Yan Zhang: Number of Children and Older Adults' Cognitive Function in the U.S., UK, and China
2024-01-19 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Yan Zhang will present “Number of Children and Older Adults’ Cognitive Function in the U.S., UK, and China” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
“I am an assistant professor at East Carolina University, Department of Sociology. I was a postdoc research scientist at Center for Demography of Health and Aging, University of Wisconsin-Madison, before joining ECU. My research agenda focuses on family demography, population health, aging & life course, and gender & sexuality. I am particularly interested in examining how family relationships influence health outcomes among aging population. My current research investigates the association between parenthood (i.e., parental status, parent-child relationship, and fertility history) and older adults’ risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Some of my work has been published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontologist, Social Science & Medicine, SSM-Population Health, Annals of Epidemiology, Chinese Sociological Review, among other outlets (; ; )
I earned a B.A. in sociology at China Agricultural University, a M.A. in sociology at University at Buffalo, and a Ph.D. at Michigan State University.”

Ken Bollen: Causal inference with random assignment vs. researcher created binary treatments
2024-01-26 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Ken Bollen will present “Causal inference with random assignment vs. researcher created binary treatments” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Ken Bollen develops new quantitative methods to apply to the population and social/behavioral sciences. These include new models to analyze longitudinal data, creative approaches to analyzing difficult-to-measure concepts, and developing estimators that have greater robustness to the approximate nature of our models. He also is working on comparing and integrating different approaches to causal inference. Population studies, health, and trauma are the contexts within which he develops these methods while also addressing practical substantive questions.
Ken Bollen’s research focuses on creating new statistical tools that have applications across a wide range of population areas. Many of these tools are developed within the field of latent variable structural equation models (SEMs). SEMs formulate systems of equations, allow multiple “dependent” variables with mediation effects, and take account of the measurement error commonly found in population-related variables. Collaborating with a number of CPC fellows, postdocs, and graduate trainees, Bollen has applied SEMs to topics such as evaluating the use of birth weight, gestational age, and birth length as measures of a mother’s fetal conditions, assessing the measurement properties of self-rated health and depression measures, evaluating the quality of physiological measures from surveys, and analyzing the effects of SES on fertility. Many of these projects have utilized CPC-based data such as those from Add Health and the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey.

Natalicio Serrano: Equitable and sustainable opportunities for active living: exploring the impacts of neighborhood development and zoning strategies
2024-02-02 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Natalicio Serrano will present “Equitable and sustainable opportunities for active living: exploring the impacts of neighborhood development and zoning strategies” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Natalicio (Nat) Serrano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. His research focuses on creating equitable and sustainable environment and policy strategies for physical activity promotion and chronic disease prevention. Dr. Serrano utilizes a systems approach to understand inter-related factors and sectors (e.g., Transportation, Planning, Housing) impacting or being impacted by environment and policy strategies for physical activity. He is particularly interested in understanding and addressing issues related to neighborhood development, racial and economic segregation, gentrification, and displacement. Prior to joining UNC, Dr. Serrano was a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Illinois Chicago’s Institute for Health Research and Policy.

Lauren Valentino: Racial Wealth Gaps in the US: Realities, Misperceptions, and Interventions to Increase Public Support for Wealth-Equalizing Policies and Behavior
2024-02-09 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Lauren Valentino will present “Racial Wealth Gaps in the US: Realities, Misperceptions, and Interventions to Increase Public Support for Wealth-Equalizing Policies and Behavior” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
“I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Ohio State University (2020-2023) and a postdoctoral associate at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University (2019-2020). I earned my PhD in Sociology from Duke University in 2019.
My research focuses on culture & cognition and inequality & stratification. Specifically, I use a cognitive approach to culture in order to understand how people form diverse beliefs and perceptions about important stratifying institutions in society — like discrimination, occupations, social movements, and schools and universities — to show how these beliefs and perceptions in turn shape inequality. My work employs a wide variety of methodological approaches, including survey-experiments, interviews, and analysis of secondary survey and administrative data.
My work has been published in American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Poetics, and Social Problems, among other outlets. Findings from these studies have been covered in U.S. News & World Report, Inside Higher Ed, and The Hechinger Report. This research has been generously supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity, Ohio State’s Department of Sociology Seed Grant fund, OSU’s Institute for Population Research which includes core support from the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Duke’s Interdisciplinary Institute for Education and Human Development, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Bass Connections, and the Worldviews Lab.”

