UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The Population Research Institute at Penn State recently received a grant renewal from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to support research on population problems and dynamics over the next five years. Researchers at the institute are experts in topics including population health, the causes and consequences of crime, immigration, community characteristics and their impact on people, and social change and changing families.
The Population Research Institute (PRI) has been funded by the NICHD continually since 1990, and is one of only 21 such longstanding institutes in the nation. The PRI received a perfect score during peer review of their NICHD proposal, which was submitted by principal investigator Jennifer Van Hook, professor of sociology and demography and director for PRI. Co-principal investigators are Michelle Frisco, acting director of PRI and associate professor of sociology and demography; and Guangqing Chi, director of the Computational and Spatial Analysis Core and associate professor of rural sociology and demography.
The PRI provides strategic resources to over 80 Penn State faculty researchers in five colleges across the university to support innovative, high impact population research. PRI staff members provide high-quality, comprehensive research support services in spatial methods, data acquisition and management, and programming and statistics.
The grant provides a large part of the infrastructure that supports the institute. “It will allow us to contribute to collaborative research partnerships and the development of junior scholars through seed funding and consultation, seminars, symposia, working groups and other forums,” said Frisco.
The PRI was established in 1990 with a mission to foster novel approaches and methods that make important and cutting edge contributions to population research. It is one of the nine centers and institutes that comprise the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State.