Wolfgang Lutz is Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (a new collaboration between IIASA, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the WU-Vienna University of Economics and Business). He joined IIASA in October 1985, where he is Program Director of the World Population (POP) Program. Since 2002 he is also director of the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and since 2008, Full Professor of Applied Statistics (part time) at the WU. He is also Professorial Research Fellow at the Oxford Martin School for 21st Century Studies.

He is the author of the series of world population projections produced at IIASA and has developed approaches for projecting education and human capital. He is also principal investigator of the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis. Lutz is author and editor of 28 books and more than 200 refereed articles, including seven in "Science" and "Nature". In 2008 he received an ERC Advanced Grant, in 2009 the Mattei Dogan Award of the IUSSP and in 2010 the Wittgenstein Prize, the highest Austrian science award. He is elected full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and of the German National Academy Leopoldina as well as a member of the Committee on Population of the US National Academy of Sciences.