The 2026 Annual Meeting for the Population Association of America (PAA) is happening May 6th-May 9th, 2026. During that time we will have many CSDE affiliates, trainees, staff, former and upcoming seminar speakers, alumni, and friends presenting during the conference. If you would like to support CSDE, please see the links to view schedules of CSDE affiliated presentations by name or date!
Following tradition, CSDE is co-hosting a reception for affiliates, trainees, alumni, friends, and more! We will be joined by Population Center Studies and Training Center at Brown University, the Institute for Social Research Population Studies Center and the Inter-University Consortium for Political & Social Research at University of Michigan, the California Center for Population Research at UCLA, and the Center for Demography and Ecology and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Please join us on Friday, May 8th from 6:00 – 8:30 PM at the Marriott St. Louis Grand, Landmark 4 Room. Refreshments and light appetizers will be served. Come enjoy some time with old friends and make some new friends too. Register here and see the event flyer here: PAA 2026 Reception Flyer.
Heat is one of the most frequently examined environmental influences on population health, and a wide variety of data sources exist to measure exposure. This pre-PAA workshop, sponsored by the Center on Aging, Health, and Environment (CACHE), provides an overview of heat measures and examples of two, including hands-on experience with code available via the CACHE website. Participants will generate temperature exposure measures from publicly available data, as well as wet bulb temperatures. The Universal Thermal Climate Index data will also be demonstrated and linked to population data. Learn more and register here. This workshop will take place in St. Louis, Missouri on May 6, 1-5:30 PM CT . Please note you must be registered for PAA in order to attend.
The workshop’s first exercise uses data from two different sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather-stations and ERA5-Land Reanalysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Project. Both are publicly available. The workshop will review information on acquiring and cleaning daily temperature data for New York City, as an example. Key is that air temperature as well as wet bulb temperature exposure variables are generated, and at varying temporal resolution. On the CACHE website, the code is embedded in an R Markdown pdf file.
The second exercise demonstrates how to construct severe heat measures using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI, Copernicus ERA5-HEAT). It starts by showing data manipulation from raster (grid data) to a tabular dataset that obtains UTCI values for each municipality in Mexico as an example. Then, the data are mapped and analyzed as linked to population data. Finally, the number of days of severe heat (32°C UTCI and above) are generated. This code, also available on the CACHE website, is part of the demonstration CACHE project “Heat, Disability in older adults and Care” from El Colegio de Mexico.
Lead Instructors:
Dr. Frank Heiland, CUNY Institute for Demographic Research
Dr. Alex Mikulas, CACHE
Dr. Landy Sanchez, El Colegio de Mexico
Organizers:
Lori Hunter, University of Colorado Boulder, and Deborah Balk, CUNY Institute for Demographic Research
Keep an eye out for an email in the coming weeks with additional details.
Join CACHE on May 12 at 11 AM PT for a online seminar on, “Tracking the Mortality Burden Associated with Extreme Weather Events in the United States: Implications for Older Adult Health,” featuring Dr. Kai Chen of Yale School of Public Health. Extreme climate-related hazards, such as wildfire smoke, extreme temperatures (both heat and cold), floods, and drought, are increasingly recognized as major threats to human health and well-being in the United States. These events contribute to substantial premature mortality, which in turn imposes significant economic losses on society. However, the public often lacks clear, science-based information that captures the scale of these damages and makes them accessible across different regions. To address this gap, the Climate, Health, and Environment Nexus (CHEN) Lab at the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health recently developed a dashboard that attributes premature mortality in the contiguous United States to these extreme climate events: XToll: eXtreme-weather Toll Tracker. Register here.
Dr. Kai Chen will introduce the XToll dashboard and its underlying research on the national county-level mortality burden of heat, cold, wildfire smoke, floods, and drought. He will also highlight the health effects of non-optimal temperatures and wildfire smoke on older adults’ cardiovascular health, emphasizing the heightened vulnerability of aging populations to these environmental stressors. Extreme climate-related hazards, such as wildfire smoke, extreme temperatures (both heat and cold), floods, and drought, are increasingly recognized as major threats to human health and well-being in the United States. These events contribute to substantial premature mortality, which in turn imposes significant economic losses on society. More information can be found here.
