Duke University requests funds for an Academic Career Leadership Award to Dr. Kenneth C. Land to further interdisciplinary research into the social demography, medical demography, biodemography, and economics/actuarial science of aging. Land's scientific contributions to demography, statistics, and sociology are widely recognized. His leadership skills have been tested and proven during three full terms as Chairman of the Sociology Department at Duke. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Demographic Studies and has had a long association with the current NIA-funded training program in the social and medical demography of aging which he now directs. The proposed project would build on the substantial portfolio of research projects underway on the medical demography, social demography, and actuarial science of aging at the Center, as well as on the large array of additional research on aging at Duke. This project would allow Professor Land to develop the institutional and network connections of the Center with a number of other programs at Duke and neighboring institutions; to improve the curriculum in the demography of aging for our training program as well as in related areas across a number of departments and schools; and to enhance the research capacity at Duke through increased interaction among researchers and through the provision of research support services, especially programming assistance to facilitate the use of several new, complex, and longitudinal datasets.
