The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a multidisciplinary research center in the University of Chicago’s Social Sciences Division, invites applications for a full-time Senior Research Associate.

CPOST is an international security affairs research institute at the University of Chicago. Founded in 2004 by Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, CPOST is best known for creating and maintaining the most comprehensive and transparent suicide attack database available. Since its creation, it has expanded beyond terrorism to research counter-intuitive policy-relevant solutions to security situations around the globe.

The Senior Research Associate (SRA) will hold an academic research appointment in CPOST and will oversee a research team examining the Islamic State’s propaganda activities. Funded by a multi-year grant from the Department of Defense Minerva Initiative, the Minerva Martyr Video Project is a first of its kind to combine insights from political science and psychology/neuro-science to gain insights on the neuro and sociological construction of martyrdom. Under the center’s director, the SRA will make significant contributions to the project’s design and methodology as well as the supervision and training of a team of student and professional researchers. Under supervision of CPOST’s faculty leadership, the SRA will oversee data collection, evaluation, and analysis, write reports, articles, and manuscripts and conduct literature reviews. The SRA will also present research findings at meetings and conferences, as well as to funding agencies.

The Sociology Department at Whitworth University invites applications for a Lecturer in Sociology with an emphasis on social welfare and applied sociology, criminal justice, and social research methods and statistics. This is a one-year position while the department does a full search for a tenure-track assistant professor.

The Whitworth Sociology Department’s mission is to prepare students with the skills to describe, explain, interpret, and make a difference in social life. The department equips students to promote well-being in the arenas of social life around them and encourages students to explore the relationships between sociology and faith. To these ends, students are expected to master the substantive content of sociology and its methods of research and data analysis, to develop an ideal vision of social life as informed by sociology and their deepest convictions, and to be prepared to advance that vision through a career and social engagement. The faculty is committed to providing excellence in teaching, scholarship and mentoring, and to modeling community engagement through research, writing, consultation, and service.

The Gender Studies Program at the University of Southern Indiana invites applicants for a tenure track teaching position in Gender Studies at the Assistant Professor level beginning August 2017. The Gender Studies Program is interdisciplinary and incorporates courses and faculty from various fields across the College of Liberal Arts. The position requires teaching Introduction to Gender Studies, (theoretical) Perspectives on Gender, and other courses in the candidate’s area of expertise. This position requires teaching or research in the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sexuality, and/or other social justice issues. The University of Southern Indiana is actively engaged in developing cultural and educational opportunities in southern Indiana and faculty service to the community is valued. The preferred candidate will have a doctorate level degree in Gender Studies or a related Liberal Arts field by the time of appointment. ABD candidates may be considered if doctorate is conferred by appointment. Salary is commensurate with qualifications and experience. Evidence of commitment to undergraduate teaching is required and candidate should have an active research agenda.

Abstract: Egocentric network sampling observes the network of interest from the point of view of a set of sampled actors, who provide information about themselves and anonymised information on their network neighbours. In survey research, this is often the most practical, and sometimes the only, way to observe certain classes of networks, with the sexual networks that underlie HIV transmission being the archetypal case. Although methods exist for recovering some descriptive network features, there is no rigorous and practical statistical foundation for estimation and inference for network models from such data. We identify a subclass of exponential-family random graph models (ERGMs) amenable to being estimated from egocentrically sampled network data, and apply pseudo-maximum-likelihood estimation to do so and to rigorously quantify the uncertainty of the estimates. For ERGMs parametrised to be invariant to network size, we describe a
computationally tractable approach to this problem. We use this methodology to help understand persistent racial disparities in HIV prevalence in the US.

Joint work with Martina Morris

SPEAKER: Sir Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief, Nature

ABSTRACT: The role of PIs in sustaining the progress and robustness of research is critically important, and yet the pressures on them – some well advised, some not – seem to keep growing. To help Nature’s future coverage of these issues, I will present an overview of some of the key pressures on PIs and invite insights and proposals into how funders, universities and journals might best mitigate them.

Sir Philip Campbell is editor in chief of Nature and of the Nature Publishing Group. His areas of responsibility include the editorial content of Nature, and assuring the long-term quality of all Nature publications. He is based in London. He has a BSc in aeronautical engineering, an MSc in astrophysics, and a PhD and postdoctoral research in upper atmospheric physics. Following his research, he became the Physical Sciences Editor of Nature and then, in 1988, the founding editor of Physics World, the international magazine of the UK Institute of Physics. He returned to Nature to take on his current role in 1995. He has worked with the UK Office of Science and Innovation, the European Commission and the US National Institutes of Health on issues relating to science and its impacts in society. For ten years until 2012 he was a trustee of Cancer Research UK.

The Graduate School Presidential Dissertation award is intended to assist Ph.D. candidates in the final stages of writing and completing their dissertations. The 2017-18 Dissertation Fellowship is a one-quarter award established with support of the University President.

The purpose of these awards is to relieve graduate students of their teaching duties or other employment not directly related to the dissertation in order to devote their full time to writing the dissertation. Typically, during the tenure of the award service responsibilities are suspended.

The award must be used during the 2017-18 academic year (summer 2017 through spring 2018). The choice of the quarter will be left to the discretion of the graduate student in consultation with his or her supervisory committee chair.

More information about eligibility and applications is available below.

Next week, Peter Kerrigan from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) New York Office is visiting the University of Washington to host a general information session for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in studying, interning or researching in Germany.

There are both long-term and short-term funding opportunities available for study, research, and internships. The awards are open to students from all academic disciplines and from any country of citizenship. Previous knowledge of the German language is often not required.

All graduate and professional students are welcome and encouraged to attend!

ACM SIGHPC and Intel are launching a new international program of graduate fellowships in computational and data science.The goal of this new graduate fellowship is to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field. The program will support students pursuing degrees at institutions anywhere in the world.

Submissions are open now for the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships.

Interested faculty advisors and students can find more information on the fellowships, including a description of the online nomination process, below. Nominations close April 30.

The Population Association of America is sponsoring a congressional lunch briefing on Monday, April 3, 12-1:15 regarding rural demography in Room 2045, Rayburn House Office Building.  NCHS data will be featured in the presentations, including during a presentation on mortality trends in rural America.