Weekly News, March 31, 2025 - Population Sciences

This Friday, April 4th, 10am, we’ll hold our annual Pre-PAA Mini-Conference, giving graduate students and post-docs the opportunity to practice and present their upcoming talks at the Population Association of America’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC (April 10-13). This Friday’s conference will be held in person in 310 Social Sciences, as well as via zoom. We start at 10am and lunch will be served. Please see the working agenda here. If you’d like to attend or have questions, please email Sharon Green: sharongreen@berkeley.edu.

Our next Brownbag Seminar will be after the PAA Annual Meeting on Wednesday, April 16th, 12pm, with Magali Barbieri, joint researcher at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris, France and in the Department of Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Barbieri will present, “Multi-morbidity and the US Disadvantage in Life.” This is an in-person seminar, Room 310, Social Sciences Building. Zoom option: Meeting ID: 985 2901 0198 Password: DEMOG_BB See the full event details here. Our YouTube channel is here.

NIH website on Implementation of New Initiatives and Policies Now Available:

See further announcements and opportunities below.

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EVENTS

March 31 | 2-3:30pm | UC Berkeley Sociology Colloquium | Alexander Brewer, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California. “Painful Solutions: How Corporatization Sustains Racial Inequality in Healthcare.” 402 Social Sciences Building. See the full event details here. Zoom link here.

April 1 | 12pm | AJ Alvero, a computational sociologist at Cornell University, who will present “Consequential Sentences: Computational Analyses of California Parole Hearing Transcripts.” This talk is part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Berkeley Institute of Data Sciences (BIDS). 820 Social Sciences Building. See full details here.

April 1 | 12:10-1pm | Public Health Research Series | Thomas Goetz, “Creating Accountability for Commercial Determinants of Health.” Please pre-register for the Zoom link ahead of time. The zoom link to register for the talk is here.

April 2 | 2-3:30pm | UC Berkeley Sociology Colloquium | Kristen Harknett, Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “Living Life On Call: Retail Workers and the Battle over Time.” 402 Social Sciences Building. See the full event details here. Zoom link here.

April 4 | 12:10-2pm | Brilliance of Berkeley | with Jennifer Doudna & Rachel Morello-Frosch.

Wheeler Hall Auditorium.

12:10-1pm: Jennifer Doudna “The Chemistry of CRISPR: Origins and Opportunities of RNA-guided Genome Editing.”

1:10-2pm: Rachel Morello-Frosch “From the Body to the Barrio: Addressing Structural Drivers of Environmental Health Disparities.”

FUNDING

CITRIS Seed Funding Opportunity. The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) create information technology solutions for society’s most pressing challenges. The CITRIS Seed Funding Program issues competitive awards that advance information technology research for societal benefit and catalyze proof-of-concept results that can lead to transformative solutions for industry and the public sector. Interdisciplinary proposals are invited from principal investigators at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Davis Health, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz. Areas of focus include digital health, sustainability and climate resilience, and AI. Each selected team receives $40,000–$60,000 to pursue their research during the 12-month performance period. Proposals due April 22, 2025. More info here.

GECC Call for Pilot Project Proposals Extended to April 14th. The Gateway Exposome Coordinating Center (GECC) is seeking pilot projects that advance research on the various environmental exposures over the life course — known as the “exposome” — that affect Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and AD-Related Dementias (ADRD) risk, resilience, and disparities. The GECC anticipates selecting between 5-8 proposals to receive between $32,000-60,000 each (including indirect costs). Proposals are now due April 14, 2025. For the full call and information about how to submit proposals here. Pilot projects should support the GECC’s overarching mission to improve knowledge and understanding of AD/ADRD, driving policy changes and providing better data for future research. The most competitive pilot projects will create novel measures, data sets, or data guidance for exposome research. Projects may be related to or build on one or more of the six GECC domains of study: climate, physical environment, social environment, policy environment, community services environment, and life experiences. Pilots focused on methodological topics cutting across multiple substantive domains are encouraged. If you have questions about whether your project is a good fit for the GECC, please contact us at pilots@gatewayexposome.org.

The Retirement Research Foundation (RRF) funds research that seeks to identify interventions, policies and practices to improve the well-being of older adults and/or their caregivers. Preference is given to projects aimed at generating practical knowledge and guidance that can be used by advocates, policy-makers, providers, and the aging network. Of particular interest are:

Interventional trials; translational studies; and health services and policy research
Projects that build on the investigator’s past studies
Proposals that include robust dissemination plans, if appropriate, to assure that findings reach audiences positioned to act on them

Learn more and view calendar cycle here.

WEBINARS, CONFERENCES

The 2025 ACS Data Users Conference will now be a one-day conference—held virtually—on May 29, 2025 from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm ET. Stay tuned for a detailed program and registration information coming soon. The conference will bring together ACS data users and U.S. Census Bureau staff to share information about key ACS data issues and applications. The conference will include:

Contributed presentations by ACS data users
Invited plenary panels
Breakout sessions
Lightning sessions

Registration for the conference will be free for all participants. If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Diana Elliott (delliott@prb.org) or Mark Mather (mmather@prb.org).

You’re invited to join the Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) Summit 2025. Led by the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the summit shapes national recommendations that reflect urgent research priorities for Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias, including frontotemporal degeneration, Lewy body dementia, multiple etiology dementias, and vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia.

The summit will feature opportunities for public comment on updated draft research recommendations. Insights from the event will be presented to the NINDS advisory council, and approved recommendations will become research milestones in the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease. The summit will be held virtually April 29 and 30, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST. Registration is required. Register to attend the summit today.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Fertility, Childlessness, and Reproductive Aging: Bio-social Perspectives. We invite submissions for the upcoming conference (September 15-17, 2025) Fertility, Childlessness, and Reproductive Aging: Bio-social Perspectives at Villa Vigoni, Menaggio, Italy. This interdisciplinary event will bring together scholars to discuss the interplay between biological and social factors shaping reproductive outcomes for women and men, and its implications in the context of low fertility. The conference is a joint event with the ERC Synergy BIOSFER project, which investigates how social, biological and psychological factors work together to produce the observed patterns, levels and variation in fertility among young adults. We welcome contributions that address the following themes:

Fertility Trends and Childlessness: Determinants and consequences, shifting reproductive norms, and voluntary vs. involuntary childlessness.
Reproductive Aging: The biological and social dimensions and implications of changing reproductive functions across the life course, in both men and women.
Socio-Economic Differences: How socio-demographic factors (e.g. income, education, employment) and social policies shape reproductive decisions and fertility outcomes.
Male and Female Perspectives on Fertility: The role of gender and couple dynamics in fertility experiences and reproductive decision-making.
Clinical and Epidemiological Insights: Advances in reproductive medicine, fertility preservation, and medical interventions related to subfecundity, infertility, and reproductive aging.

We encourage submissions for oral and poster presentations from a range of disciplines such as demography, sociology, epidemiology, public health and reproductive medicine. Empirical, theoretical, and policy-oriented papers are welcome. Please submit your work via this survey by April 30th 2025. The final decisions on acceptance will be sent out by the end of May. There are no registration fees, and all meals during the stay will be covered by the event organizers. Please note that you will have to cover your own travel expenses to Villa Vigoni and accommodation expenses (110 EUR per night). Limited financial support for the accommodation is available for junior scientists who could otherwise not participate. A group shuttle transfer from Milan-Malpensa, Linate Airport or Como train station to Villa Vigoni and back will be offered free of charge. Detailed information on pick-up times will be provided later.

Organizing Committee:

Contact: If you have any questions about the event, please e-mail biosfer@demogr.mpg.de.

Berkeley Population Center