Biomedical Informatics Senior Research Specialist

Biomedical Informatics Senior Research Specialist

The Biomedical Informatics Senior Research Specialist contributes to the conceptualization, design, development, and delivery of biomedical informatics research projects, addressing all areas of clinical and translational science for the Center for Clinical & Translational Science (CCTS). This is a critical position serving as a methodology expert drawing upon data and decision sciences and consulting and/or collaborating with a broad range of institutional investigators to further research and translation efforts.

Through a customer-focused approach, this position provides expert consultations to and collaborations with investigators leveraging the UIHealth System EMR data for research. The Senior Research Specialist is responsible for interacting with investigators on study design/methodology, establishing inclusion/exclusion criteria, developing standard and custom data queries, and continuously contributing to the expansion and operational improvement of the CCTS Clinical Research Data Warehouse.

The Informatics and Data Science team at CCTS is the principal provider of informatics support for clinical and translational research at UIC, advancing clinical research and patient care through clinical data integration, innovative informatics tools, and educational opportunities. The team serves as the informatics experts for local and national projects cutting across domains such as COVID-19, health equity, cancer, genomics, data science and Machine Learning, and more.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Collaborates in the maintenance and expansion of a research data warehouse through the utilization of extraction and transformation tools applied to EMR systems and other biomedical data sources.
• Designs, develops, and implements biomedical informatics research tools and techniques for efficient and accurate data extraction, process automation and data quality assurance.
• Collaborates with study PI's and study teams to provide consultative services on study design and subsequent data analysis, as well as data extraction and transformation from the research data warehouse. Develops custom queries to tailor data extractions to project needs.
• Serves as collaborator and consultant with research, clinical faculty, and industry partners on design, optimization of research aims, and alternative approaches, for multi-partner collaborations in biomedical informatics.
• Provides leadership, training and mentoring to teams in areas relating to biomedical informatics including data ingestion, extraction, data science, tools development, or biomedical education as needed.
• Attends national and regional biomedical informatics seminars and meetings. Presents original research and represents UIC and the CCTS at national scientific meetings and conferences.
• Research core literature in the biomedical informatics field to identify appropriate advances and new trends. Contributes to the methodological and technical components of scholarly manuscripts. Authors and co-authors scientific papers in the field of biomedical informatics.
• Perform other related duties and participate in special projects as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Biomedical Informatics, Clinical Informatics, Systems Engineering, Operations Research, Computer Science, or a related field.
• A minimum of 5 years of related experience in clinical research informatics.
• Requires excellent analytical, problem solving, and computational skills combined with skills in communication, customer focus, organization, project management and presentation.
• Strong working knowledge of SQL and scripting languages
• Programming expertise in Python, Java, or a similar programming language.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep understanding of controlled clinical research vocabularies, specifically OMOP and ACT/i2b2, strongly preferred.
• Epic Clinical Data Model experience, including demonstrated ability to understand the transformation of Epic EMR data into a clinical research data warehouse via an ETL pipeline
• Understanding of knowledge extraction from unstructured clinical text using NLP or other technologies
• Experience with and understanding of FHIR and HL/7

The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our non-discrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify.

The university provides accommodations to applicants and employees. Request an Accommodation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools may be used in some portions of the candidate review process for this position, however, all employment decisions will be made by a person.