To encourage more young statisticians to take an active interest in official statistics, the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) is announcing its next annual competition for the best paper in the field of official statistics written by a young statistician. In addition to the monetary prizes, the first place winner will receive travel funds to present the paper at one of the sessions at the 61st World Statistics Congress in Marrakech, Morocco in July 2017.

They encourage submitters to address, and propose solutions to pressing methodological or strategic issues in the area of official statistics at the regional, national or international level. The paper must be ten or fewer pages in length, be submitted in English, and not have been previously presented in a public forum or published. More information is available at the link below.

IPUMS at the University of Minnesota is hiring. They are currently recruiting candidates who are enthusiastic about creating the data that fuels social science and health research around the world. They are seeking smart, data-minded people to join our growing team of researchers and technical staff.

They have several open research positions at different professional levels (BA/BS, MA/MS, PhD). Their researchers are involved in all stages of data and metadata production, including the web dissemination system and outreach. They are constantly pushing the boundaries of data processing and dissemination methods, and they are looking for people who will approach their work with initiative and creativity.

IPUMS is seeking submissions for the IPUMS Research Award. Candidates for this award used IPUMS microdata in a paper that was published in 2016. Papers or publications submitted should utilize IPUMS-USA, IPUMS-CPS, IPUMS-International, NAPP, or IHIS data to study social, economic, and/or demographic processes. Cash prizes will be awarded for best published work and for best work by a graduate student (published or unpublished).

The submission deadline is Monday, February 13, 2017. Visit the IPUMS Award page for full submission information.

Join for a talk by UW Genome Sciences Alumn Joshua Burton who is a computational biologist at local company Adaptive Biotechnologies.

Joshua N. Burton has traveled through several scientific fields en route to a fulfilling career in the biotechnology industry. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Genome Sciences from the University of Washington in 2014. In graduate school he invented genome assembly tools under Prof. Jay Shendure and obtained a UW grant to convert his patented research into a start-up. Now, as a Computational Biologist at Adaptive Biotechnologies, he applies his expertise in genomics and bioinformatic software development to build Adaptive’s cutting-edge immunosequencing products, which are driving groundbreaking research in cancer and other immune-mediated diseases. He enjoys mentoring other scientists and is excited to come back to UW to share his experiences.

The Duke Network Analysis Center (DNAC) with the Duke Population Research Institute (DuPRI) will be hosting a second, week-long Social Networks and Health workshop from May 22 – 26, 2017.  The Social Networks and Health workshop will cover topics in social network analysis related to studying health behaviors, including:

• Data collection
• Ego network analysis
• Diffusion and peer influence
• Communities in networks
• Respondent-driven sampling
• Network visualizations
• Exponential random graph models (ERGM)
• Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOM, or Siena models)
• Agent-based modeling

The workshop will also contain a substantial lab component, which will give attendees an opportunity to learn how to use the R statistical computing language to analyze networks.  Last year’s presentations and labs are available online at https://dnac.ssri.duke.edu/social-networks-health-scholars-training-program.php .

We have funding for a limited number (up to 10) of SN&H fellowships. Fellows will participate in the week-long training course, but also be matched with a mentor to work on an ongoing research project that the fellow has proposed. All participation costs (including domestic travel and lodging expenses to come to Duke) for SN&H fellows will be covered by the program.  There is additional funding available for fellows to travel to meetings and otherwise support research meetings with their program mentor. SN&H fellows must commit to presenting the results of their project at next year’s workshop.  SN&H Fellowships will be primarily targeted at pre-doctoral students, post-docs and junior faculty and is open to participants both in the triangle and across the nation. Women, individuals from underrepresented minority groups, and disabled individuals are strongly encouraged to apply.

To apply for an SN&H fellowship, please send an email with your CV and a brief (no more than 1 page) description of research project you propose to work on over the year to snh2017@soc.duke.eduby Feb 1, 2017.

This is to announce the Spring 2017 round of the Royalty Research Fund (RRF) grant program. Proposals are due on Monday, March 6, by 5:00 PM. The application for approval by the Dean of Arts & Sciences is due by Thursday, March 2, by 5:00 PM.

