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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Rokem Receives Award from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping

CSDE Affiliate Ariel Rokem was recently awarded the Education in Neuroimaging Award from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. The Education in Neuroimaging Award is given to an OHBM member who has made significant contributions to education and training in the field of neuroimaging. Dr. Rokem is a Research Associate Professor with the Department of Psychology and is a Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute. He has made many contributions to education in neuroimaging including creating a summer school called Neurohackademy, which he co-directs with eScience Senior Data Scientist Noah Benson. At Neurohackademy, participants learn about technologies used to analyze human neuroscience data and how to make analysis and results shareable and reproducible. Applications for Summer 2024 have closed but the next round of applications will open in early 2025.

Call for AGU Abstracts: SY01: Data Co-Production at Scale: How Might We Co-Produce Social Indicators with Geo-Statistcal Models? (Due 7/31/2024)

The AGU Fall Meeting 2024 will be held in Washington, DC from December 9-13, 2024. The abstract submission deadline is July 31, 2024. We welcome your submission to the following session.

Session ID: 228351
Session Title: SY017: Data Co-Production at Scale: How Might We Co-Produce Social Indicators with Geo-Statistical Models?
Section: Science and Society

Submission link: https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu24/prelim.cgi/Home/0

Session Description: Modeled social indicators (e.g. population density, neighborhood poverty) at finescale are increasingly common and necessary to address priorities of dynamic, interconnected societies. Geo-statistical models require ground-“truthed” training and/or validation data. Many social and physical scientists are unconvinced that local stakeholder engagement (bottom-up) methods are compatible with modeled/scaled data production (topdown). After all, how can we meaningfully engage every community being modeled? This session challenges the notion that top-down and bottom-up data production methods are mutually exclusive. Speakers describe approaches for modeled data co-production at scale, and posit that co-production is even necessary to model social indicators so as to ensure outputs are: relevant (reflect local realities), valid (sufficiently accurate and complete at the right scale), impactful (generate new insights among the right stakeholders), and just (marginalized communities are centered and protected throughout). Presenters discuss their methods, partnerships, and other ingredients for scalable data co-production, and the value-added of these approaches.

Additional information:

  • Travel Grants are available for faculty from a typically under-resourced US institution attending AGU for the first time
  • Note the following non-refundable fees upon abstract submission: $70 USD for each regular submission, $40 USD for each student submission, no fee for individuals residing in qualifying LMICs

*New* Biomarker Working Group: DNA Methylation and Epigenetic Clocks (8/1/24)

Date: Thursday, August 1, 2024
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Location: Raitt 223 and https://washington.zoom.us/j/91571954774

Please join the CSDE Biomarker Working Group for an upcoming discussion on DNA methylation and epigenetic clocks as biomarkers of aging! Special guest, Dr. Calen Ryan (Associate Research Scientist and Senior Data Scientist, Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University) will present an overview of how epigenetic clocks are used in research on biological aging. Following the presentation, there will be time for questions and discussions of how DNA methylation data and methods might be applied to your research interests. From some background reading, please check out this review paper by Dr. Ryan.

The Biomarker Working Group meets on the first Thursday of each month. Please contact Tiffany Pan (tpan@uw.edu) for more information.

Casey Discusses Hurricane Related Power Outages and the Health Risks Involved in the New York Times

Over the last few weeks, Hurricane Beryl has impacted many residents of the southern coast of the U.S. and various Central American and Caribbean countries. Future Hurricanes Could Stress Power Grids of U.S. Cities and the risk of hurricane-induced power outages, “could become 50 percent higher in some areas because of climate change in the coming decades.” A new analysis was created by researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Electric Power Research Institute to map how hurricanes will impact power grids and allow residents of typical hurricane impacted areas to check how vulnerable their area is. While the article goes into the various environmental and social impacts of hurricanes’ effect on power supplies, CSDE Affiliate Joan Casey discusses the health risks involved. There are various people who rely on electricity-dependent respirators, so when hurricanes cause extended power outages, they are put in dangerous situations.

Congratulations to CSDE’s Graduating T32 Fellows!

Congratulations to CSDE’s T32 Fellow graduating cohort! All of us at CSDE are proud of your accomplishments and wish you the best of luck in the next chapter of your lives and all that follows!  Stay in touch!