Grants>Aging

American Sociological Association Graduate Student Paper Award: Aging and the Life Course

This annual award honors the outstanding paper written by a graduate student (or students) member(s) of the Section on Aging and the Life Course, as determined by the Graduate Student Paper Award committee. Papers authored or coauthored solely by students are eligible; faculty co-authorship is not allowed. Eligible student authors include master's students and pre-doctoral student members of the section who are currently enrolled in a graduate program or who have graduated no earlier than December of 2011.

Unpublished, under review, accepted, or published papers are eligible. If published, the paper should have appeared within the past two calendar years (e.g., a paper nominated in 2012 may have been published anytime during 2011 or 2012). The nominated paper should be journal-length (35 pages maximum) and in the format used by the American Sociological Review. Only one award will be given. All nominations are due by March 1, 2012. Self-nominations are encouraged. To be nominated send a hard copy and an electronic version of the paper to the Chair of the Graduate Student Paper Award Committee. The award consists of $250 presented to the winner at the Business Meeting of the Section, held during the annual ASA meeting.

Nominations for the 2012 award should be sent to:

Professor Teresa Cooney
Chair, SALC Graduate Student Paper Award Committee
Department of Human Development & Family Studies
314 Gentry Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-7700
E-mail: cooneyt@missouri.edu

Call for Applications: Somers Aging and Long-Term Care Internship

Application Deadline: Thursday, March 1, 2012

Honorarium: $3,500.00

The National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) seeks outstanding graduate and upper division undergraduate students to serve as interns on aging and long-term care policy projects in Washington DC. Students studying economics, gerontology, political science, public policy, health policy, social work, actuarial science or related subjects are urged to apply for this 12-week summer semester internship.

The Somers Aging and Long-Term Care Internship is designed to recognize qualified students and provide them with a challenging learning experience. This internship, compared to the Washington Internship on Social Insurance, focuses on aging and long-term care issues and is more research oriented.

Somers interns have the opportunity to:

Work with leading long-term care policy experts;
Gain valuable work experience; and
Make professional contacts and network in their area of interest; and attend relevant seminars, symposia, and make site visits to long-term care facilities.

Somers interns work closely with the experts in their Washington or Baltimore offices. Placements may include:

AARP
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Alzheimer’s Association
America’s Health Insurance Plans
Congressional Research Service
Institute for the Future of Aging Services
Institute for Health Care Research and Policy
National Academy on an Aging Society, and others.

NASI, as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to furthering knowledge and understanding of social insurance programs, is uniquely qualified to provide students with challenging internship opportunities. NASI's members, recognized experts in social insurance and health policy, offer the interns access to information and experiences found nowhere else. This is a nationally competitive program with only five placements made each year. Academic credit may be arranged through the intern’s college or university. International Students with valid student visas can be placed with non-governmental organizations, if placement projects match their skills and interests.

To apply for the Somers Aging and Long-Term Care Research Internship, please submit the following by March 1:

A completed Online Internship Application or a PDF Internship Application form

A one-page cover letter that explains your interest in the internship program and answers the following questions:

In your own words, how would you define social insurance and its role in your family’s life?
To what extent have you studied social insurance programs?
What special skills or qualifications will you bring to your placement?
On what types of assignments do you perform best? (e.g. research, writing, statistics, computer applications, organizing etc.)
How will this experience relate to your future career plans?

Resume

Official transcript (if you are a graduate student, submit a copy of your undergraduate and graduate course work to date)

Three professional and/or academic written letters of recommendation with contact information

A five to ten page writing sample which reflects the type and quality of work you have done

Mail to:

Internship Programs
National Academy of Social Insurance
1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20036-1904

Application and materials must be received by March 1.

Completed applications will be considered by the selection committees for placements beginning in May or June.

Applications will be considered incomplete if any information is missing as of the deadline.

For additional information, contact NASI’s Internship Coordinator at (202) 452-8097 or internships@nasi.org.

Call for Applications: 19th Annual RAND Summer Institute

RAND is pleased to announce the 19th annual RAND Summer Institute (RSI). RSI consists of two annual conferences that address critical issues facing our aging population. The Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists will be held on July 9–10, and the Demography, Economics, Psychology, and Epidemiology of Aging conference on July 11–12, 2012. Both conferences will convene at the RAND Corporation headquarters in Santa Monica, California.

The application deadline is March 9, 2012

The conferences are sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.

Qualified applicants must hold a Ph.D. or have completed two years of a Ph.D. program and be actively working on a dissertation. Only applicants working in the field of aging—or actively considering this research field—will be considered.

Mini-Medical School
The Mini-Medical School, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, is an invitational series of lectures about biomedical issues relating to aging. The Mini-Medical School program should be of interest to all non-medically trained scholars whose research relates to the aging process and the medical treatment of elderly.

The program is organized as a series of lectures, each with a distinct theme. Topics will be drawn from the diverse fields of biomedicine, including biology, genetics, patient care, psychiatry, and other areas. Expert clinicians and researchers will lecture on how the practice of medicine can inform, and improve, social science research. Participants will gain insight into the science of aging and a greater understanding of relevant medical issues.

The 2012 conference will be held July 9–10, just prior to the workshop in Demography, Economics, Psychology, and Epidemiology of Aging. Participants attending RSI are encouraged to attend both sessions. The Mini-Medical School will pay travel and living expenses for as many of the invited attendees as funds allow. This program affords a unique opportunity to learn about the practice of medicine in an informal setting with other social science researchers.

