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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Adrian Dobra Published in AIDS

Adrian Dobra, CSDE Affiliate and Associate Professor of Statistics at UW, has an articles in the upcoming issue of the journal AIDS. Dobra’s study focused on HIV transmission and migration patterns in rural South Africa in hopes of uncovering a relationship between the two. His team’s in-depth analysis of a population cohort in a rural sub-Saharan African population has revealed a clear non-linear relationship between distance migrated and HIV acquisition. The findings show that even relatively short distance migration events confer substantial additional risk of acquisition. Check out the report details below.

Martina Morris Awarded NIAID Grant

Martina Morris, CSDE Affiliate and Blumstein-Jordan professor of sociology and statistics at the University of Washington, was awarded a 2-year, $424,875 R21 grant from NIAID this summer. The research project aims to narrow the gap between generalized epidemic models and the local epidemic treatment plans they inspire. Specifically, Morris’s work focuses on HIV transmission in King County in hopes of establishing an effective parameterized HIV transmission model for regional public health planning purposes.

Morris is collaborating with UW faculty Matthew Golden (Epidemiology, School of Public Health) and Sara Glick as well as Roxanne Kerani (Division of Allergy & Infectious Disease, School of Medicine).

Population Research Discovery Seminar: Sigal Alon

Race, Class, and Affirmative Action

Race, Class and Affirmative Action (The Russell Sage Foundation, 2015) evaluates the ability of class-based affirmative action to promote the social and economic mobility of disadvantaged populations and boost diversity at selective postsecondary institutions, as compared with race-based policy. The book draws from within- and between-country comparisons of several prototypes of affirmative action policy. It uses the United States as a case study of race-based preferences, and Israel as a case study of class-based preferences. For each country the model that has actually been implemented is compared to a simulated scenario of the alternative policy type. The develops new, and more global insights about the potential of race-neutral public policy to promote equality in higher education.

Dr. Alon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University. Her main research interests include social stratification and mobility, with an emphasis on the sociology of education. Her work focuses on unveiling the dynamics and historical processes underlying class, gender, and racial-ethnic inequalities in educational attainment, and the extent to which do admission, retention, affirmative action and financial aid policies in higher education narrow these inequalities. Alon’s perspective is interdisciplinary and comparative, taking into account educational processes and outcomes, institutional arrangements and social structures, psychological biases, as well as demographic and economic trends. Dr. Alon has published in leading journals in sociology, education and economics and her research has been supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Texas Higher Educational Opportunity Project, and Yad Hanadiv.

Urban Food-Energy-Water Summit

The public session of the Urban Food-Energy-Water Summit will be held on Friday, November 18, from 8:30-11:00am at the Brightwater Center. This summit is an opportunity to share early research findings and engage in a continued conversation about how to best monitor and manage interlinked food, energy and water resources for a resilient, sustainable food future. Groups will share a synthesis report from interviews conducted over the summer with 27 stakeholders including local food producers, consumer representatives, policy makers, and energy and water resource managers. A downloadable version of the synthesis report is available on the project website.

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Systems Biology at NIMBioS

The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS), located at the Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, is currently accepting applications for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in computational biology with an interest in using systems approaches to solve problems in cell biology, cancer biology, immunology or development biology.

An applicant may propose to use modeling, simulation, or analysis to produce useful biological information and concepts that current theories cannot provide. The proposed study should address biological problems involving complexity and dynamics of networks at molecular and/or cellular levels. Examples of the biological topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Cell cycle progression, cellular senescence, cell differentiation and death.
  • Plasticity of cells during development or cancer progression.
  • Cancer metastasis and dormancy.
  • Dynamical response of immune system (including response to viral infection).
  • Development of immune cells.
  • Embryonic development.
  • General theories concerning biological networks.

Examples of the proposed computational methods include, but are not limited to:

  • Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE), Partial Differential Equation (PDE), and stochastic methods.
  • Multiscale modeling.
  • Spatiotemporal dynamical modeling.
  • Parameter optimization.
  • Analysis using bifurcation theory, landscape theory, and parameter-free methods.
  • Processing of omics data for dynamical modeling (e.g., genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic data).
  • Integration of multiscale data for dynamical modeling (e.g. transcriptomic, epigenomic, subcellular, cellular data).

Support: annual stipend of $51,000, full University of Tennessee employee fringe benefits, and an annual travel allowance of $3,000.

Call for Proposals: Population Research and Policy Review – Special Issue 2018

Population Research and Policy Review (PRPR) welcomes proposals for its Special Issue 2018. PRPR intends to publish one Special Issue (SI) each year. This SI will include around five empirical papers together with an introductory editorial that provides a more overarching (theoretical) synthesis of the individual contributions.

The proposal for the SI should be made by the expected guest editor(s) and submitted to the editors-in-chief of PRPR (Lynne Cossman and Jennifer Glick). The proposal must include:

  • the title of the special issue
  • the names and affiliations of the guest editor(s)
  • the names and affiliations of the contributing authors
  • a one page summary of the theme, overarching aim, timeliness and innovativeness of the SI for publication in PRPR. It should be shown that the different papers fit together as a coherent SI.
  • all titles and (half page) abstracts of the SI paper contributions

The SI proposals will be evaluated by the editorial team of PRPR. If the proposal is selected, the process of evaluating the contributions will follow the regular review procedure of PRPR while the guest editor(s) will take the responsibility of editor(s) of the SI manuscripts. Depending on number and quality of the SI proposals that are submitted in this call, the editorial team may decide to accept one proposal (for 2018), and up to two more for the two sequential years to come. However, in case the editorial team judges that none of the proposals meet the quality standards of the journal, it can also be decided that none of the suggested proposals will be accepted for further development and production.

Once the editorial team of PRPR approves the proposal, the guest editor(s) will be informed of the time line for the production process. The guest editor(s) will from then on be the primary contact person(s) for the contributors to the SI and should inform them about deadlines for submission and further procedures. The full papers for the SI should be uploaded in Editorial Manager (the online submission system) and handled from there by the guest editor(s) who is(are) expected to manage the review process. The editorial office of PRPR will assist if needed.

Each paper for the SI will be evaluated by three anonymous reviewers. The guest editorial will not be sent out to external reviewers, but will be evaluated by the editorial team of PRPR. After the reviewers’ reports have been received, the guest editor(s) decide(s) on the manuscript and inform(s) the authors as well as sets the deadlines for the revised papers to be received. It may occur that one or more of the papers is rejected based on reviewer reports. At this stage the editors-in-chief will be informed about the outcome and, if necessary, make a joint decision on how to proceed. The guest editor is responsible for ensuring that all papers are of sufficiently high quality and form a coherent set of papers for the SI.

Call for Conservation Incubator Projects

The Center for Creative Conservation invites proposals for transdisciplinary project Incubators on any cross-cutting topic related to conservation and sustainability from groups of practitioners and University of Washington researchers. Incubators convene multisectoral teams in a series of start-up meetings to encourage effective and creative conservation problem solving.  Letters of inquiry are due November 10, 2016.

2017 EGOS Colloquium: Migration and Inclusion

You are invited to consider submitting a paper to Sub-Theme 21: Migration and Inclusion, at the 2017 EGOS colloquium in Copenhagen, July 6-8, 2017. This sub-theme continues the conversation started in EGOS Colloquium 2015 on migration, work, and organizations. It focuses on a grand challenge that has emerged as one of the crucial unresolved problems of our time–the peaceful and productive co-existence of migrants and other members of organizations and societies.