CSDE Affiliate Kristian Jones (Social Work) just published a new article, “Friends in Our Lives: Perspectives of Young People Who Participated in a Professional Mentoring Program,” in the Journal of Applied Youth Studies. Despite the emerging utilization of professional mentoring programs, little is known about the ideal characteristics of a professional mentor and young people’s experiences in these professional mentoring programs. Jones and co-authors interviewed 12 young people who participated in the same professional mentoring program in different regions of the United States. The participants discussed their ideal characteristics in a mentor, highlighted factors that made the professional mentoring program impactful to them, and shared their ideas on how to improve the overall program.
Bennett Authors Book on Geopolitical and Ecological Change in the Arctic
CSDE Affiliate Mia M. Bennett (Geography) has released a new book, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, published by Yale University Press. Together with co-author Klaus Dodds, Bennett examines the state of the Arctic today–emphasizing the twin dangers of climate change and geopolitical competition. Unfrozen reveals how the region is becoming a space of experimentation for everything from Indigenous governance to subsea technologies. Growing geopolitical competition is accompanying environmental disruption. Countries including Russia, China, and the United States are investing in the Arctic and consolidating their interests in strategic access, resource exploitation, and alliance-building.
Bleil Awarded Two NIH Grants to Test Pubertal Mechanisms Underlying Health and Pain Outcomes
CSDE Affiliate Maria Bleil (Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing) has been awarded an NIH grant “Improving health among disadvantaged girls to slow pubertal onset and reduce long-term health risks”, which tests whether positive health behavior change among prepubertal girls may lesson risk for earlier pubertal onset and associated cardiometabolic outcomes. Dr. Bleil has also been awarded, along with Dr. Rui Li (PI), an NIH grant “Understanding the role of early life social determinants and sex-specific pubertal pathways in the development of adolescent chronic pain”, which focuses on puberty in relation to chronic pain. Congratulations Dr. Bleil!
A Demographer’s View of Education and Dementia: Patterns, Predictability, and Persistence – Hyungmin Cha
When: Friday, November 21 at 12:30 pm
Where: Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom
We are looking forward to hosting CSDE Affiliate Hyungmin Cha from the University of Washington on Friday, November 21 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative.
Education is one of the strongest predictors of dementia, but its influence extends well beyond whether individuals develop the condition. In this talk, I synthesize three projects that examine how education shapes the functional form, timing, and cumulative duration of dementia experiences. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, I show that (1) dementia risk declines linearly with additional years of schooling, with a notable threshold reduction at high school completion; (2) education postpones dementia onset and reduces variability in its timing, such that college-educated adults experience both later and more predictable onset; and (3) higher life-course socioeconomic status extends dementia-free life expectancy and compresses the years lived with dementia. Together, these studies position education as a fundamental cause of dementia disparities, shaping not only incidence but also the lived experience of cognitive aging. This work advances a sociological and demographic life-course framework for understanding how education structures cognitive health inequalities.
Hyungmin (“Min”) Cha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and an affiliate of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. He is a demographer and population health researcher whose work examines how socioeconomic resources shape health inequalities across the life course and across generations. His current projects focus on education and dementia, highlighting how schooling influences the patterns, timing, and duration of cognitive aging. His research has appeared in leading journals including Demography, Social Forces, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science & Medicine, and Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, among others. He received his PhD in Sociology and Demography from the University of Texas at Austin, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Gerontology at the University of Southern California, and is a recipient of the Gerontological Society of America’s 2023 Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award.
*New* CSDE Computational Demography Working Group (CDWG): Dr. Ilan Strauss and Sruly Rosenblat (11/19/25)
When: November 19, 2025 from 10 – 11 am
Where: Raitt 223 and on Zoom
On November 19, CSDE’s Computational Demography Working Group will host Dr. Ilan Strauss and Sruly Rosenblat from the AI Disclosures Project housed at the Social Science Research Council. Strauss and Rosenblat will present on, “Can Membership Inference Attacks Detect Paywalled Content in LLM Training Data? Lessons and limitations.” Using a legally obtained dataset of 34 copyrighted O’Reilly Media books, Strauss and Rosenblat apply the DE-COP membership inference attack method to investigate whether OpenAI’s large language models were trained on copyrighted content without consent. Results show that GPT-4o, OpenAI’s more recent and capable model, demonstrates strong recognition of paywalled O’Reilly book content (AUROC = 0.82, 95% bootstrapped CI: 0.60–0.96). GPT-4o Mini, as a much smaller model, shows no knowledge of public or non-public O’Reilly Media content (AUROC ≈ 0.50). Testing multiple models, with the same cutoff date, helps account for potential language shifts over time that might bias our findings. These results highlight the urgent need for increased corporate transparency regarding pre-training data sources as a means to develop formal licensing frameworks for AI content training.
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Sruly Rosenblat is an LLM researcher for the AI Disclosures Project housed at the Social Science Research Council. He graduated with a degree in computer science from Hunter College.
Dr. Ilan Strauss is co-director of the AI Disclosures Project in New York City. He is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (London) and a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a Ph.D in economics from the New School for Social Research.
Community-based Circular Economy Strategies to Improve Local Well-being and the Environment (11/20/25)
National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families Fellowship for Early Career Investigators (11/21/25)
Sara Curran Elected as North America Representative to IUSSP Council
We are pleased to announce that CSDE Director, Sara Curran, has been elected to serve as the North America Representative on the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) Council for the 2026–2029 term. In this role, she will help guide IUSSP’s scientific agenda, foster collaboration among population researchers, and represent the interests of members across North America.