The UW Statistical Consulting Service is now available for Spring quarter. Appointments will be held online via Zoom. We would appreciate you sharing this email about the service with your department colleagues.
Faculty and graduate students in the Consulting Program of the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics offer free statistical advice to the UW community through scheduled 50-minute consulting appointments during the academic year when classes are in session. They provide assistance with:
- the design of studies and experiments, including the preparation of grant proposals
- data visualization and presentation
- choice and application of statistical methods
- development of specialized statistical methods in some cases
The consultants have experience primarily with the R statistical analysis system, but they work with clients using whatever statistical package is most convenient for them. (Note: Statistical consulting is for study design and data analysis advice, not software tutorials.) Clients should come to a consulting appointments prepared to provide background information and a clear statement of the scientific aims of their research prior to discussion of particular statistical issues, techniques or analyses.
For more information about the Service and to schedule an appointment, click on the following link:
UW STATISTICAL CONSULTING SERVICE
About the Consulting Program: This program is a UW course for graduate students in the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics. Through this course, students learn how to apply their statistical skills to a variety of real-world problems. Most appointments will have three to four consultants in attendance: two to three student trainees and one faculty advisor. The program is organized around the academic calendar and the participating student consultants change every quarter. Because this is a training program, each consulting appointment has multiple goals. In addition to helping clients, student consultants are developing their consulting skills. Many problems brought to the consulting program require the consultants to research and discuss possible solutions with program colleagues following an appointment in order to determine the most appropriate statistical methods or guidance. In these cases, follow-up appointments are typically scheduled. While resources are limited, some assistance with actual data analyses can be provided on a case-by-case basis, depending on consultant availability, client needs, the size of the problem, and data analysis tasks.
The London School of Economics and Political Science invites applications to the Fellowship in International Migration to teach in the MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, based in the European Institute and Departments of Government and Sociology. The program provides a systematic approach to central controversies in the comparative analysis of public policy responses to immigration and migrant integration. The successful candidate will contribute to teaching, research, and student engagement activities.
Wednesday 22 April 2020 | 12:30–1:30pm Pacific Time
Technical and statistical issues in wastewater-based drug epidemiology
Jason R. Williams PhD
Research Scientist, The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, University of Washington. https://adai.uw.edu/staff_members/jason-r-williams-phd/
Abstract: Wastewater-based epidemiology has potential to shed population-level insight on a host of hidden or not otherwise readily measureable phenomena, including measures of health functioning and levels of licit or illicit drug use. It is a relatively young and very multidisciplinary field that has and will continue to benefit from insights from various branches of statistics. In this presentation, we review some of those contributions. We will focus on the various pieces that must be assembled to create estimates of drug use, associated measurement issues, and areas for future improvement.
Note: Throughout the Spring 2020 quarter, the CSSS Seminar Series will be conducted online via Zoom. Interested participants can join us at the following password-protected link.
Link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/91254070244?pwd=a3MzRVd3OWxoMGNmZFl5K1dhMVlaZz09
Password: CSSS.JW.EP
NOT-OD-20-089: Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Competitive Revisions for Firearms Injury and Mortality Prevention Research https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-20-089.html
PAR-20-143: Firearm Injury and Mortality Prevention Research (R61 Clinical Trial Optional) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-20-143.html
Nearly 40,000 people in the U.S. die from firearm-related deaths each year, primarily from suicide (60%) or homicide (37%), and many more have experienced non-fatal firearm injuries, both intentional and nonintentional. The Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the FY2020 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1865) included funding for the NIH to conduct research on firearm injury and mortality prevention and recommended that NIH take a comprehensive approach to studying the underlying causes and evidence-based methods of prevention of firearm injury, including crime prevention. Within the legislative mandates and limitations of NIH funding (NOT-OD-20-068, NOT-OD-20-066), the NIH encourages research to improve understanding of the determinants of firearm injury, the identification of those at risk of firearm injury (including both victims and perpetrators), the development and evaluation of innovative interventions to prevent firearm injury and mortality, and the examination of approaches to improve the implementation of existing, evidence-based interventions to prevent firearm injury and mortality.
NIMH is issuing this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) to highlight interest in research to strengthen the mental health response to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and to future public health emergencies, including pandemics. NIMH is especially interested in research to provide an evidence base for how a disrupted workforce may adequately respond/adapt to and maintain services or provide additional care for new or increasing mental health needs, as well as to learn about the effects of the virus and public health measures to prevent spread of COVID-19 that may have an impact on mental health. Research addressing the intersection of COVID-19, mental health, and HIV treatment and prevention are also of interest to NIMH.
