Data Scientist Assistant I

Discover Vanderbilt University Medical Center: Located in Nashville, Tennessee, and operating at a global crossroads of teaching, discovery, and patient care, VUMC is a community of diverse individuals who come to work each day with the simple aim of changing the world. It is a place where your expertise will be valued, your knowledge expanded, and your abilities challenged. Vanderbilt Health recognizes that diversity is essential for excellence and innovation. We are committed to an inclusive environment where everyone has the chance to thrive and where your diversity of culture, thinking, learning, and leading is sought and celebrated. It is a place where employees know they are part of something that is bigger than themselves, take exceptional pride in their work and never settle for what was good enough yesterday. Vanderbilt’s mission is to advance health and wellness through preeminent programs in patient care, education, and research.

Job summary

Data Scientists perform detailed analyses of large bodies of heterogeneous data to discover new patterns and insights that impact patient health or augment human capabilities. Data Scientists have deep expertise in the methods used to analyze data and deep knowledge of data types, topics, and scientific challenges and approaches that will be used to help inform and define new products, experiences, and technologies. This position works in conjunction with Data Science and Informatics faculty to provide technical thought leadership and works closely with Informatics and IT teams to create data and intelligence-driven systems to solve complex client problems.

The Center for Precision Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is seeking a Data Scientist with proficiency in R and/or Python for data wrangling and analysis with an interest in data standards. We are leaders in several projects funded by the National Institutes of Health to improve the FAIRness of research data- Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reproducibility. Our role in these projects is related to representation, collection, and distribution of clinical and phenotypic data used to drive innovative, reproducible, and open science research improving human health. Implementing emerging standards and promoting use through developing tools has the potential to bring clinical and genomic research to new users, benefiting more populations.

The day-to-day activities of this individual will primarily be focused on data management and standards in the context of a multidisciplinary team. This individual’s responsibilities will include collaborating with internal and external data stewards, analysts, and developers. They will assist with defining requirements and developing processes and tools to enable data receipt, transformation, quality control (QC), and pilot analysis in a cloud environment. Additionally, this individual will work closely with project managers on tracking data submissions, development teams and other end-users to provide feedback on tools, and data stakeholders on QC and standards alignment. Examples of this scope include shepherding a newly uploaded research dataset through a transformation and QC process and supporting the development of a vocabulary kit to map and manage terminology, among other upcoming projects.

This individual will be working with the HL7 FHIR specification for health data in a local and cloud context and standardized data to clinical ontologies and vocabularies. Familiarity with FHIR is preferred, and an interest and familiarity in working with standards and/or RESTful APIs are preferred.

Key responsibilities

• Participates in multidisciplinary teams to design, develop, and recommend new approaches for data-driven decision-making.
• Leads discovery processes on pioneering Artificial Intelligence (“AI")/Machine Learning (“ML”) based approaches to solve complex data problems across a variety of domains.
• Provides strategic direction regarding data science and AI in a specific area (e.g., cancer, surgery, planning services, marketing, healthcare delivery).
• Guides and educates data science teams to provide unbiased and accurate information, analysis, consultation, and recommendations to support strategic and operational data science initiatives.
• Develops analytics tools that can be used by other staff with non-technical expertise.
• In some positions, may work with enterprise executive leadership to advance digital strategy.
• Makes strategic recommendations on data collection, integration and retention requirements, incorporating business requirements and knowledge of best practices.
• Supports scientific projects under the supervision of a designated senior level data scientist or self-direction.
• Designs, develops, applies, and modifies scripts or software applications to support data management, extraction, and analysis.
• Provides consultative services and is responsible to gather, analyze, present findings to leadership.

Technical capabilities

Our Academic Enterprise is one of the nation’s longest serving and most prestigious academic medical centers. Through its historic bond with Vanderbilt University and integral role in the School of Medicine, Vanderbilt Health cultivates distinguished research and educational programs to advance a clinical enterprise that provides compassionate and personalized care and support for millions of patients and family members each year.

World-leading academic departments and comprehensive centers of excellence pursue scientific discoveries and transformational educational and clinical advances across the entire spectrum of health and disease.

Aligning with Vanderbilt Health’s Strategic Directions, the Office of Research provides shared research resources, administrative expertise and professional guidance to enable the trans-disciplinary environment and highly collaborative culture that advances discovery and training for all the research faculty, trainees, students and staff.

Core Accountabilities:

Organizational Impact: Delivers job responsibilities that impact own job area/team with some guidance. Problem Solving/ Complexity of work: Uses existing procedures, research and analysis to solve standard job related problems that may require some judgement. Breadth of Knowledge: Requires subject matter knowledge within a professional area to meet job requirements. Team Interaction: Individually contributes to project/ work teams.

Core Capabilities :

• Supporting Colleagues:
  • Develops Self and Others: Continuously improves own skills by identifying development opportunities.
  • Builds and Maintains Relationships: Seeks to understand colleagues priorities, working styles and develops relationships across areas.
  • Communicates Effectively: Openly shares information with others and communicates in a clear and courteous manner.
  • Delivering Excellent Services: - Serves Others with Compassion: Invests time to understand the problems, needs of others and how to provide excellent service.
  • Solves Complex Problems: Seeks to understand issues, solves routine problems, and raises proper concerns to supervisors in a timely manner.
  • Offers Meaningful Advice and Support: Listens carefully to understand the issues and provides accurate information and support.
• Ensuring High Quality:
  • Performs Excellent Work: Checks work quality before delivery and asks relevant questions to meet quality standards.
  • Ensures Continuous Improvement: Shows eagerness to learn new knowledge, technologies, tools or systems and displays willingness to go above and beyond.
  • Fulfills Safety and Regulatory Requirements: Demonstrates basic knowledge of conditions that affect safety and reports unsafe conditions to the appropriate person or department.
• Managing Resources Effectively :
  • Demonstrates Accountability: Takes responsibility for completing assigned activities and thinks beyond standard approaches to provide high-quality work/service.
  • Stewards Organizational Resources: Displays understanding of how personal actions will impact departmental resources.
  • Makes Data Driven Decisions: Uses accurate information and good decision making to consistently achieve results on time and without error.
• Fostering Innovation:
  • Generates New Ideas: Willingly proposes/accepts ideas or initiatives that will impact day-to-day operations by offering suggestions to enhance them.
  • Applies Technology: Absorbs new technology quickly; understands when to utilize the appropriate tools and procedures to ensure proper course of action.
  • Adapts to Change: Embraces changes by keeping an open mind to changing plans and incorporates change instructions into own area of work.