Be sure to join us for our next Brownbag Seminar of the semester, on Wednesday, October 2nd, for a presentation with Xi Song, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania. Xi will be presenting her research titled, “From Job Descriptions to Occupations: Using Neural Language Models to Code Job Data for Population Research.” See the full event details here. See our events calendar for our fall semester schedule as well as updates. The latest video recordings are available on the Berkeley Population Sciences YouTube Channel here.
We will not be holding a Brownbag Seminar on September 25th.
A big congratulations to Hilary Hoynes, Chancellor’s Professor of Economics and Public Policy and BPC Affiliate, for being awarded the 2024 Daniel M. Holland Medal by the National Tax Association in recognition of her groundbreaking work on child poverty. Hilary is only the second UC Berkeley professor and the third woman to receive this honor since 1993. Congratulations Hilary!
NIH is simplifying review for most research project grants starting on January 25, 2025. The goal is to better facilitate the mission of scientific peer review – identification of the strongest, highest-impact research – by:
- Enabling peer reviewers to better focus on answering the key questions necessary to assess the scientific and technical merit of proposed research projects:
- Should the proposed research project be conducted?
- Can the proposed research project be conducted?
- Mitigating the effect of reputational bias by refocusing the evaluation of investigator/environment to within the context of the proposed research.
- Reducing reviewer burden by shifting policy compliance activities to NIH staff.
Read more here. You may also listen to the NIH podcast on these changes here.
See further announcements and opportunities below.
EVENTS
September 23 | 2-3:30pm | UC Berkeley Sociology | Jose Eos Trinidad, Assistant Professor in the School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. “How Local Organizations Shape U.S. Education.” 402 Social Sciences Building. Zoom link here.
September 24 | 12:40-2pm | UC Berkeley Health Policy Colloquium Series | Karleen Giannitrapani, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Primary Care & Population Health), Stanford University. “Facilitating Divergent Ideation Co-design to Improve Teaming Across Disciplines.” 2121 Berkeley Way West Building, 1st Floor, Room 1102. Event details are here.
October 2 | 12:10-1pm | UC Berkeley Demography Colloquium | Xi Song, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania. Xi will present her research, “From Job Descriptions to Occupations: Using Neural Language Models to Code Job Data for Population Research.” This is an in-person talk, 310 Social Sciences Building. See the full event details here. See our events calendar for our fall semester schedule as well as updates. Visit our Brown Bag event page for both past and upcoming talks here. Zoom Meeting ID: 985 2901 0198 Password: DEMOG_BB
October 9 | 12:30-5:30pm | Center for Effective Global Action | Evidence to Action (E2A): Centering Gender Equity in Responses to Global Poverty | Showcasing new insights from research about gender equity in low- and middle-income countries. In-person event in San Francisco. Full event details. This event is free but registration is required.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The in-person PAA Applied Demography Conference is back. We are excited to provide applied demographers with a unique opportunity to participate in a conference designed to showcase developments in applied demography, receive feedback on work in progress, and strengthen professional and personal ties within the applied demography community. We will gather in Tucson, Arizona, February 4 – 6, 2025. We seek participation from anyone whose work intersects with population studies, whether in the academic, government, non-profit, or private sector, and at all levels of seniority. Does your work or field of study relate to counting or characterizing populations, or generating/using population data to make decisions? If “Yes” to any of these, then this conference is for you. Submit an abstract, a session or a workshop. Submissions deadline Monday, October 14, 2024. See all types of submissions in the Call for Papers.
WORKSHOP
A Workshop on Future Directions for Social and Behavioral Science Methodologies in the Next Decade. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The workshop gathers a broad group of experts to explore methodological and analytical innovations in the social and behavioral sciences, focusing discussions on future needs and methodological frontiers that are expected to benefit more than one discipline. Spanning the full data lifecycle, the workshop considers developments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, spatial analysis, causal modeling, survey methods, and the utilization of various data sources for social, behavioral, and economic research. The workshop is sponsored and conducted for the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) Program, an interdisciplinary program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Dates: Sep 25 – 26, 2024. See full agenda, and register here.
FUNDERS
- NICHD Notice of Availability of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for The Road to Prevention of Stillbirth: RFA-HD-25-010 (UG1) and RFA-HD-25-011 (UM2)
(NOT-HD-24-032) - U.S.-South Africa Program for Collaborative Biomedical Research Phase 3 (HIV/AIDS) (R01 Clinical Trial Optional) (RFA-AI-24-023)
- HEAL Initiative: Studies to Enable Analgesic Discovery (R61/R33 – Clinical Trial Not Allowed) (RFA-NS-25-023)
4. ARPA-H Launches Initiative for Emerging Health Innovators. ARPA-H is launching the Emerging Health Innovators (EHI) Initiative to increase access to government research funding for early career researchers and community health innovators to address health care gaps in the U.S.
Why it matters? Early career researchers and community health innovators, including those from minority-serving institutions and community-based organizations, will now have more opportunities to pursue bold and technically risky R&D projects, but who have been unable to take these leaps using traditional funding opportunities.
How to participate: ARPA-H wants to hear from early-career researchers, community innovators, and academic administrators about their specific needs, challenges, and concerns through our Network Survey for Emerging Health Innovators. Feedback from this survey will inform a forthcoming funding solicitation, anticipated to be available in late 2024.
What’s next? The forthcoming solicitation contemplates two tracks for funding:
- Technology-driven innovation would focus on developing innovative health technologies and would be open to early career researchers within 10 years of earning their final degree.
- Community-center innovation would focus on developing technology that addresses specific community needs and would be open to community innovators, such as community health care workers, medical professionals, social workers, non-profit organizations, and/or faith-based organizations.
To learn more about EHI and how to participate, read more on the ARPA-H News page.
NIA Training Quick Tips — NIH RePORTER.
What is NIH RePORTER, and how can I use it while preparing my grant application?
Have you ever wondered which NIH Institute/Center is the best fit for your research? Or how to find potential collaborators?
NIH RePORTER is a publicly available database of grants funded by NIH that goes back nearly 40 years, to 1985. There are two main ways that RePORTER can help applicants at all career stages prepare their applications: 1) by searching funded projects for a variety of purposes and 2) by using NIH Matchmaker to find similar projects and program officers.
The robust search features of RePORTER allow queries on a variety of different grant elements. You can search by Institute to see the kinds of research NIA funds, which can help give you a sense of our research priorities. You may also search by notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) to identify grants that have been funded through a specific call; that can help you identify potential collaborators or individuals to contact about their experiences. For example, if you’re curious about investigators who have received diversity supplements to provide research experiences and mentoring to a trainee from a background underrepresented in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, you can search on the current diversity supplement NOFO, PA-23-189.
Lastly, you may want to search by activity code (e.g., K99, R36, T32) to find investigators who successfully received funding and ask them for advice—particularly if they’re at your institution. For T32s specifically, applicants are advised to avoid duplication of T32 programs at their own institution and others. So searching for currently active T32s can be a great way to see the landscape of training programs.
NIH Matchmaker is another useful component of RePORTER. It is a free text field that allows you to input your abstract and aims, then view similar projects or program officers. Viewing similar projects can be another way to find potential collaborators, whereas viewing similar program officers will let you see which NIH Institutes are funding research in your area and which program officer has the most relevant grant portfolio. Because we highly recommend speaking to a program officer before you submit your grant application—and because navigating NIH’s website to find the appropriate person can be difficult—NIH Matchmaker is a great resource for applicants.
Berkeley Population Center