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Research Data Centre Appoints New Academic Director
Post Date:
Oct 31, 2022
Queen’s University Library (QUL) is excited to announce Dr. Christopher Ferrall as the new Academic Director of the Queen’s Research Data Centre (QRDC), effective November 1, 2022 for a five-year term.
Dr. Ferrall has a rich history of engagement with the QRDC. After spearheading the initiative to create the QRDC in 2005, he was appointed its inaugural Academic Director until 2012. He taught one of the first RDC-based courses in the country and collaborated on SSHRC and CFI grants awarded to the national network of research data centres. Currently a professor in the Department of Economics at Queen's University, Dr. Ferrall has held visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon, New York University, the Norwegian School of Economics, and UC-Santa Barbara. Dr. Ferrall holds a PhD (Economics) from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree (Economics and Computer Science) from the University of Wyoming. His research involves studying the labour market by integrating economic theory and econometric technique and developing computational methods related to dynamic programming and agency theory. Dr. Ferrall's goals in taking on the Academic Directorship of the QRDC include invigorating QRDC outreach to graduate students and faculty across the university and working with the national data centre network to advance the implementation of remote computing options for RDC access.
The QRDC is a member of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN), which provides researchers with access to microdata masterfiles from population and health surveys. The CRDCN is a premier research and training platform for over 2,000 researchers in the quantitative social and health sciences in Canada. Funded by SSHRC, CIHR, CFI, the FRQ, Statistics Canada, and 42 primary and affiliated partner universities, including Queen's University, the CRDCN provides unique access to Statistics Canada data on 33 campuses across the country to advance knowledge and inform public policy. CRDCN is recognized as one of Canada’s Major Science Initiatives.