Congratulations and Enjoy the Summer!
Posted: 5/31/2024 ()
On Friday, May 31st, CSDE celebrated its many graduate students for their accomplishments. We enjoyed delicious nibbles, sharing updates, and reunions with alumni! If you’d like to see all those updates, view the slide presentation or visit the ‘read more’ link, below.
Thank you to all who attended and presented at CSDE’s spring series! CSDE will be pausing its seminar series until Autumn 2024. Stay tuned for upcoming events! Thank you to our seminar series team – Professor Rawan Arar, Maddie Farris, Jessica Godwin, Jill Fulmore, and Katherine Cheng! Thank to the Evans School for hosting us in Parrington Hall and supporting Katherine Cheng!
In the meantime, keep sending us your news. CSDE E-news will be shifting to a biweekly schedule over the summer.
Among key highlights this year, many students completed their Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods, including Jane Dai (PhD Candidate, Health Services), Sumaya Mohamed (PhD Student, Anthropology), Will Von Geldern (PhD Candidate, Evans School), Hanjie Wang, (PhD Candidate, Political Science), Neil Panlasigui (MPH Student, Epidemiology), Natalie Turner (PhD Student, Social Welfare), Zoe Pleasure (PhD Candidate, Health Services), Desiree Salais (PhD Candidate, Sociology), and Elizabeth Nova (PhD Candidate, Sociology). The certificate equips these students with valuable skills and we are excited to keep working with them throughout their graduate training and beyond.
Several CSDE Trainees and fellows are also graduating and moving onto exciting positions! Hanjie Wang (PhD, Political Science) will be starting a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University. Anwesha Pan (PhD, Anthropology) will be an Assistant Professor at Utah State University. Delaney Glass (PhD, Anthropology) will be joining the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor. Breon Haskett (PhD, Sociology) will be a Demographic Research Analyst at the University of Georgia. Aasli Nur (PhD, Sociology) will start a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. June Yang (PhD, Sociology) will be a Research Scientist at CSDE and eScience Institute. Lizzy Pelletier (PhD, Evans School) will be joining the U.S. Census Bureau as an Economist in the Income Statistics Branch. We are so impressed with all that these graduates have accomplished, and we hope to stay in touch with them as they continue their journey.
Many of the above students also completed their master’s degrees, including Neil Panlasigui (Epidemiology), Elizabeth Nova (Sociology), Hana Brown (Sociology), Aryaa Rajouria (Sociology), Will von Geldern (Public Policy & Management), and Bocheng Zhang (Economics).
CSDE has always been proud to offer several fellowships, including the NIH T32 Fellowship and the IMPRS-PHD Fellowship (International Max Planck Research School, Population Health Data Science). This year, we celebrate several of the above students who are simultaneously completing their NIH T32 Fellowships, including Delaney Glass, Breon Haskett, Lizzy Pelletier, and June Yang in addition to those who are completing their IMPRS-PHD Fellowship, Aasli Nur, Lauren Woyczynski (Sociology), and Aryaa Rajouria. As part of their fellowships, all of these students have received valuable mentorship from CSDE Affiliates.
In 2024, CSDE had the pleasure of co-sponsoring the Applied Research Fellowship Program, alongside The Population Health Initiative, Seattle & King County Public Health, and Data Axle. This program developed a multidisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students to tackle population health challenges. Participating students included Carmen Choong (Sociology), Anoushka Manik (Public Health – Global Health), Sydney Pope (Community Health and Social Justice), Priyanka Shrestha (Global Health and Health Metrics Sciences), and Jenny Speelmon (Informatics and Psychology).
Members of our CSDE community had an impactful pressence at population health events throughout the year! At the 2024 PAA (Population Association of America) meeting, three trainees and fellows were selected for oral presentations, including Hana Brown, Nick Irons, and Zoe Pleasure. Several also attended as poster presenters, including Courtney Allen, Nick Irons, Ihsan Kahveci, Aasli Abdi Nur, Zoe Pleasure, June Yang, and Crystal Yu. Julie Kim, Lizzy Pelletier, and June Yang also gave flash presentations.
CSDE Affiliates and Trainees really shined when it came to PAA’s poster awards. Recipients included Courtney Allen and Sara Curran for their work, “Population Age Structure and Forest Growth in Low- and Middle-Income Countries” in addition to Nicholas Irons and Adrian Raftery for their work “Evaluating and Optimizing Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Combat Infectious Disease Transmission”. Aasli Abdi Nur and Michelle O’Brien also received a poster award for their work, “Contraceptive Method Skew and Women’s Reproductive Choice in Ethiopia”.
Last but not least, we are grateful for all who participated in this year’s autumn and winter Lightning talks, organized by Elizabeth Nova and Aryaa Rajouria. Julie Kim was the autumn winner for her research, “Global Improvements in the Representation of Women in Science Have Stalled”. Courtney Allen was the winter winner for her research, “Reforestation and
Age Structure in Low-and-Middle Income Countries”. Lightening talks are always a fun opportunity to bring our CSDE community together around the enlightening research of CSDE trainees. We are excited for all the years to come of this event!