The IUSSP is seeking applicants for the position of Project Coordinator for a new project on

Family planning and urban policy development in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

The IUSSP is seeking a part-time project coordinator for a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded project to build a cadre of early-career researchers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia committed to research on family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH: measurement, determinants of use of services, and consequences) of urban populations focusing on disenfranchised groups, and to influence policy by transmitting evidence on the value of FP/RH to urban policy specialists at local, national and international levels. The coordinator is needed for the period of June 2018 through to December 2021 (approximately 215 days or 1720 hours of estimated work) to coordinate project activities and monitor the progress of research fellows based at institutions in Africa and South Asia.

Applications will be reviewed as they arrive and the post will remain open until an appropriate candidate is found. IUSSP hopes to select a coordinator by 15 May 2018.

Project Description:

The project will provide 17 fellowships, each lasting 1-3 years, to early career sub-Saharan and South Asian scientists to produce new evidence on determinants and consequences of contraceptive use and reproductive behavior especially among the urban poor and disenfranchised, with the ultimate aim of improving urban policy agendas. Fellows will be recruited via two competitive calls for proposals in 2018 and 2019.  Fellows will be paired with mentors and expected to work with urban policy institutes/ stakeholders at the local and national level, and to disseminate the findings of their research to policy makers and the public as well as through scientific conferences and publications. In addition, they will receive feedback on drafts of scientific and policy papers resulting from their projects. The IUSSP will organize annual fellow workshops at hub centers in the regions that will provide opportunities for fellows to meet and share their research and participate in training.

Description of post:

The coordinator will work closely with the IUSSP Scientific panel chair (the project director) and the IUSSP secretariat to monitor and ensure fellows make timely progress on their research projects and carry out all monitoring and evaluation tasks.  The coordinator will:

• Participate in the recruitment of fellows and in designing fellowship rules and guidelines.
• Participate in meetings of the Scientific Panel and fellow workshops.
• Monitor research fellows’ progress on their projects and assure they are adhering to project timelines and achieving milestones. This will occur through the review of written reports from fellows, through Skype calls to fellows and mentors, and visits to research sites.
• Monitor pairings between mentors and fellows identifying difficulties and intervening when necessary to assure fellows get support needed to successfully carry out their research projects. The coordinator should be able to troubleshoot and help resolve issues with the assistance of the Chair and members of the Scientific Panel.
• Coordinate the review and feedback of fellows’ research paper drafts.
• Assist in the planning and organization of annual fellows’ workshops in coordination with the IUSSP Secretariat.
• Provide information to fellows on scientific meetings, conferences and events on urban planning and development and/or on family planning and reproductive health, where fellows should be submitting the research results for presentation.
• Prepare reports on fellow progress and activities for Panel, Secretariat and donor reporting.
• Prepare other reports on project activities for IUSSP Secretariat and donors.
• Conduct monitoring and evaluation of project activities with fellows and other stakeholders as stipulated in the project documents (results tracker).
• Assist the panel chair in other project work, including the organization of international policy research seminars.

Time commitments and salary

A total of 215 days have been estimated for the Coordinators time – 40 in 2018, 70 in 2019, 75 in 2020 and 30 days in 2021. The final repartition of time may be modified as needed with approval of the IUSSP. The Coordinator will be employed on a consultant basis and will need to justify time spent on job related tasks and activities. He or she will be paid at a competitive consultancy rate.

Travel requirements

International travel to Africa and South Asia is required to attend annual fellow workshops and make site visits to fellows, though much of the monitoring work could be conducted via Skype or over the internet. The project coordinator is also expected to attend and participate in meetings of the IUSSP Scientific Panel. A total of 80 days of travel has been budgeted for travel, though actual travel may be less.

Location

Project coordinator can work from his or her home or from an institution such as a university. The coordinator must be able to meet the time commitments and events described in the project calendar and timeline.

Qualifications

• Masters or Doctoral degree in the social sciences, public health, urban health or a closely related field, or experience managing similar types of fellowship/research projects;
• Knowledge of sexual and reproductive health and family planning, and/or urban policy field a plus;
• Excellent writing and verbal communication skills in English; fluency in French a plus;
• Strong project management, planning and organizational skills;
• Ability to work autonomously as well as part of a team; excellent interpersonal skills with an ability to interact with diverse individuals;
• Willingness and ability to travel; experience of working in Africa and/or Asia a plus;
• Initiative, self-motivation, resourcefulness and dependability.

