[HIRING] causal discovery for social good

[Vincent Huang]

Dear all,

 

We are a privately funded ‘action tank’ focused on bringing the latest innovations around behavior, tech, and data to global health and development.  We are looking for an exceptional, creative, and highly motivated Senior Research Scientist with experience in causal discovery to bring our causal machine learning toolbox to the next level to aid the analysis of real-world behavioral data sets in global health issues and other social impact areas.

 

Please apply if interested or kindly share the information with your contacts.

 

Best regards,

Vincent

 

Vincent S. Huang, PhD | Director of Data Science & AI

Surgo Ventures

Solving health and social problems with precision

1701 Rhode Island Avenue NW | Washington, DC 20036

Connect with us on LinkedIn. Follow us on Twitter.

https://surgoventures.org/

 

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Position Snapshot:

Domain: Social impact, global development, machine learning for social good

Specific Expertise: Causal discovery, structure learning in causal Bayesian Network

Seniority: Mid / High

Duration: Full-time or 1-year contract (with potential to be renewed)

Location: Washington, DC or Remote (USA or United Kingdom based preferred, potential for other locations)

Compensation: Highly competitive

Travel: 10-20% once safe to do so

Full post: https://surgoventures.org/careers

 

Application: Please email 1) resume/CV and 2) brief cover letter to Dr. Vincent Huang, Director of Data Science & AI, jo...@surgoventures.org. Please add “Senior Research Scientist -Causal AI Position0 <YOUR NAME>” in the subject of the email.

 

 

About Surgo:

Surgo Ventures is a privately funded ‘action tank’ focused on bringing the latest innovations around behavior, tech, and data to global health and development.  With a laser focus on uncovering the ‘why’ and developing precision solutions, we partner with organizations and governments to help unlock some of their biggest challenges. We work wherever inequities exist, whether in low-income countries or in the United States. And on major global issues such as reproductive health, maternal health, HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, education, and housing.  Surgo’s Causal Machine Learning Initiative for Precision Public Health is testing applicability and scalability of applying machine learning approaches to analyze large public health data sets. We have built a suite of software and workflow tools to enable easier application of causal machine learning to help global development programs uncover complex insights and support intervention decisions.

 

Our multidisciplinary team includes development experts, data scientists, behavioral scientists, and technologists who are skilled in collecting and interpreting data on why people behave the way they do and how complex systems work, and in developing scalable solutions and tools. We are a small but diverse team with big plans. 

 

You will also be working with an interdisciplinary team to increase performance of these tools with data scientists, and to advance the effectiveness and efficiency of their usage. You would be working with global health domain experts to help them generate causal insights in different global problems, and rapidly develop case studies using the causal discovery and inference tools and methods.

 

This is a senior role within our research team. This position requires proven research and development experience creatively innovating machine learning tools to solving challenging research problems with often messy, observational-only data. This requires a passion for unraveling and defining challenging ad hoc research problems and integrating diverse methods to answer them through insights.

 

The ideal candidate is an experienced leader passionate in machine learning for social good, entrepreneurial in spirit, strong problem solver, and an excellent communicator to both academic and non-academic audiences. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the voice and influence strategy and delivery for an innovative, ambitious, and fast-growing organization.

 

 

Responsibilities

 

• Lead R&D activities on our causal discovery python package (a suite of modular packages for causal discovery and inference using Bayesian networks).

 

• Improve the usability and usefulness of the causal discovery and inference tool through improved algorithms, interfaces and outputs with best practices in software development.

 

• Support program managers and domain experts to appropriate machine learning approaches in Surgo’s various quantitative workstreams.

 

• Lead scientific communication to stakeholders, journals and conferences.

 

• Maintain professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops; reviewing professional publications; establishing personal networks.

 

• Creatively apply, adapt, and integrate innovative statistical and experimental methodologies to identify and resolve R&D problems.

 

 

Requirements

• PhD-level candidate with a background in computer science, physics, mathematics, statistical sciences, computational modeling, or other computational disciplines and at least 4+ years of machine learning research and development experience. Very experienced MS-level candidates will be considered.

 

• Expertise in causal discovery methods such as structural learning algorithms of causal Bayesian networks is required.

 

• Be a Python expert, including code optimization (for machine learning applications) and package development. Some subroutines are implemented in C++ so familiarity is desirable. Some knowledge of R is a bonus as much of our data science research is in R.

 

• Knowledge of causal inference methods other than Bayesian network such as structural equation modeling, potential outcomes framework and quasi-experimental methods (instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, etc.) is a plus.

 

• Prior development experience to bring prototype to scalable product in industry R&D environment is a plus. Prior experience in working with public health or human behavioral data sets is a plus.

 

• Demonstrate knowledge of machine learning methods and optimization. Be experienced in conducting research, developing and applying research software. These may include probabilistic graph models, deep learning, boosted methods, random forests, computer vision, natural language processing, and cloud computing environments.

 

• Proven track record of working with messy (rather than Kaggle-type) data.

 

• Proficient visualizing and communicating results through effective slides aimed at non-technical audiences.

 

• Excellent communication (written, verbal and visual presentation) skills with a demonstrable publication record

 

• Willingness to travel when it is safe to do so

 

• (If you are US-based) US work permit (Surgo is unable to sponsor US work permit at this time)

 

 

Our Hiring Philosophy:

We hire for passion and core competencies. We look for problem solvers and lateral thinkers. We love it if you have done different things with your time.

 

Application:

Interested applicants, please send your 1) resume/CV and 2) brief cover letter to Dr. Vincent Huang, Director of Data Science & AI, jo...@surgoventures.org. Please add “Senior Research Scientist -Causal AI Position <YOUR NAME>” in the subject of the email.

 

Short-listed applicants will go through several steps: phone interviews with multiple team members across the organization, a take-home project, and a virtual on-site presentation with the team.