CSDE Trainee Will von Geldern (Public Policy) published an opinion piece in the Seattle Times that draws on findings from his dissertation research and work with CSDE Affiliates Rachel Fyall (Public Policy) and Karin Martin (Public Policy). The op-ed addresses the “right to counsel” law in Washington, which was intended to ensure legal representation for tenants who receive public assistance or who have very low incomes. Five years after the bill’s passing, however, less than half of tenants receive legal assistance during the eviction process. In the article, von Geldern argues that the decision to create the right-to-counsel program without fixing the underlying eviction process has contributed to a persistent gap in tenants’ access to justice.
Journal of Adolescent Health Names Work by Goodreau and Hamilton to its 2025 Distinguished Dozen
The Journal of Adolescent Health (JAH) recognized recent research by CSDE Affiliate and Executive Committee Member Steven Goodreau (Anthropology), CSDE Senior Research Scientist Deven Hamilton, and UW Graduate Student and first author Kendall A. Lawley. Their 2025 article, “Trends in sex of sex partners and sexual identity among US adolescents, 2015-2021” has been named to JAH’s Distinguish Dozen. This initiative amplifies particularly important contributions to the field published in JAH in 2025. The article was nominated based on peer reviewer feedback and then chosen by the Journal’s editors. Lawley, Hamilton, Goodreau, and co-authors analyzed the Youth Risk Behavior Survey and found shifting patterns in adolescent sexual identity and partners. The proportion of adolescents, especially females, reporting same-sex contact and identifying as bisexual or lesbian has increased significantly. These trends suggest potential changes in the distribution of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. To arrange a consulting appointment with Deven Hamilton or any of CSDE’s scientific support staff, please use the CSDE Science Core Consultation Request form.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Social Development and Wellbeing Lab – Northeastern University (02/18/26)
NIH Now Accepting International Proposals Under New Multi-Component Award Structure
The NIH will be accepting applications under the new multi-component award structure. Please see PA 26-002 “NIH Collaborative International Research Project (Parent PF5 Clinical Trial Optional)” for more details.
*New* CSSS Seminar: Making All the Pieces Matter: Bridging Theory, Methodology, and Analyses to Uncover Nuance in Parenting and Child Development Research – Debrielle Jacques (02/18/26)
Please join us for our next speaker in the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences Seminar Series. Wednesday February 18th at 12:30pm, Debrielle Jacques, Assistant Professor, Psychology, UW will give a seminar titled: Making All the Pieces Matter: Bridging Theory, Methodology, and Analyses to Uncover Nuance in Parenting and Child Development Research.
This seminar will be offered as a hybrid session. Below please find the abstract and information about joining in-person or on Zoom.
Parents with addiction and mental health challenges (also known as psychopathology) can struggle to consistently and responsively meet their children’s needs. This can increase children’s risk for future mental health problems and adverse developmental outcomes. Sometimes the effects of parent addiction and psychopathology are subtle, less “visible”, and unfold in diverse, complicated processes that are difficult for researchers to capture or explain. Consequently, this requires scholars to adopt more sophisticated or creative empirical approaches to enrich our understanding of associations between addiction, psychopathology, parenting, and child development. However, few studies explicitly, intentionally, or strategically combine theories (which help explain complex phenomena) with diverse methods or advanced analytical approaches to explore the nuance, novelty, and complexity of these associations. This talk demonstrates the utility of integrated and intentional theory-methods-analysis approaches via multiple studies that merge developmental theories, diverse methods, and advanced analyses (e.g., longitudinal, structural equation (SEM), and person-centered analyses). Studies 1 and 2 combine affective developmental theories with longitudinal SEM to examine how and why parental substance use and psychopathology uniquely predict infant emotional development and trajectories of anxiety and depression across early childhood. Study 3 combines social-affective-cognitive developmental theories with mixture modeling to examine heterogeneous associations between maternal alcohol dependence, psychopathology, and parental scaffolding and parent-child problem-solving behaviors.
