This award provides support to Dr. Yu Xie under the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Awards program. The objective of this program is to recognize outstanding young faculty in science and engineering, to enhance the academic career of recent Ph.D. recipients, and to foster contact and cooperation between academia and industry. Dr. Xie has already made significant research contributions to the fields of sociology and demography, and he has the potential to become a leader in academic research and education. This award will allow the investigator to pursue his research interests in the sociology of science and in the development of statistical methods for the social sciences. Dr. Xie plans to continue his research on the causes of women's underrepresentation in science. This research is based on longitudinal data for high school students, recent college graduates and experienced scientists and engineers. A related research interest of Dr. Xie's is the social determinants of academic achievement in mathematics and science among high school students and the reasons for the relatively low achievement of students in the United States compared with other developed countries. Dr. Xie also plans to continue his work on statistical methodology and demographic techniques. He will develop models for analyzing event history data with fewer restrictions than currently available model, and he plans to develop new models for comparing social mobility across nations and time.
