Entropy-informed circularity metrics for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibition Events (MICE) tourism: a systems framework and case study. Proceedings of ZCBE 2026, Lisbon. Oral presentation. Extended version invited to Building and Environment (special issue, in preparation).
- Rytck-Molodykh, I., Villalba-Ortiz, A., Roncero-Tarazona, M., Gómez-Navarro, T., & Carot-Sierra, J. M. (2026). Marco metodológico para la integración de datos heterogéneos y la construcción de indicadores compuestos en la evaluación entrópica de eventos MICE. SEIO 2026, Santiago de Compostela, September 2026. Poster.
- Rytck-Molodykh, I., Roncero-Tarazona, M., Villalba-Ortiz, A., Gómez-Navarro, T., & Carot-Sierra, J. M. (2026). From data pipelines to urban transitions: an entropy-informed framework for assessing the energy and material impact of MICE events as urban metabolism intensifications. Urban Transitions 2026, Sitges. Poster (accepted; to be presented November 2026).
Education
PhD in Statistics and Optimization
Universitat Politècnica de València and Universitat de València
Dissertation area: entropy-based modelling of urban mobility flows with machine learning, using Valencia as an empirical case. Advisor: Prof. José Miguel Carot-Sierra.
MSc in Data Analysis, Process Improvement and Decision Support Engineering
Universitat Politècnica de València
Thesis: Accessibility and socio-economic inequalities in Valencia (2SFCA, spatial autocorrelation, geospatial analysis), developed within the NearCity project.
BA in Political Science and Public Administration
Universitat de València
Skills and languages
- Statistics
- Inferential statistics, regression, ANOVA, multivariate methods, composite indicators, time series, spatial statistics (Moran's I, LISA, GWR), accessibility analysis (2SFCA), machine learning, Shannon entropy and MaxEnt
- Data engineering
- ETL pipelines, data integration and standardisation, survey design (LimeSurvey), SQL
- Software
- Python (Pandas, GeoPandas, Shapely, PySAL, NumPy, Matplotlib), R, QGIS, Tableau, Power BI, SPSS, Excel, Git and GitHub
- AI workflows
- Generative AI tools for coding, data analysis and documentation, with output validation
- Certifications
- Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate (Google, 2022); Advanced Tableau and Tableau for Data Science (Frogames Formación, 2024); Quantitative Methods (University of Amsterdam, 2019)
- Languages
- Russian (native), Spanish (C1), English (C1)