Northeastern Illinois University’s Center of Health and the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (ChicagoCHEC) are pleased to announce the 2024 Women in Science Week, featuring three days of events, including their 7th annual Women in Science Conference March 18-20, 2024.
Women in Science Week events will take place in person on the University’s Main Campus, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave. in Chicago, and via Zoom. Zoom details will be sent directly to those who sign up in advance and free parking will be available on the 4th level of the Parking Facility for those attending in person. These events are free and open to the public.
Christina Ciecierski, Ph.D., is a Professor of Economics at Northeastern and Principal Investigator for ChicagoCHEC and Director of the NEIU Center of Health.
“The NEIU Center of Health team is very proud of the tradition that the Women in Science Conference has become at our University,” said Ciecierski. “This year, we are thrilled to focus on women in Statistics because this field of study is integral to so many of our majors in Northeastern’s colleges. We look forward to seeing students, faculty and staff from across NEIU’s programs at this year’s Women in Science events!”
Various activities and workshops are offered throughout the week, including the 23rd Mathematical and Statistical Modeling of Complex Systems Workshop and the 2024 Datathon on March 18-19. The workshop will provide participants with hands-on experience in interdisciplinary quantitative analysis. Topics include modeling for cancer risk assessment, modeling in health, sciences, business and economics, and research from ChicagoCHEC. The Research & Statistical Service Team (REST) within the NEIU Center of Health will host the Datathon, with this year’s theme being “Examining Worldwide Health Disparities using Excel.” Cash prizes will be awarded to the winning teams, and only Northeastern students are eligible to participate.
One of the highlights of this year’s Women in Science Conference is a demonstration of how to utilize the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program. All of Us is a historic effort to collect and study medical data from one million or more people living in the United States. The goal of the program is better health for all of us.
Joeli Brinkman, Ph.D. is the Research Manager and Site Director for ChicagoCHEC at Northeastern and has coordinated efforts to expand Northeastern’s research capacity within REST, the NEIU Center of Health and the University’s Office of Research and Sponsored Projects by spearheading efforts to license All of Us for the University.
“Unlike research studies that focus on one disease or group of people, the All of Us research program is building a diverse database containing biological, sociological and physical measures of health that can inform thousands of studies on a variety of health conditions,” Brinkman said. “This database can be a very useful tool for several departments on campus, including the basic sciences, sociological and computer science departments for conducting preliminary studies and analysis.”
The information session on the All of Us Research Program will be held at 10 a.m. March 20 in Alumni Hall South. It will be led by the National Institutes of Health Health Science Policy Analyst Erica Martinez Zumba and Senior Design Researcher for PYXIS Partners Ghausia Ludwig.
Women in Science Conference merchandise, including T-shirts and baseball caps, to support the conference are now available for purchase. Orders will be available for pickup during the conference and can also be shipped for an additional charge.
Top photo: Northeastern Professor of Mathematics Emma Turian, Ph.D., holding a microphone and speaking on a career panel during a Women in Science Conference.
