The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) was created by Congress in 1993 in recognition of the importance of behavioral and social sciences to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mission. For more than two decades, the OBSSR has been instrumental in advancing and coordinating the behavioral and social sciences at the NIH.

To address the foundational process of training, the OBSSR and participating Institutes plan to support another four years of Short Courses on Innovative Methodologies and Approaches in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (RFA-OD-19-012). This program will support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs.

This funding opportunity is designed to fill educational gaps and needs in the behavioral and social sciences research community that are not being addressed by existing educational opportunities. Proposed educational programs should be integrative, both in the transdisciplinary nature of the skills and approaches taught and in applicability across a wide range of BSSR areas. The content of the course should focus on knowledge and skills necessary for the advancement of behavioral and social sciences and/or the integration of BSSR with other areas of science and technology. Content should not be limited to specific disease applications but rather focus on generally applicable research methodologies and analytics crucial for more advanced BSSR.

The goal for the short courses supported by this FOA is to build the capacity of the field across career stages. Applicants are encouraged to incorporate methods and models that have the potential to reach an audience that is broader than the attendees. Opportunities for attendees to sustain and continue learning beyond the course is strongly encouraged.

There is an expectation for communication and interaction among successful short course programs through investigator meetings and other opportunities. This will allow programs to share best practices and challenges, benefitting from the knowledge of the larger group.

Read the Request for Application (RFA)

The SEAxSEA Film Festival is back in 2019!  The SEAxSEA Film Festival is part of the Southeast Asia Center’s mission to actively organize Southeast Asia-related programs, and features films that explore Southeast Asia in its diversity, emphasizing underrepresented communities and youth-produced visions of the past, present, and future.

We are screening fifteen films from Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian America with discussions to follow each night. Please drop by for some free popcorn, drinks, and most of all, great films!

Please RSVP here.

Apply today to receive up to $3,000 to cover your travel to this year’s OSSD meeting. Please see below for details and share with your colleagues.

The Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), located within the National Institutes of Health, is offering a Science Policy Scholar Travel Award to a junior investigator whose work focuses on women’s health or sex/gender differences, as well as on policy. The award will be available to support travel to the annual meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD) on May 5–8, 2019, in Washington, DC. Attendance at the OSSD meeting will provide an opportunity for a junior investigator to network with leading scientists and clinicians working to advance sex and gender research and policy.

ORWH requests that interested applicants submit an abstract on a policy-related matter connected to women’s health or sex/gender differences for consideration as a poster, oral session, or symposium at the 2019 OSSD annual meeting. A panel of experts will review the abstracts to determine the recipient of the travel award.

One award of up to $3,000 will be made. OSSD will accept abstracts on the OSSD website beginning December 1, 2018, through February 1, 2019.

For more information, including eligibility criteria, see the award announcement.

To be considered for this award:

1. Submit an abstract via the OSSD website.

Send all required information and documents to ORWH, following the steps in the “How to Apply” section of the ORWH award announcement.

We are pleased to announce the 11th annual IPUMS Research Awards competition. We are looking for papers that use innovative approaches, comparative analyses, and multiple IPUMS datasets. In short, we are looking for papers that use the data to its full potential.

We have two new categories this year with awards for published papers and graduate student papers in each category.

• USA: Best paper using data from IPUMS USA and/or IPUMS CPS
• International: Best paper using data from IPUMS International and/or the North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP)
• Health Surveys: Best paper using data from IPUMS NHIS or IPUMS MEPS
• Spatial: Best paper using data from IPUMS NHGIS and/or IPUMS Terra
• Global Health: Best paper using data from IPUMS DHS and/or IPUMS PMA
• Time Use: Best paper using data from IPUMS Time Use

Deadline for submission is February 13, 2018. For more information on eligibility and the submission process, visit the IPUMS Research Awards page.

The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) is now taking applications for its Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (SRE). The program will be held June 4-July 26, 2019, on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus. Undergraduate majors in biology, math, and related fields will live on campus and work in teams with UT professors, NIMBioS researchers, and collaborators to conduct research at the interface of mathematics and biology. Participants receive free university apartment-style housing, a stipend of $4500, and up to $650 of support for travel to/from Knoxville.

2019 Projects: This year’s research projects are modeling biochemical pathways for aerotaxis in motile bacteria; modeling climate as a driver of change in human-wildlife interactions; investigating viral infection rates of marine phytoplankton; modeling cell differentiation; and modeling networking and the opioid epidemic . Applicants will be asked to select their first, second and third project choices.

