Dev-Core-001

DEVELOPMENT CORE: PROJECT SUMMARY The Development Core (DC) is the central research and innovation hub of the PSC. Its overarching objective is to promote the professional activities, intellectual exchanges, and academic ties, including access to financial support, that generate an environment that enhances the production of innovative and high-impact research in our five Primary Research Areas (PRAs): New Dynamics of Population Diversity, Formal Demography and Demographic Methods, Child Development and Human Endowments, Structures of Inequality and the Life Course, and Population and the Environment. The specific aims of the DC are to: 1) recruit and mentor junior scientists to produce innovative, high-impact population science research in our PRAs and foster their growth via a dedicated mentoring program, and career and grant writing workshops; 2) administer, oversee, and promote activities that foster innovative, interdisciplinary, and high-impact population science, including a weekly colloquium, special conferences and events, research workshops, and grant writing and career workshops; 3) administer, oversee, and promote the Quartet Pilot Research Project Competition in collaboration with the Population Aging and Research Center (PARC), Center for Health Initiatives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), and Boettner Center for Financial Gerontology, and link research associates to other sources of support at Penn to increase competitiveness for peer-reviewed external funding in population research, especially among junior scientists.; and 4) administer, oversee, and promote PSC's partnerships and outreach initiatives. These activities include partnerships with international collaborators and Temple University's Public Policy Lab; sponsorship of the Philadelphia Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC); and a new sponsored research affiliation program.