The CSDE Development Core is once again hosting its annual Grant Writing Summer Program (GWSP) to assist scholars (UW postdocs, researchers, and professors affiliated or planning to affiliate with CSDE, as well as other researchers in the Seattle area) in preparing applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Applications are now open and due May 15! More info here, and application page here. Note that the program is in person and meets once every two weeks, late June – mid Sep, on the UW Seattle campus. Final schedule is set based on the schedules of the selected participants.
Make sure to read all the FAQ’s. Past participants report great success, and lots of support and even fun along the way. Applications are due May 15. Additional questions? Contact goodreau@uw.edu.
Program eligibility and costs (including one change from previous years):
- Free: CSDE affiliates (UW and external)
- Free: UW Faculty and research scientists (planning to affiliate with CSDE)
- Free: UW-based post-docs writing K awards with one or more CSDE affiliates on their mentoring team
- $7,500: Other researchers in the Seattle area
- $7,500: Post-docs who are based outside UW, writing K awards with one or more CSDE affiliates on their mentoring team
- Current graduate students are not eligible to apply.
CSDE is thrilled to announce the Charles and Josephine Hirschman Award for student research. CSDE students may apply for up to $2,000 in funds to directly support a research project. Funds may support activities such as the cost of conducting fieldwork, data purchases, the hiring of a translator or transcriber, or participant rewards in surveys. Be creative! All funds must be spent during the 2026-27 academic year and may not be used to pay tuition or your own salary. Applications are due Friday, May 22, 2026. Apply here. A faculty advisor must approve of your application via this form. Click read more to see details on eligibility and review criteria .
Eligibility: Applicants must by UW graduate students who are affiliated with CSDE in at least one of the following ways:
1) are a current or former CSDE T32 fellow,
2) are currently enrolled at the UW and in the Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods,
3) are currently enrolled at the UW and have completed the Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods, or
4) are currently enrolled at the UW and have taken at least one of the following courses: of CSDE 513 or CSDE 533.
Each applicant must provide:
- a 1-2 page research proposal,
- a budget from the provided template, and
- their CV.
- Applications will not be accepted without approval from a faculty mentor.
If awarded, funding is contingent upon proof of IRB approval or proof that the project is deemed not human subjects research.
Review Criteria: The Award Committee will review applications according to the NIH’s review criteria of significance, approach, innovation, investigators, and environment, as well as the impact of the award on your own personal research and professional goals. Our rubric contains more information.
CSDE collaborates with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in a doctoral training program called the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS). This program is based in Rostock, Germany, but includes 12 doctoral programs in the U.S. and Europe. CSDE has one IMPRS-PHDS fellowship application slot available to current CSDE Trainees. The fellowship funding will support a one quarter research stay at the MPIDR any time between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2027. Information about the program, the faculty, and partner institutions can be found here. Applications are due to CSDE by Tuesday, May 26. Apply here.
In a new article in Quaternary Environments and Humans, CSDE Affiliate Jade d’Alpoim Guedes (Anthropology) investigates the spread of Sino-Tibetan languages to the eastern Tibetan Plateau, combining evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, applying data from linguistics, palaeoclimate and archaeology. The study focuses on the interaction among different groups of people, zooming into the contact and cultural dynamics of the eastern plateau between ca. 3300 BC to 846 AD. d’Alpoim Guedes observes diversification in both archaeological and linguistic evidence following the 4.2 kya event, suggesting a potential human response to the climate change. The results also illustrate acceptance and resistance of the populations on the Tibetan Plateau to different degrees in terms of agriculturalist economy and diversification of subsistence strategies in order to avoid risks.
The Population Association of America invites you to join upcoming fireside chat with the NIH Director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, at the PAA 2026 Annual Meeting, on Friday, May 8, 2026, 1:30 – 2:45pm in the Ferrara Theater (1st Floor) of the America’s Center. This plenary session, “NIH and the Future of Population Research: A Conversation with the NIH Director”, will focus on broad issues shaping population research, such as NIH strategic priorities, funding levels, open science/reproducibility, new methods of inquiry/AI, science communication, and the future of social and behavioral research. Professor Will Dow (UC-Berkeley) will moderate.