Eligibility
Qualified applicants must hold a Ph.D. or have completed two years of a Ph.D. program and be actively working on a dissertation. Only applicants working in the field of aging—or actively considering this research field—will be considered.

How to Apply
In order to be considered for the 2012 Mini-Medical School, please complete and return the online application form and submit the required supplementary materials.

Funding
Applicants may request fellowship support that will cover all expenses associated with participation, including travel and accommodations.

Deadline for Applications: March 9, 2012

Demography, Economics, Psychology, and Epidemiology of Aging

RAND is pleased to announce the 19th annual RAND Summer Institute (RSI) on the Demography, Economics, Psychology, and Epidemiology of Aging. The RAND Summer Institute, which is an annual conference that addresses critical issues facing our aging population, is comprised of the Workshop on Aging and the Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists. The 2012 Workshop on Aging will be held July 11–12 at the RAND Corporation headquarters campus in Santa Monica, California, just after the Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists on July 9–10. The conference serves as a vehicle to provide additional training to researchers new to the field of aging. The conference is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.

Funding
Applicants may request fellowship support that will cover all expenses associated with participation, including travel and accommodations.

Deadline for Applications: March 9, 2012

Questions?
Contact: Diana Malouf: diana_malouf@rand.org

2012 Senior Scholar in Aging Award

The Ellison Medical Foundation was established and is supported by Lawrence J. Ellison to support biomedical research (including basic biology, basic biomedicine and epidemiology) on aging. The Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar program is designed to support established investigators, working at institutions in the U.S., to conduct research in the basic biological and basic biomedical sciences relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities. The award is intended to provide significant support to established investigators in order to allow the development of new, creative research programs by investigators who may not currently be conducting aging research or who may wish to develop new research programs in aging. The Foundation particularly wishes to stimulate new research, which has rigorous scientific foundations, but which may not be currently funded adequately, because of its perceived novelty, its high risk, or because it is from an area where traditional research interests absorb most funding.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to

Structural biology
Molecular genetics
Studies with model systems ranging from lower eukaryotes to humans
Inquiries testing the relevance of simpler models to human aging
Genetic epidemiology of aging; candidate longevity genes
Aging in the immune system
Host defense molecules in aging systems
Mechanisms of free radical induced cell aging
Mechanisms of aging in various differentiated cell populations
Gene/environment and gene/gene interactions
Integrative physiology
New approaches to age-modulated disease mechanisms

Eligibility

Any interested researcher may submit a Letter of Intent for the 2012 Senior Scholar in Aging award competition; however, current or past Senior Scholar Awardees are not eligible. Applicants for the Senior Scholar Award are expected to furnish evidence of substantial prior scientific creativity and productivity not necessarily targeted to aging heretofore. Evaluation by the Aging Review Group and the Scientific Advisory Board will be based upon the applicant's submission re: scientific contributions to date, the quality of publications, and the importance to aging of the proposed new research. The Aging Review Group and the Scientific Advisory Board will pay close attention to arguments as to why the work does not or would not qualify for support from established sources such as the NIA. Except for compelling circumstances, the awards are not intended to supplement ongoing, already funded programs but, instead, to inspire new directions, which may entail substantial risk. There is no limit on the number of Senior Scholar letters of intent from any one institution. Up to 25 Senior Scholar awards will be made in 2012.

Letter of Intent for Submitting an Application

Instructions and a link to submit a Letter of Intent online for the 2012 application cycle appear on the Applications and Receipt Dates page.

Letters of Intent are due by March 8, 2012 (online submissions must be completed by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time).

Terms of the Award

The Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar Awards in Aging will be made in early October 2012. Each award will be made for up to $150,000 per year direct cost, plus indirect costs, for up to four years. Funding for years two, three and four is contingent upon submission of an acceptable progress report.

Acceptable uses for award funds include project-related: salaries, other personnel costs, equipment, supplies, resource acquisition and travel. Carry-overs in excess of $25,000 must be approved by the Ellison Medical Foundation Scholars Program Office. Full indirect costs at the NIH Facilities and Administration (F & A) negotiated rate will be provided. The Ellison Medical Foundation does not permit indirect costs on equipment, even for purchases less than $5,000, for initial awardee years of 2005 and later.

For all (new and non-competing renewal) awards supporting research involving human subjects, animal subjects, research collaborations with foreign institutions, biosafety issues, or embryonic stem cells the Foundation will require the following documentation before an award can be made:

Human subjects:

Copies of the protocol submitted to the Institutional Review Board(s)for this project* and the notification of protocol approval from all relevant IRBs (for funded awards an annual update will be required at the time of the progress report).
Documentation from the applicant institution that the principal investigator has completed training on the protection of human research participants.

Animal subjects:

A copy of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approval for this project* (an annual update will be required at the time of each progress report).

Foreign component:

A letter of support from the collaborating in-country institution.

Biosafety:Research supported by the Ellison Medical Foundation is expected to conform to the relevant NIH Guidelines for biosafety, including those for handling of hazardous reagents and those for research involving recombinant DNA and gene transfer http://oba.od.nih.gov/rdna/nih_guidelines_oba.html .
A copy of Institutional Biosafety Committee approval for this project* .

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Committee approval of the protocol for this project* if it involves human embryonic stem cells.

* Approval for this project means the EMF funded project, not a similar protocol funded by some other entity.

For further information, contact:

Richard L. Sprott, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Ellison Medical Foundation
4710 Bethesda Avenue
Suite 204
Bethesda, MD 20814-5226
(301) 657-1830 (Phone)
(301) 657-1828 (Fax)
rsprott@ellisonfoundation.org