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CSSS Seminar - Modern Experimental Design: When Agents Compete - Alexander Volfovsky

Alexander Volfovsky is an Associate Professor of Statistical Science at Duke University, where he also serves as co-director of the Polarization Lab. He is also an Amazon Scholar working in Supply Chain Optimization Technologies (SCOT). His research lies at the intersection of causal inference, network analysis, and machine learning, with applications to understanding social behavior, online interactions, and decision-making in complex systems. He develops novel statistical methodologies for estimating causal effects in the presence of interference, modeling relational data, and designing adaptive experiments. Volfovsky’s work often bridges methodological innovation with large-scale empirical studies, integrating tools from Bayesian statistics, randomized experiments, and computational social science. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Templeton Foundation, among others. Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Estimating Place-Based and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Life Expectancy and Cause-Specific Mortality in the US - Laura Dwyer-Lindgren

Mortality rates differ widely across racial and ethnic populations and locations, and these patterns vary by cause of death and over time. To better understand these patterns in the US, we estimated life expectancy and cause-specific mortality for approximately 175 causes of death by county, race and ethnicity, and year (2000–2023). This seminar will focus on the methods used for this analysis and present preliminary findings. Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Health Metric Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on quantifying and describing geographic patterns and disparities in health outcomes, and how other types of health disparities are patterned spatially and intersect with place-based disparities. At IHME, Dr. Dwyer-Lindgren leads the US Health Disparities team which focuses on describing levels and trends in burden of disease in the US by county, racial and ethnic group, and socioeconomic status.… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Epistemic Diversity Across Language Models Mitigates Knowledge Collapse - Jevin West

The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) raises concerns of knowledge collapse, i.e. a reduction to the most dominant and central set of ideas. Prior work has demonstrated single-model collapse, defined as performance decay in an AI model trained on its own output. Inspired by ecology, we ask whether AI ecosystem diversity, that is, diversity among models, can mitigate such a collapse. We build on the single-model approach but focus on ecosystems of models trained on their collective output. We find that increased epistemic diversity mitigates collapse, but, interestingly, only up to an optimal level. In the context of AI monoculture, our results suggest the need to monitor diversity across AI systems and to develop policies that incentivize more domain- and community-specific models. Jevin West is the co-founder of the new Center for an Informed Public at UW aimed at resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society and strengthening democratic discourse. His research and teaching… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Community Notes Reduce Engagement With and Diffusion of False Information Online - Martin Saveski

Social networks scaffold the diffusion of information on social media. Much attention has been given to the spread of true vs. false content on online social platforms, including the structural differences between their diffusion patterns. However, much less is known about how platform interventions on false content alter the engagement with and diffusion of such content. In this work, we estimate the causal effects of Community Notes, a novel fact-checking feature adopted by X (formerly Twitter) to solicit and vet crowd-sourced fact-checking notes for false content. We gather detailed time series data for 40,078 posts for which notes have been proposed and use synthetic control methods to estimate a range of counterfactual outcomes. We find that attaching fact-checking notes significantly reduces the engagement with and diffusion of false content. We estimate that, on average, the notes resulted in reductions of 46.1% in reposts, 44.1% in likes, 21.9% in replies, and 13.5% in views after being attached. Over… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSDE Biodemography Working Group Meeting

Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Raitt Hall (RAI). Campus room: 223. Accessibility Contact: csde-prgm-coord@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Event sponsors: The CSDE Biomarker Working Group is a forum for discussions of practical and theoretical issues associated with collecting and using biomarker data in social and behavioral science research. This working group is open to all students, faculty, and staff and meets on the first Thursday of each month. Thursday, February 5, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Novel Methods to Construct a Representative Sample for Surveying California’s Unhoused Population: the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH) - Paul Wesson