Application

Please send a letter of motivation, curriculum vitae and the names and contact information of least 2 references to the IUSSP Secretariat (recrutement@iussp.org) to the attention of Mary Ellen Zuppan, IUSSP Executive Director. Applications will be considered on a first come basis, and the post will remain open until filled. We hope to find a Project Coordinator before 15 May 2018.

The Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences is currently accepting applications from graduate students of CSSS affiliated faculty for travel fund awards to support costs for presenting research or attending workshops or courses from July to December 2018.

Applications will be accepted until 5 pm on Wednesday, April 25.

The online application can be reached through the link on the attached flyer, or this website:

https://www.csss.washington.edu/research/travel-awards/call-for-applications

The purpose of the CSSS awards is to support travel that will advance the long-term goals of CSSS:  promoting research in social statistics and quantitative methods in the social sciences, and collaborative research between social scientists and statisticians.  Applications will be evaluated by the CSSS Executive Committee; priority will be given to proposals that demonstrate sophisticated use of statistical methodology and promise to have significant substantive impact.  Among high priority proposals, preference will be given to students for whom other sources of support are not available, and who have not received CSSS funding in the past.  Successful applicants should acknowledge the support of CSSS in the course of any presentations, and may be asked to participate in CSSS poster or presentation sessions subsequent to their travel.   Questions should be directed to csss@uw.edu

The School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University invites applications for a postdoctoral research associate to support the MA in Global Security and the Center on the Future of War. Anticipated start date is July 2018. This is a full-time, benefits-eligible, fiscal year position. Renewal is possible on an annual basis contingent on satisfactory performance, availability of resources, and needs of the university.

The postdoctoral research associate will work under the supervision of MA in Global Studies co-directors Jeffrey Kubiak and Daniel Rothenberg to teach courses in this innovative online program and to assist with its development, management and strategic vision. In addition, the postdoctoral research associate will be a research fellow at the Center on the Future of War and is expected to pursue independent and collaborative policy-oriented interdisciplinary research, scholarship and publication. These efforts may be linked with the Center’s team and various programs and should play a role in the Center’s larger strategy of integrating educational and research programming.

Candidates are expected to contribute significantly to the Faculty development, including teaching, research, community service and other assigned work. Successful candidates will be responsible for developing and teaching courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs and engaging actively in research and academic activities. Qualifications are describe as following:

• Candidates should possess a PhD degree in archaeology, anthropology, history, native studies, art history, religious studies, politics and economics, international relations or other social science subjects.
• The geographic research regions are limited to Arctic and Subarctic areas such as Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Siberia, Northern Europe, and other relevant areas.
• Preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate strong expertise and accomplishments at international level in their respective discipline, e.g. record of publishing.
• Excellent commitment to the teamwork of the Faculty and University.

The positions will remain open until filled. Review of applications and nominations will commence immediately. Applicants may consider their applications not successful if they were not invited for an interview within 3 months of submission. The successful candidate is expected to assume the position in September 2018.

The Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families at Oregon State University (OSU)
is seeking a postdoctoral scholar to develop a state/local poverty measure and use it to analyze Federal
and State safety net policies and their impacts. This postdoc position will focus on spearheading the
Oregon Poverty Measure (OrPM) project, a pioneering effort to create a more accurate measure of
poverty and economic hardship across Oregon’s diverse demographic and geographic landscape. Building
on other state-level poverty measure efforts in Wisconsin and California, the OrPM project involves
combining data from the American Community Survey, administrative data from the Department of
Human Services and Employment Department, and tax models. In addition to measuring poverty, the
project seeks to understand how changes in the economy and labor market, demographics, and state
polices affect the poverty rate. Oregon is a rich social laboratory to study innovative social policy and
their relationship to poverty. There will be considerable opportunity for the postdoctoral scholar to lead
research into relevant topics. Examples include minimum wage increases, expansion of the state Earned
Income Tax Credit, and a relatively generous cash assistance safety net. In addition to the cross-sectional
data linkage, we anticipate building a longitudinal panel dataset to examine questions of poverty policy
analysis and measurement over time.

SPEAKER:   Tim Althoff, Stanford University

TITLE:     Data Science for Human Well-being

DATE:      Tuesday, April 17, 2018

TIME:      3:30 pm

PLACE:     EEB-105

HOST:      James Fogarty

ABSTRACT

The popularity of wearable and mobile devices, including smartphones and smartwatches, has generated an explosion of detailed behavioral data. These massive digital traces provides us with an unparalleled opportunity to realize new types of scientific approaches that provide novel insights about our lives, health, and happiness. However, gaining valuable insights from these data requires new computational approaches that turn observational, scientifically “weak” data into strong scientific results and can computationally test domain theories at scale.

