Job Opportunity: Content Research Analyst for the Human Islet Research Network

[Human Islet Research Network]

Position Summary:
We are seeking a Research Associate II for the Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope.  The candidate in this position will work directly with diabetes scientists around the world, to advance and promote the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN).  Using related databases and content curation strategies, this individual will gather and generate required information needed to register, annotate, and publicize scientific resources in project registry systems.  The applicant will be part of a multi-disciplinary team responsible for developing, managing, checking, and sharing the metadata needed to describe a scientific resource, such as biomedical datasets, biological reagents, documents (e.g. protocols), and/or technologies (e.g. assays). 

The candidate will develop content using literature curation methodologies, biological ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and databases, but often requires direct interaction with and feedback from submitting laboratories, i.e. scientists. Metadata completeness and correctness is of primary importance; the applicant will organize and oversee existing registry data, as well as perform reviews of new or modified metadata submissions.   Curated registry data are made freely available to the public and scientific communities.  The applicant is expected to work collaboratively with laboratory scientists, bioinformaticians, software developers/engineers, and others focused on the prevention and cure of type 1 diabetes.  The ability to share and learn from one another is a key feature of the team.  Telework is an option. 

Key Responsibilities include:

• Creative new approaches to marketing scientific resources, publications, and discoveries
• Identify scientific resources of interest, described in the literature, or reported/shared by submitting laboratories
• Understand and critically evaluate scientific publications, for collection of key metadata parameters
• Facilitate user training, orient users on common techniques and applications, and promote HIRN on social media
• Participate in the development, testing, training, and modification of registry user interfaces
• Utilize ontological or controlled vocabulary terms for standardization of metadata
• Interact with biocurators from other biomedical resources
• Forecast curation needs and services
• Respond to user questions and queries
• Interface with users and laboratories to manage and assist with data collection and cleaning
• Communicate clearly and work well with others in a multi-disciplinary team with both local and remote team members to improve scientific data quality
• Follows established City of Hope and department policies, procedures, objectives, performance improvement, attendance, safety, environmental, and infection control guidelines.  Practices a high level of integrity and honesty, maintains confidentiality.

Basic education, experience and skills required for consideration:

• A Bachelor’s degree with 2 years of experience or Master’s with 1 year of experience is required.  Degrees within Biological Sciences, Bioinformatics, Library and Information Science, Information Systems, or Computer Science is preferred
• Familiarity with the application of biological/biomedical ontologies (e.g. DO, OBI, EFO, CLO, CO), taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies for scientific content curation
• Willingness to learn new database technologies
• Customer service oriented with patience, attention to detail, and ability to communicate clearly

 

Preferred education, experience and skills:

• Degree(s) or specialization in Biocuration or Data Curation
• Computational and/or statistical skills with familiarity with one or more of the following programming languages: R, SAS, SQL, SPARQL
• Understanding of data analysis pipelines
• Domain expertise in diabetes
• 3+ years of experience in science and data quality assessment

Additional Information:

• For more information on Dr. John Kaddis’ research, please visit here.
• To protect the health of patients and staff and to comply with new State of California mandates, City of Hope staff are required to show proof of full vaccination by September 30, 2021.  Compliance is a condition of employment.