This week’s CSDE spotlight is on CSDE Biodemography Director Eleanor Brindle. Ms. Brindle joined CSDE in 1999 to facilitate research requiring biomarker data. She holds an MA in Bioanthropology and Demography from Penn State, where she was a graduate trainee at the Population Center. Ms. Brindle is a highly-skilled laboratory research scientist with extensive experience in biomarker methods development and application, grant proposal writing and biodemography. She has co-authored several publications on biomarker methodologies. At CSDE, she provides end-to-end research consultations to both students and faculty for research requiring biomarker data.

UW Sociology Graduate Student Ian Kennedy, along with co-authors, including Dr. Chris Hess (CSDE Alum), recently published an article in Social Forces examining “racialized language” in rental ads in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area. The article received significant attention media and a special press release from the UW, including a segment on King 5. Using a topic modeling approach, they assess patterns in ad terms and the neighborhoods the ads are tied to. They find a pattern of “racialized language” that can perpetuate neighborhood segregation, using specific terms to describe apartments in different areas of town. The project is supported by CSDE's UW Data Collaborative and CSDE’s computing core, and employs sophisticated data science techniques for collecting and analyzing data. 

Dr. Tracy Mroz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the impact of health policy and delivery system factors on access to and quality of post-acute care services for older adults and adults with disabilities, with an emphasis on home health care and care provided in rural communities. As an investigator with the WWAMI Rural Health Research Center and the UW Center for Health Workforce Studies, she is leading studies on post-acute care in rural communities and therapy workforce.

Dr. Clair Yang is an Assistant Professor specializing in Chinese Economics in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. She is also a non-resident scholar at the 21st Century China Center at the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), UC San Diego. She received her Ph.D. in Managerial Economics and Strategy from Northwestern University. Most recently, Dr. Yang was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Her research is in the area of political economy, applied microeconomics and the Chinese economy.

Dr. Kivan Polimis is a data scientist at Atlas Analytics in Houston, Texas. He is also a CSDE alum, currently a CSDE regional affiliate, and a research affiliate at the Bocconi Institute for Data Science and Analytics (BIDSA). Previously, he served as a data scientist with MAANA after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Università Bocconi’s Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy in Milan. He has also worked with UW’s Data Science for Social Good and Microsoft to develop programming solutions in transportation infrastructure and the legal system.

Dr. Paula Nurius is Associate Dean, Transdisciplinary Scholarship at the UW School of Social Work was recently honored with her election as Fellow of the National American Academy of Social Work and of Social Welfare and of the Society for Social Work & Research. She is also the inaugural recipient of the GADE National Leadership in Doctoral Education Award and was named one of Social Work’s top 25 female scholars on the basis of her scholarship impact.

Dr. Stewart Tolnay, CSDE Affiliate and S. Frank Miyamoto Professor Emeritus of Sociology recently published Less Than Righteous (Independent). Tolnay is a longstanding expert in historical demography, and a leading authority on The Great Migration, and lynching. His research has sought to document these racialized elements of the nation’s history and explain large-scale demographic trends and how they have influenced Black American populations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

CSDE Director Sara Curran, along with Chris Bachrach (University of Maryland) will moderate an IAPHS Webinar “Health Care – Population Health Science Partnerships: What Can And Can’t They Do”on Thursday, September 17, 2020. The growing interest in population health approaches among health care entities is creating new opportunities for partnerships between health care systems and population health science. This webinar examines the potential, as well as the challenges and limitations, of these partnerships for advancing population health and equity.