Join us at the Open Scholarship Commons for the “Most Wanted” Researcher Summer Series! This set of workshops highlights tools and topics UW researchers are most curious about. In the coming months, workshops such as “Introduction to Text Mining” and “Publish & Protect Your Research: Build a Book Fast with Manifold” will offer practical skills for researchers across campus. Register here to reserve your spot.
*New* Postdoctoral Researcher Position in Demography/Quantitative Social Sciences and Spatial Analysis (07/07/2025)
Call for Papers: Panel Study of Income Dynamics User Conference (7/1/25)
CSDE Research Scientist Hana Sevcikova Supports Efforts of the United Nations to Produce Demographic Projections for all Countries of the World
For over a decade, the United Nations (UN) Population Division has been publishing demographic projections that are based on methodologies developed at the University of Washington. CSDE Senior Research Scientist Hana Sevcikova, PhD, is the lead collaborator in these efforts, along with CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery, Blumstein-Jordan Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Sociology (PI) and Patrick Gerland (United Nations). This work includes methods for probabilistic projections of fertility, mortality and population. In the most recent revision of the World Population Prospects (WPP), the WPP 2024 revision, probabilistic projections of migration have also been included for the first time.
The research is ongoing – not all challenges in this aim of producing fully probabilistic population projections have been solved. For example, Sevcikova, along with Raftery, Sara Curran, CSDE Director, and Crystal Yu, PhD candidate in Sociology and CSDE trainee, are working on expanding the framework from the national to the subnational level, while collaborating with CSDE External Affiliates Mike Morhman and Rob Kemp from the State of Washington’s Office of Financial Management (OFM) on its application to county-level projections.
If you’re interested in population projections, you can arrange a consultation appointment with Hana Sevcikova or any of CSDE’s scientific support staff, please use the CSDE Science Core Consultation Request form.
Another challenging task is to predict migration age profile into the future and Sevcikova, along with James Raymer (Australian National University) and Raftery, have developed a promising methodology (currently under peer-review).
Many of the methods that the UN has been using have been implemented in open-source software that Dr. Sevcikova developed and has been maintaining. It includes implementation of the statistical methodology as well as tools for data analysis and visualization. These efforts allow for any demographers, planners, researchers etc. to easily reproduce and analyze the UN work, as well as to apply it to their own circumstances. In addition to providing direct user support, Sevcikova and colleagues have been teaching the methodology and software in workshops throughout the world.
*New* CSSCR Workshop: Introduction to R (7/9/25)
Description: This workshop aims to introduce basic tools and functions of R for reading, management and examining datasets. Attendees are assumed to have little to no experience with R.
- Instructor: Alireza Aminkhaki, CSSCR Consultant
- Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2025
- Time: 11:00am – 12:20pm
- Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
- Register here.
*New* Post-Graduate Fellowships – Office of Program Research, State of Washington (07/11/2025)
Casey and Colleagues Publishes New Research in Environmental Epidemiology
In recent years, power outages have become more common oftentimes because of extreme weather. Extreme heat, wind, and precipitation have become more frequent and intense because of climate change. This combined with aging electrical grid components that have not been upgraded to withstand severe weather events caused US electrical customers to experience power outages for an average of 8 hours in 2020. This exposes vulnerable people to health risks, for example, those who use electricity-dependent medical equipment. Research on this health risk has been limited due to lack of exposure data, but new national power outage data has become available since 2020. Joan Casey and colleagues published a research article in Environmental Epidemiology titled, “Assessing bias in measuring power outage exposure with simulations,” discussing these new data and how best to estimate exposure to power outages for health research. To learn about Dr. Casey and her colleagues’ research, visit the link to read the full research article.
Swanson and Co-Authors Publish Research in Population Research and Policy Review
David Swanson and colleagues Jeff Tayman and Mike Cline, recently published a research article in Population Research and Policy Review titled, “A New Approach to Probabilistic County Population Forecasting with an Example Application to West Texas.” This paper shows how measures of uncertainty can be applied to existing subnational population forecasts using the 107 counties that make up West Texas as a case study. The measures of forecast uncertainty are relatively easy to calculate and meet several important criteria routinely applied by state and local demographers. The authors also report the results of two independent comparisons supporting the argument that this approach is valid. The paper concludes it is well-suited for developing probabilistic population forecasts in the United States and elsewhere. To learn more about this study, visit the link to read the full article.
Morris, Goodreau, and Jenness Presenting at Summer Institute in Statistics and Modeling in Infectious Diseases
CSDE Former Director & Affiliate Martina Morris, CSDE Development Core Director Steve Goodreau, and CSDE Affiliate Samuel Jenness will be offering two modules pertaining to Network Modeling for Epidemics using EpiModel at this year’s SISMID (Summer Institute in Statistics and Modeling in Infectious Diseases).
Both modules are in person in Atlanta.
Network Modeling for Epidemics I: July 21-23. This module is ideal for those who are starting out with EpiModel, or who want a refresher. It is roughly equivalent to a condensed version of the old NME workshop in Seattle.
Network Modeling for Epidemics I (NME-I) introduces stochastic network models for infectious disease transmission dynamics. It is a ‘’hands-on’’ course, using the EpiModel software package in R. EpiModel software provides a unified framework for statistically based modeling of dynamic networks from empirical data, and simulation of epidemic dynamics over these networks. This explicit modeling of networks is essential for accurate projections when the contacts that enable transmission are sparse, highly structured, heterogeneous and/or evolving over time.
Network Modeling for Epidemics II: July 23-25. This module is ideal for those who have taken or will take NME-I, either this year or last year at SISMID, or else in Seattle in years pass.
Network Modeling for Epidemics II extends the material in NME-I to developing research-level applications of EpiModel and its underlying TERGM statistical framework. Here, we focus on learning how to use the application programming interface (API) in EpiModel to design and program epidemic model components (or “modules”) that define a network-based epidemic model for a specific research question. The goal is to enable students to build EpiModel extensions to represent any infectious disease component in a system of interest.
Gates Foundation Grant Opportunity: RCTs on STIs and Reproductive Tract Sequelae in Non-Pregnant Women (7/7/25)
The Gates Foundation recently announced a Grand Challenges request for proposals for a Randomized Controlled Trial on Sexual Transmitted Infections (STIs) and Reproductive Tract Sequelae in Non-Pregnant Women. The goal is to support rigorous clinical research to evaluate the prevention, diagnosis, and management of STIs and their long-term reproductive consequences, such as pelvic inflammatory disease. The submission deadline is Monday, July 7, at 11:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time.
This Grand Challenge is part of our ongoing effort to address the problem of neglect in women’s health research and development, as highlighted by Anita Zaidi, the Gates Foundation’s President of Gender Equality Division, in her keynote speech on the second day of this year’s Grand Challenges Annual Meeting. The annual meeting was held virtually this week, and if you were unable to attend in real time, we encourage you to view videos from the plenary sessions focused on clinical research and trials, women’s health, and regulatory harmonization.
Please review the full details for this opportunity on our Grand Challenges website. We are planning a webinar to provide more information and answer your questions on June 17 from 7:00-8:00 AM Pacific Time. To participate, please register and submit your questions ahead of time.
We are eager to hear from experts around the world. Please forward this email to colleagues who may be interested in applying. If you were forwarded this message, please sign up on the Grand Challenges website to receive emails announcing grant opportunities.
As always, we invite you to read summaries of selected Grand Challenges grants. They are sortable by dropdown menus, so you can quickly find, for example, the 23 awards related to women’s health. You can also explore Grand Challenges projects using this interactive world map.