Please make sure to read the job posting in its entirety as it reflects both the University roles and responsibilities, followed by the specific description.

Department
86755 Research Computing Center

About the Unit
The University of Chicago Research Computing Center (RCC), a unit in the Office of Research and National Laboratories (RNL), provides high-end research computing resources to researchers at the University of Chicago. It is dedicated to enabling research by providing access to centrally managed High Performance Computing (HPC), storage, and visualization resources. These resources include hardware, software, high-level scientific and technical user support, and the education and training required to help researchers make full use of modern HPC technology and local and national supercomputing resources.  The Office of Research and National Laboratories oversees the conduct of sponsored research, research program development, multi-institutional research institutes, national laboratory board, and contract management functions. RNL supports the development and coordination of research-related communications and educational programs at The University of Chicago. RNL oversees the management of two Department of Energy contracts for Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. When combined with the Lab R&D budgets, the office oversees approximately $1.4 billion in sponsored research. RNL works closely with individual scholars, departments, and divisions to encourage, seed, and coalesce research across the University, Argonne, and Fermilab campuses.

Research
Responsible for all aspects of research projects and research facilities. Plans and conducts clinical and non-clinical research; facilitates and monitors daily activities of clinical trials or research projects. Directs engineering and technical support activities to develop and maintain tools and computational methods needed to gather and analyze data.

Career Track and Job Level
Research Computing
Creates research focused user interfaces web front-ends, back-end services that scale, and integrate scientific workflows that automate and accelerate the scientific output of multi-institutional collaborative projects. This role involves software development in support of research projects involving data acquisition, ingestion, and integration from heterogeneous sources (metadata extraction from a corpus of diverse data sets, both structured and unstructured data).

P2: Requires knowledge and experience in own discipline; still acquiring higher-level knowledge and skills. Builds knowledge of the organization, processes and customers. Solves a range of straightforward problems. Analyzes possible solutions using standard procedures. Receives a moderate level of guidance and direction.

Role Impact

Individual Contributor

Responsibilities
The job develops software to support the data acquisition, ingestion, and integration for research projects. Assists in the development of user interfaces and scalable back-end services to automate and accelerate the scientific output of multi-institutional research projects.
1) Participates in the product development life cycle, providing professional assistance to the design of front-end applications and database systems back-end schema. Analyzes high-level system specifications and makes sure that all application development standards are met., 2) Develops and presents technical training materials and web-based documentation. Ensures timely systems support and updates. Assists in conducting information security assessments and risk analysis of computing environment., 3) Evaluates past and present technologies to help develop new tools. Ensures all the new tools have been through quality control reviews., 4) With a moderate level of guidance, provides hardware, user and application level authentication and authorization. Implements modern web authentication methods such as XACML, SAML, OAuth2, Shibboleth, and LDAP directory server administration. Applies theoretical expertise and innovation to create or apply new technology, such as adapting principles for applying computers to new uses., 5) Performs other related work as needed.
Job Summary

1) The Research Computing Center (RCC) is partnering with the Harris School of Public Policy to hire a highly motivated Computational Scientist, Text Analysis to work closely with faculty and researchers at The University of Chicago. The person in this position serves as a technical domain expert supporting and advising faculty on text analysis, including natural language processing. The Computational Scientist may also hold a concurrent Lecturer appointment in an academic department and teach up to two courses per year. The successful candidate will join a team of Computational Scientists who are playing a key role in scientific computing support at the University of Chicago.

Unit-Specific Responsibilities

1) Develop, maintain and support text analysis pipelines that include data collection, data management, data digitization, data analysis and documentation.

2) Implement NLP algorithms, summarize findings and generate study results and plots for research projects.

3) Independently propose and execute practical solutions to research challenges; develop, install and test scientific software in support of research goals.

4) Prepare and contribute contents to manuscripts and presentations; create and present tutorials, hands-on workshops and documentation.

5) Communicate with various agencies and partners to apply for and manage data access; manage data collection and storage.

6) Work closely with faculty to identify, develop, and implement useful computational methods and resources that support or advance their research.

7) Keep abreast of new developments in High Performance Computing, data science, Machine Learning and deep learning; and be proactive in introducing them to the faculty.

8) May teach up to 2 academic courses per year.

9) Assist researchers with grant proposals with strong HPC or AI component to describe the interplay between their research and computation and data science.

10) Work with faculty and their research groups to enable them to fully utilize the University and national computational resources for their research.

Unit-Specific Competencies

1) Excellent interpersonal and communication (verbal and written) skills.

2) Understand and translate researchers' scientific goals into computational requirements.

3) Mentor and technical lead of a small team of students and/or Research Assistants.

4) Work well with faculty and researchers.

5) Identify and gain expertise in appropriate new technologies and/or software tools.

6) Function as part of an interactive team while demonstrating self-initiative to achieve project's goals and Research Computing Center's mission.

7) Strong analytical skills and problem-solving ability.

8) Work collaboratively with a diverse group of research scientists with different skills and expertise.

Education, Experience, and Certifications
Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 2-5 years of work experience in a related job discipline.
Preferred Qualifications

Education

1) PhD in Computer Science, Social Sciences, or related fields.

Technical Knowledge or Skills

1) Understanding of key natural language processing, data mining, machine learning and statistical methods.

2) Proficiency in one or more programming languages (such as C++, C, etc.).

3) Proficiency in a scripting language such as Python.

4) Knowledge of text analysis, including natural language processing.

5) Experience with Linux/Unix.

6) Knowledge of SQL.

7) Research experience in Natural Language processing, Machine Learning and Deep Learning frameworks.

8) Experience with running computational jobs on high-end computing systems.

Required Documents

1) Resume/CV

2) Cover letter

3) A solo-authored research-oriented writing sample (e.g. from a thesis) preferred.

NOTE: When applying, all required documents MUST be uploaded under the Resume/CV section of the application.

FLSA Status
Exempt

Pay Frequency
Monthly

Pay Grade
Depends on Qualifications

Scheduled Weekly Hours
37.5

Benefits Eligible
Yes

Drug Test Required
No

Health Screen Required
No

Motor Vehicle Record Inquiry Required
No

Posting Date
2020-08-14-07:00

Remove from Posting On or Before
2021-02-14-08:00

Posting Statement

The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity/Disabled/Veterans Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, status as an individual with a disability, protected 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.

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