| CSSI News and Opportunities | Dear CSSI Community,
I hope your semester is off to a strong start and that your research and creative activities are progressing well.
This month’s CSSI newsletter highlights new opportunities for UI faculty to launch nationally representative surveys and build advanced social science methods skills through our expanded Spring 2026 workshop series. We are excited to announce the selection of this year’s Grant Writing Residency Program awardees and to introduce our new residents. You’ll also find features on recent research by CSSI affiliates and staff, including work on suicide prevention, speech development, firearm safety, and how people are using AI tools. We invite you to explore the full newsletter and learn how CSSI can support your research this semester.
Sincerely,
Mark Berg
Director, Center for Social Science Innovation
Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology  | | | | CSSI seeks UI faculty to apply for Surveying the Social World. Selected researchers will have the opportunity to submit up to 35 survey questions to a nationally representative sample of 1000 U.S. adults. As part of the award, CSSI will fully subsidize the survey costs and provide end-to-end survey support, including survey administration, programming, testing, deployment, and IRB compliance.
Apply by Monday, March 2, 2026. | | | The spring 2026 calendar for CSSI's Social Science Methods Series has been announced! The semester will kick off with a workshop on research data management essentials with Brian Westra, data services librarian. Other workshop topics include network analysis, factor analysis, data visualization in Stata, longitudinal modeling, geospatial data analysis in R, python, and Large Language Models (LLM).
Take a look at the full Spring 2026 workshop lineup. | | | | Katherine Britt, assistant professor in the College of Nursing, and Philip Combiths, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, have been awarded proposal-development support through CSSI's Grant Writing Residency Program, a competitive initiative designed to help advance high-quality, externally funded research in the social sciences.
Learn about their projects. | | | Haelim Jeong, assistant professor in the School of Social Work and CSSI researcher affiliate, studies suicide prevention, including suicidal ambivalence—the co-occurring desire to live and to die—among suicide attempt survivors. Jeong was also recently selected to be part of a research collaboration supported by CSSI’s Research Convergence Residency Program to explore loneliness, sleep disruption, and the use of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT for mental health support.
Read the feature on Haelim Jeong. | | | | Ethan Kutlu, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and CSSI researcher affiliate, recently published a study tracking how school-aged children categorize speech sounds. His research supports new evidence that speech categorization continues to evolve beyond the first year of life, extending into elementary school years and becoming more refined.
Read about Kutlu's publication. | | | Yi-Fang Lu, postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Social Science Innovation, was selected for the Dare to Discover campaign, which celebrates outstanding UI student and postdoc researchers on banners throughout downtown Iowa City. Lu's research integrates policy databases, health and crime surveys, and geospatial data to uncover patterns in firearm violence and how exposure to community violence affects health and well-being.
Learn more about Lu's research. | | | Research Findings Supported by CSSI | | CSSI researcher affiliates Ken Brown and Brian An recently purchased 10 survey questions through CSSI's Survey Harvest initiative. Results from the survey of 1,000 U.S. adults yielded surprising results as to how people are using artificial intelligence tools in their personal and professional lives, prompting a drive to dive deeper.
Read about the findings from Iowa Capital Dispatch. | A new study from University of Iowa researchers offers fresh insight into how rural families believe firearm safety efforts can be made more effective. CSSI staff supported focus group facilitation, transcription, and coding for this project. Cassidy Branch, research services manager, was a co-author on the study.
Read about the project from the College of Public Health. | | | Opportunities from CSSI Partners | | The University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center (UI IPRC), funded by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announced the availability of funds for one-year pilot projects of up to $22,500. The UI IPRC’s mission is to support multidisciplinary academic and community efforts to prevent and control traumatic injuries and violence, with a special focus on rural populations.
Apply by Friday, March 20, 2026. | The Office of Undergraduate Research is now accepting applications for Independent Creative Research by Undergraduates (ICRU) Fellowships. OUR ICRU Fellowships fund the research and creative projects of undergraduates during the summer or academic year.
Apply by Feb. 13, 2026 for summer fellowships.
Apply by March 27, 2026 for academic year fellowships. | | | |
