Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Insight Data Science Fellowship Lunch Information Session

We invite you to gain perspective on how to best prepare and transition into Data Science from the Insight Data Science Fellows Program.

Insight is an intensive, tuition-free 7-week postdoctoral training fellowship that bridges the gap between academia & a career in data science. The program enables academics to learn industry-specific skills needed to work in the growing field of big data that leading companies in tech and beyond.
Over a thousand Insight alumni now work as Data Scientists and Engineers at Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Yelp, Intuit, Netflix, Apple, Airbnb and 200+ other top companies.

This talk is intended for anyone who is interested in Data Science and learning how best to make the leap! All backgrounds are welcome.

Details:

Date: Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Time: 12:30-2:00 PM
Location: Mary Gates Hall, Room 258

Lunch will be provided

Maximizing Access to Research Careers – Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research

Sponsor: NIH
Program: Maximizing Access to Research Careers Undergraduate – Student Training in Academic Research (MARC U-STAR) (T34)
Program number: PAR-17-068
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-17-068.html

Number of applications UW can put forward: 1
OR internal deadline: 11/30/17
OSP deadline: 5/14/18
Sponsor deadline: 5/24/18

Program Description

The Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (U-STAR) program is designed to provide structured training programs to prepare high-achieving, underrepresented students for doctoral programs in biomedical research fields. Programmatic activities should include authentic research experiences, academic enhancements, skills development, and mentoring. The long-term goal of the program is to enhance the pool of underrepresented students earning baccalaureate and PhD degrees in biomedical research fields and ultimately to contribute to the diversification of the nation’s scientific workforce.

Pre-proposal instructions

Please submit:

a one-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, November 30, 2017. Full proposals are due to the sponsor 5/24/18, so you will need to have your materials in to OSP by 5/14/18 for processing if given the go-ahead by the review committee. Other open limited submissions opportunities, as well as the internal proposal review committee review and selection process outline, are here: http://www.uw.edu/research/funding/limited-submissions/. 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.

CSDE Welcomes New Affiliates

CSDE’s Executive Committee is pleased to welcome five new faculty affiliates!

Kim England – Professor, Geography, University of Washington. England researches patterns of transnational migration for care labor (domestic workers, nannies, health workers) and its implications for social reproduction and inequality.
Carmen Gonzalez – Assistant Professor, Communication, University of Washington. Gonzalez researches the communication practices of immigrant and minority populations in the contexts of health promotion and civic engagement.
Jane Lee – Assistant Professor, Social Work, University of Washington. Lee researches the role migration plays in shaping the health and well-being of immigrant populations.
Melanie Martin – Martin is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University and will join UW Anthropology in 2018. Martin researches growth, health, and reproductive outcomes across the life course in relation to breastfeeding practices, diet, and microbial exposures.
Ali Mokdad – Director of Middle Eastern Initiatives, Professor of Global Health, Epidemiology & Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington. Dr. Mokdad researches chronic diseases, emergency and refugee health, and is an expert in surveillance and survey methodologies. Currently, he serves as the Vice Chair of the UW’s Population Health Initiative.

These affiliates bring a wealth of knowledge and unique approaches that enhances our community of demographers and collectively advances population science. We look forward to supporting each of them as they pursue their research. You can learn more about their individual research interests by visiting their affiliate pages, linked above.

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate or you know of someone who should become one, you can invite them to do so by directing them to this page. Affiliate applications are reviewed quarterly, by CSDE’s Executive Committee.

Ali Rowhani-Rahbar Addresses Gun Violence and Policy in Editorial

Affiliate Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, co-authored an accompanying editorial to a recent UC Berkeley study that relates Nevada gun shows to gun violence in California. The study found that firearm-related injuries and deaths increase in California within two weeks of a gun show in Nevada, in regions within driving distance of the show. Interestingly, the same effect does not occur following California gun shows. These outcomes may be attributable to differences in California and Nevada’s respective gun laws; while the former has more stringent regulations and requires background checks at gun shows, the latter does not. In the editorial, Rowhani-Rahbar and UW Professor of Pediatrics Frederick Rivara address the implications of the study for federal policy. “The state-by-state nature of [laws regulating access to guns], due to the lack of federal legislation, results in barriers to gun access that can be easily breached by a car trip. It does not reduce the importance of the laws but does reduce their impact,” they write. The editorial was referenced last week in Huffington Post and Los Angeles Times articles, and is available below.

Dan Goldhaber Discusses Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Education Initiatives

Affiliate Dan Goldhaber, Director of the UW Center for Education Data & Research, was recently quoted in an Education Week article about The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s new focus on K-12 education. The Foundation has pledged nearly $1.7 billion towards education initiatives over the next five years, approximately 60% of which will be centered on building networks of existing schools and developing improved curricula. Regarding the Foundation’s most recent shift in focus and historical challenges in improving learning outcomes for students on a broad scale, Goldhaber said, “My sense is that the foundation has had bigger tangible impacts on affecting health outcomes around the world than they have in education, and they’ve been at it for a while.” He acknowledges, however, that this is not necessarily due to inherent shortcomings on the part of the Foundation. “I think this is just sort of the way it is. It’s hard in developed countries to change well-entrenched institutions.” The full article is available below.