This initiative will support multidisciplinary research examining mechanisms underlying racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality and morbidity, testing the efficacy and/or effectiveness of multi-level interventions, and/or research strategies to optimally and sustainably deliver proven-effective prevention and treatment interventions to reduce these disparities. Only one application per institution. For more information, visit: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-MD-20-008.html. Due May 29.
This Friday, CSDE Regional Affiliate Amy Bailey and Allison Suppan Helmuth will co-present on ZIP code boundary changes. ZIP Codes are an important geographic identifier, frequently the best spatial measure available in spatially-referenced administrative data. As such, they represent an underutilized, potentially valuable tool allowing social scientists to embed individuals and institutions within neighborhood contexts. However, ZIP Codes frequently change, particularly in areas undergoing rapid change. Unfortunately, no tool allows researchers to account for these changes. In this presentation, Bailey and Helmuth will briefly cover the history of ZIP Codes and how the intended usage by USPS differs from the ways in which social and demographic researchers might want to use them.
The computational demography working group will meet virtually this quarter! Please join us on Thursday, 4/30, at 12pm for a presentation and discussion of SafeGraph Mobility Data by registering with through this link. Sociology graduate student Chuck Lanfear will demonstrate a digital trace data set for mobility research obtained by Adrian Dobra of UW Statistics and CS&SS. They are soliciting new project and collaborations ideas for these unique data.
The meeting will be hosted over Zoom. Register for the working group meeting HERE
The CDWG is sponsored by CSDE and the eScience Institute. You can find out more about us on our website here: https://csde-uw.github.io/computational-demography/.
CSDE is inviting applications for its 3rd annual Summer Grant Writing Program – a chance for you to learn more about NIH grant-writing and to workshop your proposal with other participants and with experienced senior faculty. Writing a grant in isolation can be mystifying—instead, we aim to create a group experience that is still hard work, but which will be supportive, fun, productive, and ultimately rewarding.
If you’ve been on the fence about writing a proposal, now is the time to dive in!
Full information and the application instructions and form are at: https://csde.washington.edu/research/csde-grant-writing-summer-program/.
In brief, participants will develop proposals over the course of the summer, with support and reviews from senior mentors, other participants, and the program coordinator Steve Goodreau.
Who is eligible to apply? All CSDE affiliates (local or regional) are eligible to apply. UW students and post-docs are eligible to apply only if they plan a training grant centered at UW. Applications from collaborative teams, anticipating a multiple PI arrangement, are also encouraged.
New this year—we are requesting that applicants include a letter demonstrating some form of matching support from their unit (department/school/center/college/etc.) This can take many forms, including some summer salary, research expenses, or RA support, all paid directly from the unit to the participant. Please consider this request early in order to leave time to arrange for a letter demonstrating this support.
Applications are due Friday, May 8 at 6 pm PDT.
Please email Development Core Director Steve Goodreau (goodreau@uw.edu) with any questions!
“Can’t I please just visit one friend?” is a question that many of us have asked during social distancing. Nevertheless, in a website that visualizes social networks, CSDE Affiliates Steven Goodreau and Martina Morris demonstrate how visiting “just one friend” can undo the work of measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The website depicts multiple network simulations of a 200 households community using the programming language R.
While visiting “just one friend” may seem harmless, Goodreau and Morris’ simulations demonstrate how 71% of households can easily become connected if only some households establish social connections with others—consequently, each of these connections is an opportunity for the virus to spread.
As Morris emphasized in last week’s NYT article on COVID transmission, she stated for UW News that “with COVID-19, many types of connections can transmit the virus…what we show is that you don’t need superspreaders to create network connectivity for transmission; visiting just one friend is equally effective for connecting a community into one large cluster.”
Goodreau and Morris’ website and simulations have been featured in multiple recent news articles in UW News, the New York Times, KIRO 7, Medium, and KUOW/NPR. Additionally, CSDE Student Emily Pollock and research scientists Jeanette Birnbaum and Deven Hamilton collaborated with Goodreau and Morris on this project. In Goodreau’s words, “This was a quick time-sensitive effort, but it builds upon years and years of work by the Network Modeling Group, all made possible by CSDE’s strong research infrastructure and intellectual community.”