Who may apply?
Students enrolled in an undergraduate program and not scheduled to graduate prior to August 1, 2019 may apply. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the US. NIMBioS is committed to promoting diversity in all its activities. Diversity is considered in all its aspects, social and scientific, including gender, ethnicity, scientific field, career stage, geography and type of home institution.

Application Deadline:  February 11, 2019

For more information, visit http://www.nimbios.org/sre/

The 2019 NIMBioS Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program is funded, in part, by the National Security Agency Mathematical Sciences Program.

For more information about NIMBioS, visit http://www.nimbios.org or contact Greg Wiggins, NIMBioS Education and Outreach Coordinator, at wiggybug@nimbios.org or Suzanne Lenhart, NIMBioS Associate Director of Education and Outreach, slenhart@tennessee.edu

 

 

October’s IAPHS Conference “Local, national, global impacts on population health” promises an exciting and diverse set of offerings:

– Posters featuring the latest in population health research, practice, theory, methods, and more;

– Oral presentations, comprised of investigator-driven panels as well as of individual abstracts, which address various topics of population health science, including practice, theory, methods, student training, or technological innovations.

Be a part of the action!

Please visit the Call for Submissions to find out how and submit your ideas by March 11, 2019.

PS: This year will again feature awards for the best posters!

Key dates:  

Submission Deadline:  March 11, 2019
Registration Opens:  April 1, 2019
Conference:  October 1-4, 2019

Conference Location:

Sheraton Seattle Hotel
1400 Sixth Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101

Conference Website:

https://iaphs.org/conference/

PUBPOL 570: Foundations of Social Policy

Winter 2019

Professor Bill Zumeta

Mon-Wed. 4-5:20 PM in Condon 110B

This new course is an introduction and overview of the broad field of social policy (within the U.S. primarily but with some comparative framing). It is designed for Evans MPA students in the new Social Policy Program Option but other interested students, including PhD students and students from other departments, are welcome to enroll. The seminar-style course will provide an overview of structural factors affecting the nature and evolution of social policies in the U.S. as well as some coverage of recent developments in demography, the economy, inequality and politics that are affecting social policy issues and policymaking today.

We will consider the role of specific policy analysis tools and instruments in the social policy sphere and offer an integrated overview of American approaches in the various specific policy areas that fall under the broad umbrella of social policy including: income transfer and antipoverty policies including the current emphasis on “workfare”; policies relating to families and social services; health policies including the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid; housing policies; and education policies and systems from early childhood through postsecondary education. The course will draw upon other Evans and UW faculty expertise in addition to the instructor and will thereby provide a taste of what other Evans courses in the social policy program option have to offer.

Readings:

Most of the course readings will be available on the course Canvas site. The only book to purchase is: John Iceland’s, A Portrait of America: The Demographic Perspective (University of California Press, 2014). This paperback book is available from the University Bookstore or on Amazon for about $25 (less for a used copy).

Assignments:

A research-based policy paper and presentation due at the end of the term; a 4-5 page reflection piece on one of the course topic areas and readings; some Canvas postings on week-to-week readings.

Wednesday, 9 January | 12:30–1:30pm | Savery (SAV) 409

Probabilistic Projection of Carbon Emissions

Adrian Raftery

Boeing International Professor, Departments of Statistics and Sociology, University of Washington, https://www.stat.washington.edu/raftery/

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently published climate change projections to 2100, giving likely ranges of global temperature increase for each of four possible scenarios for population, economic growth and carbon use. We develop a probabilistic forecast of carbon emissions to 2100, using a country-specific version of Kaya’s identity, which expresses carbon emissions as a product of population, GDP per capita and carbon intensity (carbon per unit of GDP). We use the UN’s probabilistic population projections for all countries, based on methods from our group, and develop a joint Bayesian hierarchical model for GDP per capita and carbon intensity in most countries. In contrast with opinion-based scenarios, our findings are statistically based using data for 1960–2010. We find that our likely range (90% interval) for cumulative carbon emissions to 2100 includes the IPCC’s two middle scenarios but not the lowest or highest ones. We combine our results with the ensemble of climate models used by the IPCC to obtain a predictive distribution of global temperature increase to 2100.

This is joint work with Dargan Frierson (UW Atmospheric Science), Richard Startz (UCSB Economics), Alec Zimmer (Upstart), and Peiran Liu (UW Statistics).