The RRF proposal submission and review process is electronic – all proposals must be submitted using SAGE (System to Administer Grants Electronically). Briefly, the RRF application consists of an eGC1 (electronic Grant and Contracts Form 1, created online in SAGE), the proposal documents, and the suggested reviewers memo. The proposal documents are gathered into a single PDF file and attached electronically to the eGC1. The completed application is then routed electronically to all of the individuals that need to approve the proposal (Chairs, Directors, and Deans). It is then automatically routed to RRF staff who review the proposal for adherence to instructions/program rules. The suggested reviewers memo is submitted separately to a special email account; this completes the submission process.

In our ongoing efforts to improve service, the RRF program continues to evolve and there are changes to the rules and/or application instructions each round. Therefore, please advise your faculty and staff that it is essential that applicants thoroughly read and carefully follow all instructions each round. Proposals that do not adhere to the guidelines will be returned for immediate correction and resubmission if time permits; otherwise, they will not be considered eligible for funding. Additionally, it is the applicants’ responsibility to find out how much lead time is required by each unit which needs to approve their proposal, through the Dean’s level. (For example the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s office requires that proposals reach them via SAGE by 5:00 pm on the Thursday prior to the RRF deadline.) We strongly encourage all applicants to monitor the progress of their application throughout the approval process. Applications not fully approved by the RRF deadline will not be accepted – NO EXCEPTIONS.

Panel I: Immigrant contribution to urban revitalization
This panel focuses on national and regional experiences in immigrant rich areas, primarily on the contributions of immigrants to revitalizing neighborhoods, improving local economies, and enriching the cultural ecology of their adopted homes. We will also look at their collective contribution to the growth of labor, both in professional and service sectors. Panelists will discuss the experiences of various cities around the country, including the Pacific Northwest.

Panel II: What constitutes a welcoming region?
Welcoming cities are those that embrace immigrants and create an inclusive environment that provides opportunities for everyone. This panel will focus on the necessity for and growth of welcoming cities and regions in the U.S., particularly in the South Sound, highlighting some of the more interesting locally-created policies that positively shape immigrants’ experience. Relying on national and regional experts, we will highlight efforts in various cities around the nation and ask whether the South Puget Sound can be considered a welcoming region. We will also entertain ideas about additional measures that might contribute to our status as a welcoming region.

The Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR) at the University of Washington is seeking applications for a one-year Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral Fellowship on the topic of “Capitalism and Comparative Racialization.” We invite recent Ph.D.s from the humanities and social sciences to apply for the 2017-2018 academic year. The fellowship carries a salary of $55,000 a year (plus health benefits).

This Sawyer Seminar will examine the relationship between race and capitalism through the historical case studies of the United States, the Philippines, Brazil, and South Africa. Recognizing the lacunae in scholarship that examines race-making and capitalism, we have designed an investigatory approach that aims to understand how the two are interrelated: how processes of race-making fueled capitalism at its onset, how systems of racial domination led to the building of global empires, and how racial and capitalist orders are linked theoretically, historically and empirically.

The postdoctoral fellow will take a leading role in the coordination of the Sawyer Seminar. The Sawyer fellow will participate in all scholarly activities associated with the seminar, which will include workshops and lectures; will help organize speaker visits for public lectures and coordinate the related reading groups; and will advance the fellow’s own research agenda while contributing to the seminar’s scholarly output through a public lecture. The fellow will be mentored by the seminar organizers and additional members of the UW faculty as appropriate, depending on specialization.

Successful applicants should demonstrate a research agenda that examines the intersection of race and capitalism. Candidates must have their Ph.D. degree (or foreign equivalent) in hand prior to the appointment start date, and must have received their Ph.D. within the previous five years. To apply, please click below and submit: (1) a two-page cover letter that includes a summary of the dissertation and discusses how the candidate’s research aligns with the seminar’s theme of “Capitalism and Comparative Racialization”; (2) a current CV; (3) one writing sample (limit 30 pages); (4) three letters of recommendation. Candidate materials should be submitted electronically. Priority will be given to complete applications received before February 10, 2017.

The Russell Sage Foundation will sponsor the first Summer Institute in Computational Social Science in June 2017 at Princeton University. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to introduce graduate students and beginning faculty in the social and data sciences (broadly conceived) to computational social science—the use of digital-age data sources and methods to conduct social research. The intensive program will involve lectures, group problem sets, and student-led research projects – topics covered will include text as data, website scraping, digital field experiments, non-probability sampling, mass collaboration, and ethics. There will also be outside speakers with relevant expertise from academia, industry, and government.