Weekly News – February 12, 2018

EVENTS

Wednesday February 14, 12-1:10 PM. A special demography brownbag seminar – a panel discussion on recent US and Comparative Mortality Patterns, with Magali Barbieri, Ray Catalano, Josh Goldstein, Ron Lee and Andrew Noymer. 2232 Piedmont, Demography Seminar Room. Coffee tea and cookies are served.

Brown Bag talks are recorded and posted on the Berkeley Population Sciences vimeo channel, https://vimeo.com/berkeleypopscience.

Monday February 12, 2018, 4 – 5:30 p.m., “Worms and Wellbeing: 15 Year Economic Impacts from Kenya” Ted Miguel. Evans Hall, room 648

Monday February 12 3-4 p.m. New directions in obesity epidemiology: Sleep, dietary patterns, and body composition” with Elizabeth Feliciano, ScD, MSc. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building.

February 13th from 12pm-1pm in 401 University Hall. Grant Writing Workshop: Specific Aims. Presented by Erica Whitney, Associate Director of Strategy and Training, at the Berkeley Research Development Office (VCRO). The presentation will focus on tips for writing a successful Specific Aims section with examples of how to address different points and messages. We will have ample time for discussions and Q&A.

EVENTS

Brown Bag talks are recorded and posted on the Berkeley Population Sciences vimeo channel, https://vimeo.com/berkeleypopscience.

Monday February 12, 2018, 4 – 5:30 p.m., “Worms and Wellbeing: 15 Year Economic Impacts from Kenya” Ted Miguel. Evans Hall, room 648

Monday February 12 3-4 p.m. New directions in obesity epidemiology: Sleep, dietary patterns, and body composition” with Elizabeth Feliciano, ScD, MSc. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building.

FUNDING AND AWARDS
NIH Support for Conferences and Scientific Meetings (Parent R13 Clinical Trial Not Allowed). https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-18-648.html. The purpose of the NIH Research Conference Grant (R13) is to support high quality scientific conferences that are relevant to the NIH’s mission and to the public health. A conference is defined as a symposium, seminar, workshop, or any other organized and formal meeting, whether conducted face-to-face or via the internet, where individuals assemble (or meet virtually) for the primary purpose to exchange technical information and views or explore or clarify a defined subject, problem, or area of knowledge, whether or not a published report results from such meeting. These are particularly important for bringing in underrepresented minorities into the discussion. We have some successful templates to use. Contact me for more information.

CALL FOR ABSRACTS/PAPERS.
Emerging Scholars from the International Conference on Aging in the Americas. Latino Aging and Health in Social, Institutional, and Environmental Context: Foundations and Frontiers September 18-20

Westward Look Wyndham Grand Resort and Spa, Tucson, Arizona. Visit the ICAA Website for more information: https://sites.utexas.edu/caa/2018-2/.

Once on the move, always on the move? Mobility after Migration. May 31 and June 1, 2018, Centre Marc Bloch Berlin. Please see the flyer for information.

WORKSHOPS
IPUMS CPS Summer Data Workshop. The workshop will familiarize researchers with the under-utilized panel component of the Current Population Survey. Up to $1,000 travel support for selected candidates. Additional workshop information, including application submission details, is available at cps.ipums.org/workshops. Applications are due March 2, 2018. Support is provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. Please share this information widely with colleagues and students. Feel free to download and distribute the IPUMS CPS Summer Workshop Flyer.

SUMMER INSTITUTE IN COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE, JUNE 17, 2018 – JUNE 30, 2018 | DUKE UNIVERSITY. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and beginning faculty interested in computational social science. The Summer Institute is for both social scientists (broadly conceived) and data scientists (broadly conceived). The co-organizers and principal faculty of the Summer Institute are Christopher Bail and Matthew Salganik. The instructional program will involve lectures, group problem sets, and participant-led research projects. There will also be outside speakers who conduct computational social science research in academia, industry, and government. Topics covered include text as data, website scraping, digital field experiments, non-probability sampling, mass collaboration, and ethics. There will be ample opportunities for students to discuss their ideas and research with the organizers, other participants, and visiting speakers. Because we are committed to open and reproducible research, all materials created by faculty and students for the Summer Institute will be released open source. Participation is restricted to Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers, and untenured faculty within 7 years of their Ph.D. Most participant costs during the workshop, including housing and most meals, will be covered, and most travel expenses will be reimbursed up to a set cap. About thirty participants will be invited. Participants with less experience with social science research will be expected to complete additional readings in advance of the Institute, and participants with less experience coding will be expected to complete a set of online learning modules on the R programming language. Students doing this preparatory work will be supported by a teaching assistant who will hold online office hours before the Institute. Application materials should be received by Monday, February 19, 2018.

