The University of Washington, the University of Tsukuba in Japan, Amazon and NVIDIA recently announced the The Cross-Pacific AI Initiative (X-PAI). Established with the support of the US and Japanese governments in April 2024, X-PAI supports research projects and collaborations, funds fellowships for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, and promotes community projects. Selected proposals will be funded at $125,000- 400,000/year for two years.

This year’s review process will prioritize proposals relating to robotics; health, aging, and longevity; climate and sustainability; improving model AI efficiency; and trustworthy AI. Learn more and apply here.

SAVE THE DATE: Cultivating Connections for Community Engagement: Fall Quarter Community of Practice

• When/Where: Friday November 15^th, 11am-12:30PM via Zoom (link)
• Who: Faculty and staff from Bothell, Seattle or Tacoma campus who are interested in community-engaged research and/or learning
• Why: To connect with faculty and staff from all 3 campuses who practice, support, or are interested in community engagement; to explore what’s happening across the UW in this space; and to generate ideas and share perspectives for building the university’s capacity for community-engaged scholarship, teaching and learning.
• Rough agenda: An update from the tri-campus effort to build institutional capacity for community engagement; time to connect with and learn from one another; and group discussion and idea development for next steps.
• More info as we get closer!

CSDE is pleased to welcome back some of our former T32 trainees and fellows as External Research Affiliates! Holly Hummer’s (Sociology, Harvard University) research is broadly focused on the mechanisms shaping individuals’ family and employment pathways and on how these pathways play into broader demographic and social patterns. Hilary Schwandt’s (Professor, Western Washington University) main area of research interest is reproductive health, her dissertation was on unsafe abortion in Ghana and included a qualitative study on the pathways to abortion, a comparison of incomplete pregnancy patients and a randomize, noninferiority trial of group vs individual family planning counseling. Elizabeth Hirsh’s (Professor, University of British Columbia) work focuses on employment discrimination and the policies and practices that minimize bias. Elizabeth Korver-Glenn (Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) speaks about many things related to racism, White supremacy, markets, or urban/neighborhood inequality. Ahmed Abdeen Hamed’s (Assistant Teaching Professor, Northeastern University & Head of Clinical Data Science/Network Medicine & AI at the Sano Centre for Computational Medicine and Personalized Health) primary research objectives revolve around addressing intricate challenges in clinical data science and network medicine, deploying computational solutions to advance the understanding of complex diseases, such as cancer, from clinical, genetic, and pharmaceutical standpoints. Learn more about each affiliate in the full story!

• Holly Hummer – Holly Hummer is a Sociologist with interests in family, gender, and work. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University in 2024 and will be a visiting scholar at the University of Washington for the 2024-2025 academic year.Her research is broadly focused on the mechanisms shaping individuals’ family and employment pathways and on how these pathways play into broader demographic and social patterns. Much of this work sits at the intersection of family sociology, feminist and gender scholarship, cultural sociology, and population studies. She has a deep interest in advancing and advocating for the use of qualitative and cross-national, comparative methods to understand social life.
• Hilary Schwandt – Hilary Schwandt earned her BS in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University. After graduating from Calpoly she lived in Jamaica for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She then earned her master’s and her doctoral degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Hilary’s doctoral dissertation was on unsafe abortion in Ghana and included a qualitative study on the pathways to abortion, a comparison of incomplete pregnancy patients and a randomized, noninferiority trial of group vs. individual family planning counseling. Her main area of research interest is reproductive health. Just prior to joining Fairhaven College, Hilary was working in the research division at the Center for Communication Programs in Baltimore, Maryland. At the Center for Communication Programs she was the technical monitoring and evaluation advisor for numerous projects, such as the Go Girls Initiative! – a project that aimed to reduce adolescent girls’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in Botswana, Malawi, and Mozambique; the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative – a project that aimed to reduce the barriers to family planning use among the urban poor; a prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission project in Ethiopia; and a malaria prevention during pregnancy project in Zambia. Hilary grew up in Bellingham and she is delighted for the opportunity to live once again in Bellingham and work with the esteemed Fairhaven College faculty.
• Elizabeth Hirsh – Elizabeth Hirsh is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, where she studies work and employment, organizational dynamics, gender and race inequality, and the law. Much of her work focuses on employment discrimination and the policies and practices that minimize bias. Hirsh regularly presents her research to professional and policy audiences and consults with governmental agencies in both Canada and the U.S. At UBC, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on work, inequality, and quantitative data analysis. While not at work, Hirsh spends her time running, enjoying the beautiful outdoors, keeping up with her three children, and coaching youth sports.
• Elizabeth Korver-Glenn – Eizabeth Korver-Glenn is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She studies, writes, teaches, and speaks about many things, most of them in some way related to racism, White supremacy, markets, or urban/neighborhood inequality. Propelling it all is this aim: to do justice.
• Ahmed Abdeen Hamed – Over the past decade, Ahmed Abdeen Hamed has dedicated himself to academic training, cultivating a robust foundation that seamlessly integrates into both his academic and industrial pursuits in Data Science. His primary research objectives revolve around addressing intricate challenges in clinical data science and network medicine, deploying computational solutions to advance the understanding of complex diseases, such as cancer, from clinical, genetic, and pharmaceutical standpoints. Within the academic realm, his ambition extends beyond personal growth. He is committed to democratizing knowledge in problem-solving, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, not only for the local student community but also for scientists and professionals within my field. His journey has been marked by leadership in diverse research projects, particularly in the field of Biomedical literature mining. Notably, a project closely aligned with the proposed venture involved mining the Biomedical literature to uncover drug-disease links and algorithmically ranking their chemical molecules based on specificity. During his tenure as an R&D scientist in the pharmaceutical industry, he designed and implemented an algorithm, leading to academic publications and eventual patenting under US Patent 10,978,178 in 2021. This groundbreaking work laid the foundation for his subsequent endeavors in Drug Repurposing. The relevance of this research became glaringly evident with the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic. 

When: Friday, November 8th, 2024 (12:30-1:30PM)

Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom (register here)

1-1 meetings: 223 Raitt Hall (sign up here)

We are looking forward to hosting Hyojung Lee from Seoul National University on Friday, Nov. 8 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative. In addition, there are opportunities to meet 1-1 with Dr. Lee throughout the day. Sign up here!

Most previous gentrification research examines neighborhood ascent only among central, low-income neighborhoods, especially in large metros. In this seminar, Dr. Lee will discuss his previous and current research projects with Kristin Perkins at Georgetown, focusing on gentrification in smaller metros and suburban neighborhoods. The findings of the first project, published in Social Forces in 2023, suggest there are indeed substantial variations in the relationships between gentrification and residential mobility across different metro types. For example, College Town and Retirement Destination metros see the largest positive association between gentrification and residential mobility, while we find a weak association in Inland Empire/Texas Border metros. Building on these findings, now we compare how the neighborhood change process differs across neighborhood types, focusing on the difference between urban and suburban neighborhoods. Our preliminary results present that the prevalence of gentrification has risen, especially in suburban neighborhoods, over the last two decades, suggesting.In addition, the neighborhood trajectories among gentrified suburban neighborhoods are largely inconsistent with those among gentrified urban neighborhoods.

Hyojung Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of City Planning in the School of Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University. His research has focused on the impacts of demographic change on housing markets, the consequences of neighborhood change for urban policy, and the jointness of mobility, residential location, and housing tenure choice. Prior to joining the department, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and an assistant professor of housing and property management at Virginia Tech. He received a PhD in urban planning and development and a master of planning from the University of Southern California and a BS and a MS in civil and environmental engineering from Seoul National University.