California has among the highest per capita rate of homelessness in the United States, with more than 181,000 people experiencing homelessness (PEH) nightly – more than 25% of the country’s homeless population and half of its unsheltered population. Much of the literature on PEH draws on data from nonrepresentative samples, limiting (and potentially introducing bias to) inference and our overall understanding of the population. From October 2021 to November 2022, the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative fielded a statewide survey of PEH in California. The purpose of this survey was to understand the characteristics of PEH, the causes and consequences of homelessness, and to identify potential opportunities to end and prevent homelessness. This seminar will describe our novel sampling strategy to generate a representative sample of PEH in California (drawing upon methods from venue-based sampling and respondent driven sampling), implementation challenges, and lessons learned. Dr. Paul Wesson is an As… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Making All the Pieces Matter: Bridging Theory, Methodology, and Analyses to Uncover Nuance in Parenting and Child Development Research - Debrielle Jacques

Debrielle Jacques is an Assistant Professor of Child Clinical Psychology at the University of Washington. Research-wise, she is broadly interested in a) the developmental effects of parent psychopathology and b) childhood risk, resilience, developmental psychopathology, and general child development in adverse family environments. Specifically, she is interested in studying how and why addiction (especially among mothers) impacts parenting - including parent social cognition, parenting attributions, parenting behavior, and parent-child interactions - and consequently, child development, including the development of psychological problems. In studying children of mothers with substance use disorders, she is also interested in better understanding the underlying function of the strategies children use to navigate these family environments, including a) how children calibrate and adjust these strategies to environmental changes over time (e.g. increasing levels of domestic violence in the home), and b) understa… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Estimating Global Age- and Sex-Specific All-Cause Mortality in 204 Countries and Territories and 660 Subnational Locations from 1950–2025 for the Global Burden of Disease Study - Austin Schumacher

Comprehensive, comparable, and timely estimates of age-specific mortality are essential for evaluating, understanding, and addressing trends in population health. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of timely all-cause mortality estimates for being able to respond to changing trends in health outcomes, showing a strong need for analysis tools that can produce all-cause mortality estimates more rapidly with more readily available all-age vital registration data. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) is an ongoing research effort that quantifies human health by estimating a range of epidemiological quantities of interest across time, age, sex, location, cause, and risk. This seminar will cover the methodology used to estimate all-cause mortality for the GBD. Specifically, it will explain the novel statistical model developed as part of the latest release (GBD 2023). This model accounts for complex correlation structures in demographic data across age and time, and fl… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSSS Seminar - Individual and Collective Human Agency in the Face of ‘AI’ - Kush Varshney

As AI systems increasingly shape our personal, professional, and societal lives, the question is not only what machines can do, but who controls the values and outcomes they produce. This talk examines both individual agency — the capacity to think, judge, and act — and collective agency, where communities define norms, resist imposed standards, and guide AI deployment. Drawing on research in trustworthy AI, decolonial alignment, and human–AI collaboration, I will explore technical and governance approaches that preserve human autonomy, including transparency tools, scoped alignment methods, and collaborative task structures. I will introduce AI platform cooperatives as a counterweight to tech‑company dominance, fostering community ownership, shared governance, and technological self-determination. Ultimately, AI should be a tool that empowers humans, singly and together. Kush R. Varshney is an IBM Fellow based at the T. J. Watson Research Center where he is responsible for innovations in AI governance and… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.

CSDE Biodemography Working Group Meeting

CSSS Seminar - Big and Small Data for Understanding the Demographics and Health of People Experiencing Homelessness in King County - Zack Almquist

Zack W. Almquist is an Associate Professor of Sociology, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Statistics, and a Senior Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute at the University of Washington. His research develops and applies innovative statistical, survey, and social network methodologies to address critical social issues, including housing and homelessness, population health, and environmental governance, with a particular focus on improving data collection for marginalized and hard-to-reach populations. Prior to joining UW, he held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota and worked as a Research Scientist at Facebook. Prof. Almquist has received numerous honors, including the NSF CAREER Award, the ARO Young Investigator Award, and two major awards from the American Sociological Association. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Mathematical Sociology and in elected chair of the Section on Mathematical Sociology for the American Sociological Association and Chair of the Caucus on Homele… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/s/91612004486. Campus room: 409. Accessibility Contact: csss@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.