As Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich, Dirk Helbing is bringing modelling and computer simulation of social processes and phenomena together with related empirical, experimental, and data-driven work combining perspectives. He is also very well-known for his provoking statements about the future development of societies and industry driven by the increasing amount of data which can benefit human development, but which can also lead to solutions undermining basic rights. The analysis of Big Data, cultural science, real-time data mining ("Nervousnet", "Planetary Nervous System"), the creation of self-organizing systems, innovation and the investigation how science works, are topics of his work.

Through his research work and his visionary and systemic thinking often presented in provocative statements Dirk can be seen as one of the most distinguished experts about the further deployment of complex ICT and its implications on society.