The American Indian Studies department at Palomar College in California is seeking qualified part-time instructors to teach American Indian studies. Teaching assignment(s) may include any of the curriculum approved courses within the discipline of American Indian studies.
The U.S. Census Bureau International Programs, Statistician/Demographer
This vacancy is for a Statistician (Demography), GS-1530-13, positions in the Population Division located at the U.S. Census Bureau Headquarters in Suitland, Maryland. The Census Bureau is accessible from the Metro Rail Green Line – Suitland Station.
This Job Opportunity Announcement may be used to fill other Statistician (Demography), GS-1530-13, FPL-13 positions within the Census Bureau in the same geographical location with the same qualifications and specialized experience.
CSSS Seminar: Empirical Bayes for A/B testing and meta-analysis: a spectral approach (5/6/2020)
Wednesday, May 6th, 2020 – 12:30 pm
Large-scale A/B testing is increasingly prevalent in many industries. We propose an empirical Bayes approach, which assumes that the treatment effects are realized from a “true prior”. This requires inferring the prior from previous experiments. Following Robbins, we estimate a family of marginal densities of empirical effects, indexed by the noise scale. We show that this family is characterized by the heat equation. We develop a spectral MLE based on Fourier series, which can be efficiently computed via convex optimization. We select hyperparameters and compare models using two model selection criteria. Our method is demonstrated on experimentation data from Amazon.com. The same method can also be applied to meta-analysis.
Note: This is joint work with James McQueen (Amazon.com) and Thomas Richardson (UW and Amazon.com).
Preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/2002.02564
Virtual Internship Programme (VIP)
The Aga Khan University is thrilled to introduce a new Virtual Internship Programme (VIP) starting in May 2020.
Job roles are changing to reflect how the world is becoming more ‘global,’ and virtual internships are the perfect way to develop a global mind-set and required skills at this time. This innovative new model of internships will connect students around the world, thus helping them to achieve their educational potential through collaborative learning.
Postdoctoral position in the computational modeling of COVID-19
A postdoctoral position is available within the Team 1 ‘Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Modelling’ of the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health (IPLESP) part of INSERM. The candidate is expected to work within the framework of the project NoCOV funded by the ANR Flash COVID-19 with the aim of analyzing the spreading of the epidemic in the French population.
The Latest Data Release and Reports from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (5/5/2020)
Join the National Center for Health Statistics in this timely presentation on the data files and accompanying reports recently released from the 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This webinar, open to the public, will review the data files released and recent data briefs on obesity, hepatitis B, hypertension, and cholesterol. Researchers, students, policymakers, and health programmers will learn about NHANES, the latest data and reports, and what to expect in the future.
CSDE Affiliates Awarded PHI COVID-19 Grants
This week, the UW’s Population Health Initiative announced its COVID-19 awards. Congratulations to all awardees! Notably, of the 21 awards made at least seven were awarded to teams including CSDE affiliates and scientific staff! Here we share a few highlights. Jen Otten and her colleagues will examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food systems, food security, and food access in WA. Arthur Acolin, Kyle Crowder, and Rebecca Walter with their team will assess prevailing impacts of COVID-19 on rental housing markets across metropolitan areas and neighborhoods. Carmen Gonzalez and her team will find codeveloping culturally relevant messages for farmworker safety and health in the COVID-19 pandemic. India Ornelas and her team will assess and address the impact of COVID-19 outbreak among Latino immigrants in King County. Christine Leibbrand (CSDE Research Scientist) joins Jonathan Kantner on a project to examine how to mitigate the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Rachel Heath and Tyler McCormick will be measuring and assessing occupational health and safety in low-income countries during COVID-19. Lastly, Stephen Mooney and team will find how using machine learning on the UW Medicine Electronic Health Record can optimize the COVID-19 response.
Martin, Rowhani-Rahbar, and Lanfear Receive 2020 UW Awards of Excellence in Teaching
CSDE Affiliates Karin Martin, Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, and CSDE Trainee Charles C. Lanfear are recipients of 2020 University of Washington Awards of Excellence. Martin and Rowhani-Rahbar received the UW Distinguished Teaching Award and Lanfear received the UW Excellence in Teaching Award. The awards, which are the university’s highest awards for instruction, recognizes these individuals for their exceptional leadership within the UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, the UW School of Public Health, and Sociology Department, respectively. The Distinguished Teaching and Excellence in Teaching Awards also recognize recipients for achievements in mentoring, public service, and staff support. Congratulations, Karin Martin, Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, and Charles Lanfear!
Differential Privacy and the 2020 Decennial Census: Implications for Social Scientists
This Friday, David Van Riper from the Minnesota Population Center will present on differential privacy, the 2020 Decennial Census, and subsequent implications for social scientists. A team of IPUMS research scientists, led by Van Riper, analyzed the implementation of differential privacy by the Census Bureau and the impact on the accuracy of summary data tables. This presentation will provide an overview of differential privacy, describe the Census Bureau’s proposed algorithm, discuss the policy decisions required for its implementation, analyze the differentially private 2010 decennial data released by the Bureau, and discuss steps the Bureau is taking to improve their implementation.
Amy Bailey Examines Military Downsizing and Mass Incarceration in New Study
In a new study titled “Institutional Castling: Military Enlistment and Mass Incarceration in the United States” published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, CSDE Regional Affiliate Amy Bailey and Bryan Sykes examine a key consequence of military downsizing: increased incarceration rates. By analyzing data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bailey and Sykes show how institutional castling—the shifting prominence of competing institutions in the lives of specific demographic groups—has affected the underlying risk of military employment and penal confinement. Their results imply that the military has remarkable protective effects against the penal institution for men with low levels of education and for Black men, in particular.
As a means to conclude the study, Bailey and Sykes emphasize that “The castling of these two institutions in the lives of disadvantaged men requires hyperbolic doubt to reimagine how state power is exercised to shape (and reshape) the composition of the armed forces, the penal system, and the civilian labor market synchronistically.”