Established in 2006, The Duke University Population Research Institute (DUPRI) brings together Duke faculty, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students engaged in population research. DUPRI is home to the federally funded Center for Population Health and Aging (CPHA), a center dedicated to broadening the scope of research in Aging, and the Duke Population Research Center (DPRC), which promotes excellence in population health and human development research.
DUPRI's goals:
- Organize the breadth and depth of population research at Duke into a synergistic whole much greater than the sum of its parts
- Attract notable researchers and develop outstanding new talent
- Promote intellectual activity surrounding population research in the classroom, the laboratory and out in the field
Researchers at DUPRI employ an unusually wide set of methods, many of which they pioneered. These include:
- Innovative data collections, including population-based cohort studies, international panel and network surveys, and state-of-the art biomarkers
- Statistical and mathematical modeling of longitudinal data
- Measuring biological processes (physiological and genomic) and analyzing their influence on development and aging across human and non-human primate populations
- Gene-environment interaction studies
- Network analyses and investigations into network influence on population processes and the reliance on networks to advance survey sampling
- New approaches to causal analysis which rely on natural experiments and field experiments
- Ethnography and mixed methods.
The Institute offers assistance through each stage of the grant process, and DUPRI provides central support for student training and development through mentoring, research opportunities, sponsored seminars, workshops and conferences. DUPRI also arranges necessary travel planning and other research-related assistance, and administers access to computational resources customized for population analyses.