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.

NICHD is planning to continue to accept and fund R21 applications. An NICHD-specific R21 funding announcement will be issued shortly. NICHD had planned to have the new R21 FOA and the Notice of NICHD’s withdrawal from the Parent R21 funding  announcement issued as approximately the same time, but the issuance of the NICHD R21 announcement was delayed.

Bottom line: Do not worry.

This cross-disciplinary symposium brings together students, faculty, researchers and members of the public to discuss racial disparities in population health and health care, and the broader social, political, economic and historical structures in which they occur.

Submissions are open for Improving Population Health: Now, Across People’s Lives and Across Generations to Come meeting October 2 – 4, 2017. The 3rd annual interdisciplinary population health research conference will bring scholars and practitioners from different disciplinary backgrounds together to share and discuss the science, practice and policy of population health. This meeting is also the first membership meeting of The Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS).

The conference is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is organized by the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science, the Population Research Institute at Penn State University,The Population Research Center at the University of Texas, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University and the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas.

The submission deadline is April 7, 2017.

• Who should submit? Population health scientists from any academic discipline, career stage, and sector committed to improving population health in the U.S.
• The meeting is free and open to the public. Registration is required and will be open in late May!

Please click below to learn how to submit an abstract.

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand junior researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take such risks, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as an emphasis on community and collaboration.

Pre-proposal instructions

Please submit:

• a 1-to-2 page letter of intent with a description of proposed aims and approach
• Biosketch or CV of the PI
• a letter of support from the Dean or Chair. This letter of support signifies that the Dean or Chair have ensured that the nominee and application are likely to be of sufficient quality to be competitive nationally

to research@uw.edu by 5:00 PM Thursday, May 4, 2017. Full proposals are due to the sponsor 7/6/17, so you will need to have your materials in to the Office of Sponsored Programs by 6/28/17 for processing if given the go ahead by the Proposal Review Committee. Other open limited submissions opportunities, as well as the internal proposal review committee review and selection process outline, are here.  Please feel free to email us at research@uw.edu with questions or information on any limited submission opportunities that should be but are not already listed on that page.