 In this talk, I will describe novel computational methods that leverage digital activity traces at the scale of billions of actions taken by millions of people. These methods combine insights from data mining, social network analysis, and natural language processing to generate actionable insights about our physical and mental well-being. Specifically, I will describe how massive digital activity traces reveal unknown health inequality around the world, and how personalized predictive models can target personalized interventions to combat this inequality. I will demonstrate that modelling how fast we are using search engines enables new types of insights into sleep and cognitive performance. Further, I will describe how natural language processing methods can help improve counseling services for millions of people in crisis.

I will conclude the talk by sketching interesting future directions for computational approaches that leverage digital activity traces to better understand and improve human well-being.

Bio

Tim Althoff is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science in the Infolab at Stanford University, advised by Jure Leskovec. His research advances computational methods to improve human well-being, combining techniques from Data Mining, Social Network Analysis, and Natural Language Processing. Prior to his PhD, Tim obtained M.S. and B.S. degrees from Stanford University and University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. He has received several fellowships and awards including the SAP Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Fulbright scholarship, German Academic Exchange Service scholarship, the German National Merit Foundation scholarship, and a Best Paper Award by the International Medical Informatics Association. Tim’s research has been covered internationally by news outlets including BBC, CNN, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

 Refreshments to be served in room prior to talk.

*NOTE* This lecture will be broadcast live via the Internet. See http://www.cs.washington.edu/news/colloq.info.html for more information.

Email: talk-info@cs.washington.edu

Info: http://www.cs.washington.edu/

(206) 543-1695

The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accomodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities.

To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance of the event at: (206) 543-6450/V,

(206) 543-6452/TTY, (206) 685-7264 (FAX), or email at dso@u.washington.edu.

Grand Challenges Explorations grant opportunities

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is inviting Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) proposals for the following three challenges (application deadline is May 2, 2018):

• Innovations in Immunization Data Management, Use, and Improved Process Efficiency
• Affordable, Accessible, and Appealing: The Next Generation of Nutrition (also see the blog)
• Tools and Technologies for Broad-Scale Disease Surveillance of Crop Plants in Low-Income Countries

GCE grants have already been awarded to more than 1300 researchers in more than 65 countries. Initial grants are for USD $100,000 and successful projects are eligible to receive follow-on funding of up to USD $1 million. Proposals are solicited twice a year for an expanding set of global health and development challenges. Applications are only two pages, and no preliminary data is required. Applicants can be at any experience level; in any discipline; and from any type of organization, including colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies.

Grand Challenges grant opportunities

• Grand Challenges India: New Approaches to Characterize the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance. Application deadline is May 25, 2018.
• Grand Challenges Explorations – Brazil: New Approaches to Characterize the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance. Application deadline is May 28, 2018.
• Grand Challenges Africa: New Approaches to Characterize the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance. Application deadline is May 16, 2018.
• Grand Challenges South Africa: New Approaches to Characterize the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance. Application deadline is May 16, 2018.
• Grand Challenges: Campylobacter spp. Transmission Dynamics in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
• Grand Challenges Explorations – Brazil: Data Science Approaches to Improve Maternal and Child Health in Brazil. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
• Misk Grand Challenges: Activating Global Citizenship: Building the Next Generation of Global Citizens for the Global Goals. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
• Misk Grand Challenges: Reinventing Teaching and School Leadership: Preparing the Youth with the 21st Century Skills Needed for a Knowledge Economy. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.

Additional global funder grant opportunities

• The African Academy of Sciences (AAS), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are partnering under the auspices of the Coalition of African Research & Innovation (CARI) to establish a post-doctoral training fellowship program, the African Postdoctoral Training Initiative (APTI). Training will be at the intramural laboratories of NIH. Application deadline is May 11, 2018.
• The Templeton World Charity Foundation announces Round 1 of its new Global Innovations for Character Development initiative. Application deadline is June 15, 2018.

Blog series on innovation: Trevor Mundel, the Gates Foundation’s President of Global Health, recently published three new blogs in his series on innovation: one on metabolic markers for gestational age assessment, one on surveying nutrient levels in breastmilk, and one on new technology to assess intestinal health in babies.

We look forward to receiving innovative ideas from around the world on the open grant opportunities listed above. If you have a great idea, please apply. If you know someone else who has a great idea, please forward this message. And we invite you to explore an interactive world map of ideas funded to date across the global Grand Challenges network.

Thank you for your commitment to solving the world’s greatest health and development challenges.