The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) seek a dynamic and distinguished executive to serve as the Executive Director of the UCSF UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health (CPH). CPH leverages the world leadership in computer science, engineering and statistics at UC Berkeley, clinical care, research and informatics at UCSF, and population health at both institutions to transform personal and public health through computation. Our mission is to apply computation to real-world settings to prevent disease, improve prognosis, and reduce health inequities. CPH’s novel bi-campus departmental structure blends over 40 top computational and health faculty from both institutions into a singular unparalleled intellectual community, and recruits new world-class faculty into joint appointments at both UCSF and UCB. The deep partnership with UCSF Health provides a real-world laboratory for testing and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools in clinical practice and beyond to public health. Graduate programs that bridge the two campuses will train a new class of talent to think and live at the intersection of health and computation, providing an engine for innovations and a powerful draw for the best faculty in the world.

The Executive Director will help CPH realize its vast potential and meet its mission. The Executive Director develops and implements CPH’s long-term strategic vision and research impact areas, under the direction of the Faculty Directors. This requires designing, funding, and overseeing the implementation of research and strategic programs. Additionally, the Executive Director works closely with the Senior Administrative Officer to oversee administrative operations, finance, human resources and facilities for the Program. Specific responsibilities include ongoing landscape analysis, partnership development, technical grant writing including center and training grants, donor and sponsor stewardship, and personnel management. The position fosters linkages between faculty researchers and their counterparts in Foundations, NGOs, governments, and the private sector. They maintain relationships for evidence dissemination among academic partners and with journalists, policy-makers, and other decision-makers. In addition, the Executive Director develops and contributes to scientific conferences and publications that enrich the research community and broader computational health ecosystem. This position reports to the UCSF and UC Berkeley faculty directors of CPH.

The Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health is a new major joint initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Germany, and the University of Helsinki, Finland. To achieve the Center’s vision of unearthing the pivotal social processes that generate health inequalities, it leverages linked family-based data, natural experimental designs, genetically-informed social epidemiological data, advanced dynamic modelling techniques, and a combination of theoretical frameworks.

The Center is currently seeking to appoint one or more full-time post-doctoral researchers to contribute to its research theme on methodological innovation. We welcome applications from researchers with a PhD in demography, statistics, epidemiology, sociology, economics, computer science, or a similar field. The successful candidate will work on one or several of the research strands within the Center’s research theme on methods: longitudinal data analysis, causal inference, and machine learning approaches. More specific topics include, but are not limited to, multistate models, Mendelian randomization, and supervised learning to assess effect heterogeneity. The successful candidate will develop their own methodological agenda within the research theme, and they will contribute their skills and knowledge to applications in the Center’s other research themes. We are seeking creative, self-driven, and collaborative scholars. Knowledge of advanced programming in R, Python, or Stata is an advantage.

BIOSFER – “Untangling the Social and Biological Determinants of Fertility in Modern Societies” – is a major new research initiative funded by the ERC Synergy grant program that brings together scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), the Center for Fertility and Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and Aarhus University in Denmark. BIOSFER investigates how social, biological and psychological forces produce the emerging fertility patterns in young adults, and to what extent the polarization of fertility outcomes across social strata can be attributed to social and biomedical factors. Key questions include how fecundity clusters across social strata, whether this clustering can help to explain socially patterned fertility outcomes, and how knowledge of fecundity and fertility behavior are related.

The MPIDR is currently seeking to appoint two or more full-time post-doctoral researchers to contribute to BIOSFER’s research agenda. The successful candidate will work on one or more of the key research arms of BIOSFER. These include understanding how fecundity, fertility ideals, and fertility behavior co-evolve over the life course; how intergenerational exposures may program fertility; the joint dynamics of fecundity, fertility, and partnership formation; and how knowledge about fecundity and age-related fecundity decline influence fertility behavior.

The MPIDR is seeking to appoint 2-3 full-time post-doctoral researchers to join the Laboratory of Population Health, the Research Group on Labor Demography, or the Laboratory of Fertility and Well-Being. 

They welcome applications from researchers working in fertility or family demography, economic and labor demography, or population health. Successful candidates will have the opportunity to develop their own research agenda, collaborate throughout and beyond the MPIDR, and supervise PhD students. The Institute also encourages collaboration with two new major research initiatives, the Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health; and the ERC Synergy project BIOSFER – Untangling the Social and Biological Determinants of Fertility.

The Training and Statistical Development Branch in the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Programs Center is hiring a Statistician (Demography) GS-1530-13. We are seeking candidates with expertise in demography, statistics, public health, survey methodology, and/or data science with strong programming skills in R. The person selected for this position will lead the development of tools for demographic analysis and population projections and serve as a technical expert for various international demographic, statistical, and data science projects. The position requires frequent international travel to countries like Djibouti, Rwanda, and Mali.

The vacancy is open from Wednesday, November 30, 2022, and will close at 11:59 p.m., EST, on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science has just released its latest issue which includes studies from across high-income countries about single-parent families and public policy.  The overview and summative essays offer thoughtful assessments of the research in this topic and directions for future research.

The Princeton Office of Population Research will be presenting part 5 of their colloquium series on The State of the Nation. In this fifth segment entitled “The State of Indigenous Americans” the panel will explore how American Indian and Alaska Native persons have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic … facing three times the likelihood of infection and death than white counterparts.  Because they represent a small percentage of the national population they face existential threat and remain invisible to the public at large. To register for the event, visit this link.