As we wrap up the end of fall semester 2025 and close out the calendar year, it is with pleasure that we share the news of our first cohort of the Bashir Ahmed Graduate Fellowship. Congratulations to Juana Montoya Murillo and Chris Soria! The Ahmed awards support students who intend to pursue a research career in population science, broadly defined, and who are actively working on their dissertations. We are extremely grateful to the Ahmed family for supporting dissertation research. You can read more about the Ahmed Graduate Fellowship in Demography here.
In addition, the Berkeley Population Center is pleased to announce nine new faculty affiliates who join us in 2025-2026: Na’ama Shenhav (Public Policy), Charlie Whittaker (Public Health), Dan Zeltzer (Public Health), Mike Boots (Integrative Biology), Mienah Zulfacar Sharif (Public Health), Brian Keum (Public Health), Carlos Schmidt-Padilla (Public Policy), Avi Feller (Statistics, Public Policy) and incoming new faculty, Kristen Harknett (Sociology). We additionally welcome two new external affiliate scholars, Asad L. Asad (Stanford), and Stephanie Koning (University of Nevada, Reno). Explore their faculty profiles on our website.
Featured affiliate research of the week: Societal restraint of behavior during the pre-vaccine pandemic saved working-age men but not women (2025) Ralph Catalano. Science Advances.
We are very grateful for our extended population science community, we thank you for all of your support, and we wish you a wonderful holiday break!
See further announcements and opportunities below.
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CALL FOR SPEAKERS
A call for speakers is currently open for the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in Social Sciences (BITSS) Annual Meeting on April 16 (Berkeley, CA) and for MeasureDev’s “Open Science in the Age of AI: Balancing Privacy and Transparency,” co-hosted by the World Bank and the Center for Effective Global Action, on April 29 (Washington, DC). Both events will gather metascientists to discuss how technology is changing research. The BITSS AM call for speakers will close on January 18 and the MeasureDev call for speakers will close on January 30.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study: 25th Anniversary. In celebration of the landmark Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study’s 25th anniversary, the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is soliciting proposals for a special issue, situating the study in the larger literature, engaging with key questions using the most recent wave of survey data, inviting comparisons using other data sources, and identifying areas for future research. The issue will provide a lens into how today’s heterogenous families form, grow, change, and thrive, using data within and across generations. Read more.
Calls for Papers | NBER | Network Meetings
Health and Healthcare Variations across the Population Conference. Conference is May 15, 2026; deadline to submit is February 13, 2026.
Geography and Health: Exploring Rural-Urban Disparities. The conference is June 8, 2026; the deadline to apply is March 8, 2026.
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
We are accepting applications for the first annual Short Course to advance cross-national research on aging and cognitive function. This initiative seeks to advance research on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (AD/ADRD) using population-based data with a focus on cross-national comparisons among the U.S., Mexico, and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The research training project is led by investigators at Arizona State University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and supported by the National Institute on Aging (Grant 1R25AG095799). This is an in-person workshop, to be held in San Antonio, March 23-26, 2026. Deadline to apply: January 9, 2026. See attached flyer.
NIH
The NIH continues to undergo a lot of change. Below are some of the new policies.
- NOT-OD-26-017: Research Security Training Requirements for NIH
- NOT-OD-26-019: NIH Administrative Burden Reduction Effort Removal of Requirements for Letters of Intent and Unsolicited Applications Requesting $500,000 or More in Direct Costs
- The National Institutes of Health is largely replacing Notices of Special Interest (NOSI)s with Highlighted Topics. Subscribe here.
- Updated guidance on the reopening process at NIH after the government shutdown. There is a significant lag in proposal review and award processes due to the shutdown. The shutdown required that NIH cancel over 370 peer review meetings, impacting the review of over 24,000 applications. The volume of missed meetings complicates NIH efforts to catch up. In order for these applications to be considered in the January council as originally planned, the following modifications in peer review practices will be made: The percent of applications discussed in most meetings will be reduced to 30-35%, instead of the current ~50%. See the Notice for more information (NOT-OD-26-012).
- NOT-OD-26-018: As of January 25, 2026, NIH biosketches and current/pending support forms need to be completed using Common Forms and SciEnCV. This includes forms for the JIT and for RPPRs. Read more here.
See below a webinar to be livestreamed on January 4, 2026, where the NIH director will share his vision for NIH-funded health economics research.
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) Mission-Driven Health Economics: Engaging Emerging Opportunities and Removing Barriers to Innovation | American Economic Association | Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 | 10:15 AM – 12:15 PM (EST) | In-Person and Livestreamed. The NIH Director will share his vision for NIH-funded health economics research and provide insight into ways in which health economics may uniquely advance the NIH mission. Other panelists will discuss impactful research carried out with NIH funding.
FUNDING
Network on Education, Biosocial Pathways, and Dementia Pilot Grants. Proposals due February 20, 2026. Focus: advance science in the education—dementia relationship in 1 of 3 critical areas (or across areas):
1: Early life factors and the education—dementia relationship
2: Mid-life socioeconomic, social, and psychological mediators of education and dementia
3: Biological mechanisms linking education to dementia
NIH Fogarty. Mobile Health: Technology and Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Countries. Mobile Health: Technology and Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Countries supports exploratory and developmental research to study the development, validation, feasibility, and effectiveness of innovative mobile health (mHealth) interventions or tools specifically suited for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that utilize new or emerging technology, platforms, systems, or analytics. The overall goal of the program is to catalyze innovation through multidisciplinary research that addresses global health problems, develop an evidence base for the use of mHealth technology to improve clinical and public health outcomes, and strengthen mHealth research capacity in LMICs. Deadline, March 20, 2026. Learn more here.