Biosocial Symposium: Colter Mitchell - The Potential and Peril of Social Epigenetics
2024-02-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Colter Mitchell will present “The Potential and Peril of Social Epigenetics”
as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Dr. Mitchell is interested in the influence of the social and familial environmental on health and behavior over the life course. His earlier research focused mainly on the social environment and child and young adult behavior in early life. Over the last decade, he has expanded on this research by examining how social contextual factors interact with genetic, epigenetic, and neurodevelopment factors to predict health and wellbeing over the life course, including in later life.

Jaime Slaughter-Acey
2024-03-01 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Jaime Slaughter-Acey will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Jaime Slaughter-Acey is an Associate Professor with training and expertise in social epidemiology and maternal and child health epidemiology. Her research focuses on socio-environmental, and psychosocial factors that contribute to health across the life course, with emphasis on women and families from marginalized and/or underserved populations and health equity.

Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez: Associations between accelerating aging and life expectancy
2024-03-22 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez’s research focuses on the demography of health and aging. He has written on health patterns and trends in low- and middle-income countries; on aging in high-income countries including issues about compression of morbidity; on the links between early life experiences and late life outcomes; as well as on biomarker data from Mexico to study physiological patterns of health and their link with sociodemographic factors. Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez is also Associate Director of the UCLA California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and co-director of the T32 training grant at CCPR.
With Prof Alberto Palloni (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Dr. Guido Pinto Aguirre, Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez co-founded the Latin American Mortality Database, the largest data repository of mortality from 19 countries in Latin America (including data from around 1850). He has collaborated with researchers and institutions in México, Brazil, Germany, and Sweden.
He received the 2018 Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. This award is given biennially in even years to scholars who have made distinguished contributions to population research during the first ten years after receipt of the Ph.D.

Kerilyn Schewel: Rethinking the Links between Climate Change, Development, and Human Mobility: Insights from Rural Ethiopia
2024-04-05 12:00 - 13:00
Kerilyn Schewel will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Schewel is the co-director of the Duke Program on Climate-Related Migration, a Lecturing Fellow at the Duke Center for International Development and a Senior Researcher at the International Migration Institute.
Trained as a sociologist, her research to examines the root causes of human migration and immobility, with an emphasis on the themes of gender, youth, education, rural development, and climate change. She has carried out extensive qualitative and mixed-methods fieldwork in Ethiopia. Her book, Moved by Modernity: How Development Shapes Migration in Rural Ethiopia, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
At the Duke Center for International Development, Kerilyn teaches on migration policy and development and leads Rural Development and the Capability to Stay, a research project funded by the Social Science Research Council. She has also worked with the United States Agency for International Development, International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration, and the Joint Research Center of the European Commission on policy-oriented publications and dialogue.
Kerilyn holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam (2019), an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford (2014), and a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia (2009). She has held visiting researcher positions at the University of Addis Ababa and Princeton University.

Udry Lecture: Jennifer Manly: Social and Structural Drivers of Cognitive Aging and Dementia
2024-04-11 15:00 - 17:00
The 2024 J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture will be presented by Jennifer Manly, a Professor of Neuropsychology in Neurology at the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center and the Taub Institute for Research in Aging and Alzheimer’s disease at Columbia University.
Her research focuses on mechanisms of inequalities in cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her research team has partnered with the Black and Latinx communities in New York City and around the United States to design and carry out investigations of structural and social forces across the lifecourse, such as educational opportunities, discrimination, and socioeconomic inequality, and how these factors relate to cognition and brain health later in life. She is the MPI of the Columbia Interdisciplinary Research Center on Alzheimer’s Disparities which focuses on mentoring early career scientists from minoritized backgrounds.
Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer’s Association, and she has authored over 220 peer-reviewed publications and 10 chapters. She was the 2014 recipient of the Tony Wong Diversity Award for Outstanding Mentorship, was the recipient of the Paul Satz-International Neuropsychological Society Career Mentoring Award in 2020, and was named the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research Senior Mentor of the Year in 2022. Dr. Manly was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021. She served on the HHS Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Research, Care and Services from 2011 – 2015 and is a current member of the National Advisory Council on Aging.
