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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Postdoctoral Fellowship – Climate Change, Machine Learning and Advanced Materials

The Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP) is a new institute in UC Berkeley’s new College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), bringing together machine learning and data science with the natural sciences to address one of society’s most urgent challenges: climate change. The BIDMaP Emerging Scholars Program is accepting fellowship applications from recent PhDs in basic science or data science fields interested in working at the interface of machine learning, the natural sciences and climate change.

Research led by Dr. Agyemang and co-authored by Guttmannova, Spencer and Colleagues Evaluates an Intervention to Address Child Trafficking

CSDE Affiliates Dr. Katarina Guttmannova (Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences), Dr. Michael Spencer (Professor, Social Work), and co-authors published in the Journal of Human Trafficking, titled “Community-Based Child Labor Trafficking Prevention in Ghana: A Rights-Based Approach”.  Almost half of child labor (72.1 million) is found in Africa. One in five children in Africa (19.6%) is a child laborer, whilst prevalence in other regions such as Arab States, Asia, and Europe is between three percent and seven percent (International Labor Organization). This study evaluates a community-based child rights education intervention implemented in Ghana, West Africa, to address the problem. The project contributed to an eight percent increase in school enrollment (which has been associated with a decrease in child labor trafficking in other studies), an equivalence of 706 students in one and half years after implementation. The study contributes to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals five and 16 (promoting gender equality, facilitating human rights advancement and strengthening accountable institutions). It also provides project implementation strategies to support the efforts of anti-trafficking institutions. In addition, it fosters awareness on the traumatic impact of child labor trafficking and a call to action for social workers to develop clinical interventions to support victims. It also discusses various limitations, implications, and future directions for the study.

*New* CSDE Computational Demography Working Group (CDWG) Hosts Director of Henry Spatial Analysis (11/1/23)

On November 1st from 3:30-4:30pm Dr. Nathanial Henry will join CSDE to discuss computational approaches to spatial analyses and dynamic visualizations for effective scientific communication. CDWG Will be Hybrid in Fall Quarter 2023. The discussion will take place in Raitt 223 (The Demography Lab) and on Zoom (register here). Dr. Henry has a decade of experience in applied spatial statistics and geospatial software development. He recently started a geographic consulting firm focused on health and urban sustainability. Previously, Nat has worked at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and the Oxford Big Data Institute. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Oxford, where he pioneered new spatial statistics techniques for health data. His collaborative efforts span various sectors, including academic institutions, NGOs, city governments, and advocacy organizations. His work has been featured in such prestigious publications as Nature and The Lancet and on the front pages of The New York Times and The Seattle Times.

The Computational Demography Working Group (CDWG) at the University of Washington meets weekly to provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussions of digital and computational approaches to demographic research. The workshop features a range of paper presentations, methods demonstrations, software tutorials and professional development. The CDWG is sponsored by the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE), the eScience Institute and OBSSR T32 Grant #1T32HD101442-01. We welcome anyone with interest in computational demography (broadly defined).