Population Research Center

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Population Research Center (PRC) of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) requests a five-year grant under the NICHD R24 Population Research Infrastructure Program to help provide infrastructure support services and project development funds for a very productive interdisciplinary group of 46 population-related researchers. Most researchers work in one or two of five thematic areas: Health Disparities; Religion, Family Life, and Health; Children and Families; Education, Transitions to Adulthood, and the Labor Force; and Latin American Demography and Social policy. Underlying this work is a foundation that emphasizes fundamental attention to issues of social and economic inequality, rigorous attention to, and application of, the most appropriate and advanced methodological techniques, and an orientation toward federal and major foundation grant funding and publication in top quality scientific journals. The infrastructure program proposed here includes three cores: I) an Administrative Services Core to facilitate the initiation and completion of population-based research and to promote the interdisciplinary growth and collaborative nature of PRC research; 2) a Computing and Information Services Core to provide the highest quality computing and information services and infrastructure to researchers and other cores of the PRC, at the lowest possible cost to the center and to projects, and with the highestpossible efficiency and security; and 3) a Developmental Core to provide PRC faculty members with seed financial support to develop nascent research ideas, attract new researchers to the PRC, and increase the overall grant and publication activity of the center. In comparison to the last competitive renewal of the P30 center grant five years ago, the PRC is a substantially younger, intellectually broader, and much more productive research unit. We have also benefited from a tremendous set of 17 faculty hires made over the last five years. Along every criterion that matters in this arena-grants, publications, interdisciplinary activity, institutional support, and promise for the future-the PRC is stronger than ever. Support through the R24 mechanism will enable the PRC to continue in its re-development of exciting new areas of exciting new areas of research activity, as well as provide for the continuance of traditional areas of PRC research strength.