The University of Chicago

Department

BSD CRI - Administration

About the Department

The University of Chicago biomedical enterprise houses three entities: The Biological Sciences Division (BSD), the University of Chicago Medicine (UCM), and the Pritzker School of Medicine. Collectively called UCM, we are one of the nation's leading academic medical institutions and have been at the forefront of discovery, education, and clinical care since 1927. Located 20 minutes south of downtown Chicago, our Hyde Park main campus provides a single environment for learning, world-renowned basic science and clinical research, and outstanding clinical care.

The BSD is the largest academic unit within the University. The BSD is comprised of faculty from ten basic science departments, 13 clinical departments, and several Centers and Institutes. The approximately 1,300 faculty and 3,000 staff members working in the BSD collaborate across the organization to achieve our Mission, Vision, and Values (MVV):

MISSION: As part of the University of Chicago, we pursue globally impactful solutions to seemingly unsolvable challenges. Through our rigorous research, innovative education, and comprehensive care and healing, we collaborate on life-changing advancements that create meaningful results for our community and the world, including a greater, more equitable future for all.

VISION: Together, we elevate the human experience with knowledge and health care.

VALUES:

• Commit to Excellence: We contribute our exceptional talents to all we do and empower the same spirit of excellence in others.
• Embrace Curiosity: We stay open to new ideas, champion diverse perspectives, and drive a culture of thoughtful risk-taking to deliver transformative innovation.
• Embody Equity: We identify systemic issues and then foster change to drive a more equitable environment inclusive of diverse people, ideas, and fields of science.
• Grow Together: We meaningfully collaborate with one another to create something bigger than we could ever achieve alone.
• Make a Difference: We lead with heart and compassion in all our interactions. We create positive change in our areas of influence, whether expanding scientific inquiry, developing the next generation of leaders, or healing our community.
• Take Ownership: We accomplish what we say we will and hold ourselves and one another accountable for our actions.

The MVV serves as our True North, charting our strategic plan for the next ten years and beyond. It is an exciting time to be a part of the University of Chicago and the BSD. Our team is helping shape the future for our learners, staff, faculty, patients, and community.

The Center for Research Informatics (CRI) is an organization within the Biological Sciences Division (BSD) that provides informatics resources and services to BSD faculty. Four main services comprise the CRI's operations: applications development, bioinformatics, IT infrastructure and scientific computing, and clinical research data warehousing/business intelligence. Through these service lines, the CRI enables research of the highest scientific merit and advances the state of the art of clinical and translational informatics. The CRI recruits exceptional candidates looking to leverage state-of-the-art technologies to deliver innovative and exciting solutions biomedical researchers.

Job Summary

The incumbent will be responsible for supporting clinical data science and analytics requests for the Biological Sciences Division. This will require the development and deployment of analytics and machine learning tools, relational databases, and web-based interfaces to facilitate the collection, analysis, and presentation of structured and unstructured data. This includes understanding data extractions, transformations, and loads and translating SQL code to support the ETL team in acquiring new data sources into data warehouses, affiliated data marts, both local and distributed and self-service tools, and working with existing teams to further development according to existing standards and conventions. The incumbent will be responsible for wrangling clinical data and assisting team members with identifying insights from procured data sets. This will include understanding data source acquisition and positioning from self-service tools, identifying additional data sources to be procured, and harmonizing them to meet project-specific goals. Additionally, the incumbent will be responsible for working with data, both standardized and unstandardized, and creating and maintaining a growing body of documentation. Incumbent will perform advanced data analysis using coding languages to answer research questions under several University faculty members' direction and support quality improvement initiatives. Finally, this position involves translating project requirements into data analytics specifications, generating project deliverables, and conducting code reviews to ensure analytics insights are of the highest quality. An ideal candidate will be able to quickly master medical terminology related to clinical data requests, communicate effectively with a business analyst and clients, use statistical methodologies to optimize the organization of data deliverables, perform analyses using R and Python, etc., and generate visualizations using Tableau as needed. Prior to delivery of analysis, the incumbent will assist with data quality checks, making sure that each deliverable matches the original request specifications, and that the data is of the highest quality. The incumbent will perform statistical analyses as needed and develop reports for clinician-scientists as needed. Services for the CRI may include developing and implementing software methodologies and computational/database tools as needed by the project, keeping abreast of industry trends and new technologies, and recommending potential solutions based on the latest technical developments. The position operates within a federal recharge center.

