Data Scientist

Overview

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The position will be based in the Women’s Brain Health research program led by Dr. Francesca Farina, Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a faculty member of the Healthy Aging & Alzheimer’s Research Care (HAARC) Center. The HAARC Center seeks to serve as an aging and dementia research hub. The Biostatistical Core, led by Dr. Ana Capuano, focuses on applying state-of-the-science methods to the discovery of factors that promote resilience, resistance, and increased healthspan through multidisciplinary research.

This work involves collaboration with international research partners, offering opportunities to contribute to global initiatives in women’s brain health and Alzheimer’s disease prevention.

• Leads the acquisition, cleaning, and harmonization of secondary datasets from multiple sources, including international cohort studies, with support from the project team.
• Performs data exploration and statistical analyses to extract meaningful insights from large, complex datasets, with support from the project team.
• Unifies different data types including cognitive instruments; performs measurement in variance testing; builds IRT/linking models and score crosswalks; documents comparability limits.
• Corrects site/batch effects and temporal drift using appropriate statistical approaches; conducts sensitivity analyses.
• Handles missing data with principled methods (e.g., MICE, IPW); quantifies robustness.
• Maintains privacy-conscious data handling (HIPAA/GDPR concepts).
• Maintains and analyzes statistical models using best practices in machine learning, statistical inference, and reproducible research workflows.
• Prepares publication-ready tables, figures, and statistical summaries for interim and final reports.
• Develops tailored statistical procedures and visualizations for specific research questions.
• Analyzes moderately complex datasets to extract and apply relevant information.
• Provides professional support to staff or faculty in defining the project and applying data science principles in manipulation, statistical applications, programming, analysis, and modeling.
• Cleans, transforms, merges, and matches large research and administrative datasets; plans resources to collect, organize, and analyze data from internal and external sources.
• Builds and analyzes statistical models and reproducible data processing pipelines; serves as a point of contact for requests and coordinates with IT resources as needed.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications: A college or university degree in a related field.

Work Experience: 2-5 years of work experience in a related discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Graduate degree;
  Master’s in Biostatistics, Statistics, Epidemiology, Psychometrics, Data Science, or related field.
• Foundational knowledge and hands-on practice in core statistical methods with implementation in R/Python and clear interpretation.
• Experience harmonizing cognitive data and applying measurement in variance/IRT/score linking.
• Practical knowledge of missing data methods (MICE, weighting).
• Experience publishing harmonized datasets and reproducible reports (R Markdown/Quarto/Jupyter).
• Foundational knowledge in survival analysis, mixed-effects models, and longitudinal modeling.
• Experience with health data standards (ICD, SNOMED, LOINC, HL7 FHIR or OMOP) and unit/scale conversions (UCUM).

• Excellent written and oral communication; organization; problem-solving; collaboration; attention to detail; ability to work autonomously.
• Proficiency with digital collaboration tools (Zoom, MS Teams) and MS Office; programming experience.

• Ability to use a computer for extended periods.
• Office/Clinical Setting.

• Resume (required)
• Cover Letter (required)

When applying, documents MUST be uploaded via the My Experience page, in the Application Documents section of the application.

Pay Range: $70,000.00 - $. Pay rate may vary depending on qualifications. Benefits eligibile:
Yes. The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits; see the Benefits Guidebook for details.

The University of Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or expression, national or ethnic origin, disability, age, or veteran status. Reasonable accommodations are available on request for applicants.