Childhood Neighborhood Disadvantage and Adult Social and Economic Well-Being: Evidence from Sibling and Cousin Fixed Effects Using the NLSY

Steven Alvarado, Department of Sociology, Cornell University

Recent neighborhood effects studies have largely focused on proximate associations between childhood ecological conditions and childhood outcomes. In contrast, Steven capitalizes on restricted data from the NLSY 1979 and NLSY Child and Young Adults cohorts to study how childhood neighborhood disadvantage impacts joblessness, income, obesity, and criminal justice contact in adulthood. Sibling fixed effects and cousin fixed effects models, which address unobserved confounding at the parental and grand-parental levels, suggest that exposure to childhood neighborhood disadvantage indeed impacts adult well-being. Moreover, he analyzes whether these neighborhood effects operate through sensitive childhood years, teen socialization, duration effects, and cumulative effects across respondents’ life-course. Lastly, he explores whether familial exposure to multiple generations of neighborhood disadvantage yield pernicious effects on well-being for grandchildren.

Steven has some availability on Friday morning; please contact him directly at alvarado@cornell.edu if you would like to speak with him.

CSSCR Course/Workshop Offerings, Autumn Quarter Part II

The Center for Social Science Computation and Research (CSSCR) is an interdepartmental computer center in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington. CSSCR provides facilities and consulting support for computing activity related to teaching and research at the University.

This is the second CSSCR announcement for the quarter. You will find a listing of additional workshops for the remainder of the quarter at the following link: http://csscr.washington.edu/courses.html

CSSCR has a special workshop coming up this quarter provided by Dr. Shuming Bao from the University of Michigan. Dr. Bao is the Director for Spatial Data Center and China Data Center at the University of Michigan. A brief abstract for the workshop follows:

Abstract: The US NSF/SBE Advisory Committee released a report on “Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Perspectives on Robust and Reliable Science” in 2015, which encourages research that is reproducible, replicable, and generalizable. This workshop/seminar will address how to build reproducible, replicable, and expandable case studies in data analysis by applying some workflow based tools. It will present some sample case studies in the spatial studies of population, religion, and industries. Future directions of the development and applications of workflow based case studies will be discussed.

As always, registration is open and free to anyone in the UW community.

Individuals can subscribe to the CSSCR newsletter here, and the CSSCR newsletter archive is availble here.

Associate Professor/Professor of Public Policy

The University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy invites applications from social scientists with a PhD in sociology, social psychology, social demography, social policy, public policy or other closely-related disciplines for one or more tenured positions at the associate or full professor rank. The Ford School is committed to attracting and retaining a distinguished and diverse faculty. Areas of specialization and methodological approaches are open, with a particular interest in candidates whose scholarship addresses questions relating to poverty and inequality, stratification, economic sociology, science and technology studies and the sociology of diverse societies (including political sociology and race/ethnicity). Focus may be domestic/US or comparative. Successful candidates must demonstrate a record of outstanding research impact; ability and willingness to teach core and elective courses in undergraduate, master and PhD degree programs in public policy; dedication to public engagement; and a keen interest in interacting with students, faculty, staff, and policy practitioners in an interdisciplinary professional school environment. Candidates should combine relevant substantive expertise with strong interests in public policy.

This is an ongoing search. First consideration will be given to applications received by December 31, 2017, but applications will be considered until the position is filled. The following application materials should be sent in PDF format to fspp-facultysearch@umich.edu – a letter of interest, curriculum vitae, statement of current and future research plans, statement of teaching philosophy and experience, and teaching evaluations. In addition, candidates should include a brief statement describing how their work would contribute to the Ford School’s and University of Michigan’s strategic commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM

Sponsor: NSF
Program: Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM (CCE STEM)
https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15528/nsf15528.htm
Program number: NSF 15-528 (2018)
Award amount: $600,000
Number of applications UW can put forward: 1
OR internal deadline: 11/30/17
OSP deadline: 2/7/18
Sponsor deadline: 2/15/18

Program Description

Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM (CCE STEM) funds research projects that identify factors that are efficacious in the formation of ethical STEM researchers in all the fields of science and engineering that NSF supports. CCE STEM solicits proposals for research that explores the following: ‘What constitutes ethical STEM research and practice, and which cultural and institutional contexts promote ethical STEM research and practice and why?’ Factors one might consider include: honor codes, professional ethics codes and licensing requirements, an ethic of service and/or service learning, life-long learning requirements, curricula or memberships in organizations (e.g. Engineers without Borders) that stress social responsibility and humanitarian goals, institutions that serve under-represented groups, institutions where academic and research integrity are cultivated at multiple levels, institutions that cultivate ethics across the curriculum, or programs that promote group work, or do not grade. Do certain labs have a ‘culture of academic integrity’? What practices contribute to the establishment and maintenance of ethical cultures and how can these practices be transferred, extended to, and integrated into other research and learning settings?

Pre-proposal instructions

Please submit:

a one-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, November 30, 2017. Full proposals are due to the sponsor 2/15/18, so you will need to have your materials in to OSP by 2/7/18 for processing if given the go-ahead by the review committee. Other open limited submissions opportunities, as well as the internal proposal review committee review and selection process outline, are here: http://www.uw.edu/research/funding/limited-submissions/. 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.

Assistant Professor of Sociology

The Department of Sociology at the University of South Carolina invites applications for TWO tenure-track Assistant Professor positions. For both positions, we seek candidates with research and teaching interests in Social Stratification and Inequality. This solicitation seeks candidates who also have the ability to teach quantitative methods at the graduate level. Candidates who have research and teaching interests in Social Stratification and Inequality but are not interested in teaching graduate quantitative methods are encouraged to see our other solicitation. Applicants qualified for both positions are encouraged to apply for both. Both positions are to begin in August 2018. Completion of PhD degree by the time of employment is expected.

Applicants should submit their curriculum vitae, a statement outlining their research and teaching agenda, three letters of recommendation, and up to three samples of writing. All material should be submitted via our online portal.

The faculty will begin reviewing applications by November 6th and review of applications will continue until the position is filled. For additional information contact the Recruitment Committee Chair, Matthew E. Brashears, at brasheam@mailbox.sc.edu.