8th Berlin Summer School in Social Sciences: Linking Theory and Empirical Research, Berlin, July 16 – 26, 2018. The summer school aims at supporting young researchers by strengthening their ability in linking theory and empirical research. The two-week program creates an excellent basis for the development of their current research designs. In the first week, we address the key methodological challenges of concept-building, causation/explanation, and micro-macro linkage that occur in almost all research efforts. We strive for a clarification of the epistemological foundations underlying methodological paradigms. In the second week, these methodological considerations are applied to central empirical fields of research in political science, sociology, and other related disciplines. In this second part of the program, participants are assigned to four thematic groups according to their own research topics. The thematic areas covered are: “External Governance, Interregionalism, and Domestic Change”, “Citizenship, Migration, and Identities”, “Social Struggle and Globalization”, and “Democracy at the Crossroads”. Details on the location and tuition fees can be found on our webpage www.berlinsummerschool.de. The international summer school is open to up to 60 PhD candidates, advanced master students, and young postdocs. The call for applications is currently open. Applications can be submitted online via the application form on the summer school webpage until March 31, 2018. The decisions of the selection committee will be announced to the applicants in April. If you have any further questions, please contact the organizing team at summerschool.bgss@hu-berlin.de.

DATA
The Census Bureau introduced the Response Outreach Area Mapper, or ROAM. ROAM combines a metric for locating hard-to-count areas — the Low Response Score — with an interactive mapping platform populated with tract-level ACS data. ROAM displays a map of U.S. census tracts shaded by their LRS. Users can explore the map by zooming and panning around, or by searching for a geography of interest including: address, place, county, state, congressional district or ZIP Code Tabulation Area. In addition to quickly identifying hard-to-count areas, ROAM also informs users of why a particular area may be hard to count. Click on a census tract to display the LRS and neighborhood characteristics from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey five-year population estimates. ROAM even has a feature allowing users to select census tracts that meet a set of particular interests. For example, if you want to see census tracts within a particular county that have a high LRS and contain a large percentage of non-English speakers, then use ROAM’s filter option for a quick and easy search. ROAM is now available for public use at www.census.gov/roam.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in Annapolis, MD invites proposals from highly qualified graduate students interested in conducting collaborative, socio-environmental synthesis research (i.e. “Graduate Pursuits”). Graduate Pursuits are supported for a period of 18 months. Such support centers around 3–4 team meetings at SESYNC, but also includes a suite of services ranging from team facilitation to computational and cyber infrastructure resources to science communication. SESYNC is particularly interested in Graduate Pursuit proposals that bring together diverse backgrounds and disciplines as well as diverse sources of data in novel, integrative ways. Graduate Pursuit proposals that are designed to be applicable or generalizable across multiple locations and scales in addition to those with potential to contribute to decision-making and non-academic communities are also of special interest to SESYNC. For details, please visit: https://www.sesync.org/opportunities/research-thematic-pursuits/graduate-pursuits-request-for-proposals.

D-LAB
D-Lab regularly offers workshops and training in courses, one-on-one consulting for faculty, grad students and undergraduates, and working groups of focuses topics. One-on-one consulting also available. For more information and registration, visit http://dlab.berkeley.edu. You can now add D-Lab workshops to your bcalendar directly from D-Lab workshop description.

JOBS
All jobs and postdoctoral fellowships are posted as we receive them on the Demography Department Jobs Listserv, http://lists.demog.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/jobs. This list advertises positions of all sorts relevant for social and behavioral scientists with advanced degrees.

MIGRATION MAILING LIST
Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI.berkeley.edu) is a research center for the study of immigrants and immigration. BIMI has a mailing list (immigration_group@lists.berkeley.edu), which is where a good deal of immigration and migration announcements are posted, and not all of that material is posted on the PopSciences Weekly News.