*New* Human Trafficking Prevention Lecture Series: “The Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People (02/19/26)
Join us for the next event in the Human Trafficking Prevention Lecture Series, “The Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People,” taking place on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, from 3:30–5:00 PM in Cunningham Halh. The event is Hosted by the UW Women’s Center and the UW School of Social Work. This lecture features Carolyn DeFord, an activist, advocate, and the founder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People, a grassroots organization that raises awareness and supports the families of missing and murdered Indigenous people. In her current role as an Anti-Trafficking Program Manager at the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Carolyn oversees the development and implementation of strategies to prevent and respond to human trafficking in the tribal community. She will share insight into how her extensive experience in the anti-human trafficking field helps empower and protect communities from exploitation and violence while promoting cultural identity and dignity. RSVP here.
Dataindex Launches New Site to Track Changes to Federal Data and Surveys
A new initiative that CSDE helped inform is now up and running. The Dataindex.us provides the public with information and updates about federally-based data and surveys. They also provide a sense of how much risk is associated with the provisioning and sustaining of these data through their assessment map. This is meant to be a resource for the broad community of the public research community and for feedback to them.
*New* ORCID 101: The ORCID iD and Record (02/18/26)
Join UW libraries for a hybrid training, “ORCID 101 : The ORCID iD and Record” on Wednesday, Feb 18, 2026, from 12:00 – 1 pm. A valid ORCID account is now required for all NIH biosketch submissions with the implementation of the new Common Form. No prior experience is necessary for this ‘101’-style session for how to get & use your free ORCID iD and ORCID record. The ORCID Guide from the Health Sciences Library is also kept up to date with information on linking ORCID to UW. Register here to attend live and/or receive the session recording.
CSDE Computational Demography Working Group: Changjie Chen (02/18/2026)
On February 18th from 10-11AM PST, the UW Computational Demography Working Group will host Dr. Changjie Chen (University of Florida). Dr. Chen will deliver a talk titled :Urban digital twins: An emerging computational framework for making sense of cities.” The talk will be held both in person at Raitt 223 and via zoom. A sign-up link is here for Dr. Chen to meet CSDE affiliated students and researchers 1 on 1 during his visit. To receive the newsletter from CDWG, participants may choose to join our listserv here.
ABSTRACT
Cities are complex systems in which physical structures, natural processes, social relations, and human activities coexist and interact across scales. While these interdependencies have long defined urban life, recent advances in data availability, computation, and modeling have dramatically expanded our capacity to represent, integrate, and reason about urban systems. This talk introduces urban digital twins as an emerging computational framework for making sense of cities, providing a means of cultivating integrative knowledge by relating heterogeneous data, models, and system architectures to support informed decision-making about urban futures. The talk examines urban digital twins as computational infrastructures that shape how urban processes are represented, coupled, and explored. It draws primarily on case studies from Florida, where rapid population growth, sea-level rise, and climate-driven risk have positioned the Florida Digital Twin as a living laboratory for methodological and technical innovation. Examples include regionalization methods for cross-scale data harmonization, applications to coastal vulnerability and adaptation planning, and AI-powered 3D city modeling. The talk also considers emerging extensions that incorporate agentic reasoning within digital twins, reframing computational inquiry around how cities can better support human life.
BIOGRAHY
Dr. Changjie Chen is a computational urbanist studying the spatial structure and functional dynamics of cities, with a focus on building scalable and intelligent urban digital twins for modeling, simulation, and planning decision support. His work integrates geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, spatial econometrics, artificial intelligence (AI), and high-performance computing (HPC) to fuse large-scale, multi-sector urban data with real-time sensor streams into high-fidelity representations of cities across space and time. Leveraging cloud-based data infrastructures, 3D geospatial data, and smart city ontologies, he develops generative AI pipelines that rapidly reconstruct immersive cityscapes and agentic AI systems that autonomously reason about urban complexity, enabling scenario testing, agent-based experimentation, and the simulation of current and future urban conditions
*New* Human Trafficking Prevention Lecture Series: “The Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People (02/19/26)
Join us for the next event in the Human Trafficking Prevention Lecture Series, “The Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People,” taking place on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, from 3:30–5:00 PM in Cunningham Halh. The event is Hosted by the UW Women’s Center and the UW School of Social Work. This lecture features Carolyn DeFord, an activist, advocate, and the founder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People, a grassroots organization that raises awareness and supports the families of missing and murdered Indigenous people. In her current role as an Anti-Trafficking Program Manager at the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Carolyn oversees the development and implementation of strategies to prevent and respond to human trafficking in the tribal community. She will share insight into how her extensive experience in the anti-human trafficking field helps empower and protect communities from exploitation and violence while promoting cultural identity and dignity. RSVP here.