About the Series

The weekly Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) seminar provides a forum for local and visiting scholars to present current research at the interface of statistics and the social sciences. Talks range in their level of technical detail and substantive motivation, and often result in spirited discussion. Students may receive credit for attending the seminar by enrolling in CS&SS 590 All seminars are held at 12:30 on Wednesdays in Savery (SAV) 409 unless otherwise noted, and we will aim to conclude by 1:30. We provide coffee and light refreshments; attendees are also welcome to bring their lunch. For information or questions about the CSSS Seminars, please contact our Seminar Organizers, Darryl Holman (djholman@uw.edu) or Will Brown (brownw@uw.edu). You can receive updates via a mailing list or calendar.

SocSem
For many decades, the UW Sociology Department sponsored biweekly area seminars that offered graduate students and faculty an opportunity to present and discuss research (often in progress).  In addition to improving the quality of our work, these seminars provided an important albeit informal setting for strengthening our bonds as a community, and as consequence, all across the country UW alums fondly recall Friday afternoons in the Dev Sem, the MACRO group, and IA.  In recent years these seminars withered, victims perhaps of a restructured graduate program, new centers on campus, busy schedules, and increasingly challenging commutes.

And yet, many of us lament the loss of regular opportunities to learn about each other’s work, to think about sociological problems outside our narrow interests, and to just spend time with others in the department.  Enter SocSem, a new biweekly seminar for the entire department.  We’ll gather mid-afternoon on Fridays for research presentations and lively discussion.  Following long-standing tradition, light refreshments will be provided.  Please mark your calendars, and plan to join us.

Short Workshop Offerings Winter Quarter 2019

(listed in order of scheduled appearance)

Introduction to R using Rstudio

Description:
This class will teach you how to get started with R using the free integrated development environment called Rstudio. The workshop will cover the basic organization of R and RStudio, where to find good help references, and how to begin a basic analysis. This class is ideal for users who have little or no experience with R.

Instructor: Yunkang Yang, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Friday, January 18, 2019
Time: 9:00am- 10:00am
Place: Savery 121

Introduction to Python

Description:
This class will provide you the basics of PYTHON for both gathering data from public sources and providing analyses.

Instructor: Mike Babb, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Place: Savery 117

Introduction to GIS/ArcGIS

Description:
This workshop will provide students with a broad overview of what geographic information systems (GISs) are and how social scientists can benefit from using them in their research. Students will explore basic GIS concepts through hands-on exercises using ArcGIS, a widely used GIS software package, as well as freely available data sets.

Instructor: Aya Masilela, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Time: 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Place: Savery 117

Introduction to R using Rstudio

Description:
This class will teach you how to get started with R using the free integrated development environment called Rstudio. The workshop will cover the basic organization of R and RStudio, where to find good help references, and how to begin a basic analysis. This class is ideal for users who have little or no experience with R.

Instructor: Jasmine Jiang, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2019
Time: 2:30pm- 3:30pm
Place: Savery 121

 

Introduction to SPSS

Description:
This workshop introduces the SPSS statistical package including reading in datafiles as well as basic data management and introductory statistical procedures. Additional topics include computing and recoding variables and selecting and filtering cases.

Instructor: Galen Kerrick, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Friday, January 25, 2019
Time: 9:30am – 10:30am
Place: Savery 117

 

Introduction to STATA

Description:
This workshop will introduce you to the basic Stata statistical package including reading in STATA datasets, basic data manipulation in Stata, and common statistical procedures.

Instructor: Anwesha Pan, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Time: 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Place: Savery 121

Introduction to Qualitative Research and ATLAS.ti

Description:
This workshop provides a brief, practical introduction to working in ATLAS.ti, covering basic terminology and functionality of the program. This will include importing text documents, coding and annotating documents, and exploring relationships through analysis and query tools. Time permitting, we may also briefly discuss best practices for data management. The workshop assumes no prior use of Atlas-ti.

Instructor: Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Monday, January 28, 2019
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Place: Savery 121

Data Wrangling in R

Description:

This workshop will cover some of R’s useful tools for data management and exploration. Most of class will be devoted to learning Hadley Wickham’s excellent “tidyr” and “dplyr” packages. Attendees are assumed to have basic familiarity with R/Rstudio.

Instructor: Yuan Hsiao, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Tuesday,  February 5, 2019
Time: 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Place: Savery 121

 

Intermediate SPSS

Description:
This workshops builds from CSSCR’s introductory SPSS workshops and includes additional data management topics as well as more statistical procedures.

Instructor: Gabbs Gorsky, CSSCR Consultant
Date: Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Place:  Savery 117

 

Register for any of the above workshops follow this link.