Responsibilities

• Analyze clinical and other related data to identify and interpret trends in support of data requests, business cases, and proposed projects.
• Translate requirements for the design, construction, testing, and maintenance of data warehouse and related functionality.
• Design, develop, and test business intelligence outputs (including visualization) to ensure useful and insightful information using software including R, Python, Tableau, and/or Excel to support research and quality improvement initiatives.
• Test and validate data with the purpose of understanding and making conclusions to support decision-making processes.
• Assist in analyzing data for the purpose of extracting applicable information. 
• Performs research projects that provide analysis for a number of programs and initiatives.
• Helps prepare results for publication, grants, and online visualizations and presentations.
• May assist staff or faculty members with data manipulation, statistical applications, programming, analysis and modeling on a scheduled or ad-hoc basis.
• Collects, organizes, and may analyze information from the University's various internal data systems as well as from external sources.
• Builds and rigorously evaluates statistical models using best practices of machine learning and statistical inference.
• Performs maintenance on large and complex research and administrative datasets. 
• Contributes to the design, implementation, and validation of an efficient and reproducible data processing pipeline
• Manage a variety of information systems and data files, including large and complex files: analyzing file structure, using and creating file layouts, transforming raw data into finished products.
• Assisting with the development of analytic pipelines for natural language processing of clinical text, including providing general programming support.
• Monitor for timely and accurate completion of select datasets.
• Participate in strategic initiatives to enhance data management and reporting to support research and quality improvement initiatives.
• Collaborate closely with a cross-functional team of Data Analysts, Project Managers, Developers, and Leadership to ensure high-quality projects are performed.
• Proactively identify issues and opportunities to improve data systems and related policies as an aspect of data governance.
• Prepares project memos, summaries, presentations, reports, and other work products for dissemination targeting academic researchers and other stakeholders, as needed.
• Attend meetings and read current literature on the computational aspects of clinical research informatics.
• Respond to requests and engages other IT resources as needed.
• Analyzes moderately complex data sets for the purpose of extracting and purposefully using applicable information.
• Provides professional support to staff or faculty members in defining the project and applying principals of data science in manipulation, statistical applications, programming, analysis and modeling.
• Cleans, transforms, merges, and matches between large and complex research and administrative datasets. Plans own resources to collect, organize, and analyze information from the University's various internal data systems as well as from external sources.
• Builds and analyzes statistical models and reproducible data processing pipelines using knowledge of best practices in machine learning and statistical inference. Serves as a single point of contact for all requests and engages other IT resources to assist as needed. May partner with other campus teams to assist faculty with data science related needs.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

Education:

Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.

Work Experience:

Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 2-5 years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Certifications:

• 
  

Preferred Qualifications

Education:

• Master's degree in biostatistics, computer science, or other related field OR requisite job experience in statistical analysis.
• Terminal degree strongly preferred.

Experience:

• Experience in organizing, analyzing, and disseminating significant amounts of information with attention to detail and accuracy.
• Experience in data management, including extraction, transformation, loading, validation/testing, and structuring of data.
• Experience with business intelligence and visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, etc.
• Knowledge of academic medical centers.
• Knowledge of research processes.
• Ability to work in matrixed environment.
• Ability to communicate with multiple stakeholders and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• Understanding of various common data models (OMOP, PCORnet).
• Experience working with application development and/or agile teams.
• Understanding of healthcare terminologies.
• Understanding of common healthcare related coding systems (ICD9/10, CPT, LOINC, RxNORM).
• Advanced knowledge of machine learning techniques and algorithms.
• Experience developing, debugging and testing reproducible and maintainable code.
• Experience with or proficiency in Python, R and Bash programming.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present data in a simple and straightforward way for non-technical audiences.
• Strong interpersonal skills.
• Strong initiative and a resourceful approach to problem solving and learning.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced, matrixed environment.
• Sound critical thinking skills.
• Strong attention to detail with superb analytical and organization skills.
• Familiarity with program evaluation and causal inference.

Licenses and Certifications:

• Clarity.

Technical Skills or Knowledge:

• Data management, including extraction, transformation, loading, validation/testing, and structuring of data.
• Business intelligence and visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, etc.
• Various common data models (OMOP, PCORnet).
• Python, R, and Bash programming.

Preferred Competencies

• High level of problem-solving and decision-making skills.
• Knowledge of healthcare data including ICD-9, ICD-10, and CPT.
• Expert in SQL and Excel.
• Proficiency in relational databases with experience designing transformations, mappings, and working with reference table.
• Ability to break down and translate client requirements into individual tasks and fulfill them through programming computational methods, machine learning techniques, and algorithms.
• Ability to translate technical information to non-technical audiences.
• Critical thinking and multi-tasking skills with the ability to manage multiple projects.
• Time management skills.
• Proficiency in creating technical specifications, business cases, and other development-related documentation. 
• Experience investigating data issues and working with a cross-functional team for problem resolution.
• Energized by working through complex problems.
• Intellectual curiosity.

Working Conditions

• Office, hybrid (2-3 days on-site, required).

Application Documents

• Resume (required)
• Cover Letter (required)

When applying, the document(s) MUST be uploaded via the My Experience page, in the section titled Application Documents of the application.

Job Family

Research

Role Impact

Individual Contributor

Scheduled Weekly Hours

40

Drug Test Required

No

Health Screen Required

No

Motor Vehicle Record Inquiry Required

No

Pay Rate Type

Salary

FLSA Status

Exempt

Pay Range

$70,000.00 - $100,000.00

The included pay rate or range represents the University’s good faith estimate of the possible compensation offer for this role at the time of posting.

Benefits Eligible

Yes

The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off. Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.

Posting Statement

The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity/Disabled/Veterans and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, status as an individual with a disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University's Notice of Nondiscrimination.

Staff Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-5800 or submit a request via Applicant Inquiry Form.

We seek a diverse pool of applicants who wish to join an academic community that places the highest value on rigorous inquiry and encourages a diversity of perspectives, experiences, groups of individuals, and ideas to inform and stimulate intellectual challenge, engagement, and exchange.

All offers of employment are contingent upon a background check that includes a review of conviction history. A conviction does not automatically preclude University employment. Rather, the University considers conviction information on a case-by-case basis and assesses the nature of the offense, the circumstances surrounding it, the proximity in time of the conviction, and its relevance to the position.

The University of Chicago's Annual Security & Fire Safety Report (Report) provides information about University offices and programs that provide safety support, crime and fire statistics, emergency response and communications plans, and other policies and information. The Report can be accessed online at: http://securityreport.uchicago.edu. Paper copies of the Report are available, upon request, from the University of Chicago Police Department, 850 E. 61st Street, Chicago, IL 60637.

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