Research Networks in Biodemography and Demography of Aging

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research on aging and health requires knowledge, methods, ideas and data from multiple disciplines and presents great opportunities for cross-fertilization between disciplines. But there are many challenges to cross-fertilization - communicating questions across disciplines, cross-teaching researchers in aging about other fields, and stimulating innovative collaborations between established scientists from different fields to work on aging. This project will address these challenges by developing research networks via the following specific aims: Specific Aim 1: Conduct training workshops in the formal demography and biodemography of aging to train young and new investigators in diverse analytical and quantitative approaches to aging. Specific Aim 2: Organize catalysis meetings to stimulate cross-disciplinary collaborative research on aging that deals with several broad questions - the interplay between genetics and behavioral and social factors, theories and data on social networks, and the integration into aging research of work on quantitative and population genetics and genomics, evolutionary and ecological genetics, epidemiology and health policy. Specific Aim 3: Organize advanced workshops/seminars to bring together small groups of researchers to focus intensively on particular questions and data in aging research, using a variety of tools including short working group meetings, web-based seminars and workshops, and other web-based collaborative tools. Training workshops teach young and new researchers about recent scientific work on aging and provide links to established investigators. Catalysis meetings, successful in other fields, provide a stimulating setting in which a small group explores and formulates new cross-disciplinary ideas. Advanced workshops are expected to emerge from catalysis meetings and go beyond them by allowing researchers with substantive interests in a problem to work through in detail ideas and plans for collaborative work. These activities will strengthen research on aging and launch collaborative research in several emerging areas as requested in the FOA on Network Infrastructure Support for Emercino Behavioral and Social Research Areas in Aoinc. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project will provide training in methods, knowledge and techniques from new, emerging and diverse fields (such as genomics, genetics, and network analysis) to young and established researchers in aging. By so doing the project will enhance aging research and promote new and novel scientific collaborations.