Research Assistant I

What you'd do

• Serve as manager of the BIRC’s research practice of open and reproducible neuroimaging science.
• This entails maintaining, improving, and implementing pipelines for the BIRC’s neuroimaging data into an internationally recognized standardized data format termed BIDS (Brain Imaging Data Structure) by writing Python code.
• This requires familiarity with Python.
• Fluency in Python is preferred, but not mandatory.
• Knowledge of other computational languages is helpful.
• Conduct supervised analyses of behavioral and neuroimaging data, including regressions relating task performance to demographic variables (e.g., trauma history, childhood adversities, drug addiction behaviors, late-life dementia, and reduced functioning, etc).
• Conduct quality assurance analyses of neuroimaging data under the mentoring of the BIRC’s scientists, and extend the behavioral analyses to model task-related changes in brain activity.
• Support data analyses of structural and functional MRI data.
• Enroll, screen, and assess participants for ongoing studies within the BIRC.
• Screen potential participants to determine eligibility, schedule initial intake assessments, and provide reminder phone calls and texts as needed.
• Conduct informed consents to ensure participants have accurate information related to the study, participate in behavioral data collection by conducting participant clinical interviews and assisting participants on self-report measures, and ensure compliance with all study protocols during data collection activities.
• Monitor participants in follow-up portions of studies to ensure accurate and timely collection of longitudinal data on research projects.
• Assist with data acquisition, including running behavioral tasks and collecting psychophysiological data (e.g., skin conductance, heart rate, electromyographic recording of facial muscle responses), MRI data, or fNIRS data.
• Assist, on an ongoing basis, in achieving the targeted enrollment goals for all actively enrolling BIRC studies by engaging in recruitment strategies.
• Recruitment strategies include, but are not limited to, going to pre-established community partners and describing studies to patients, patrons, or members, and asking potential participants to participate in studies.

What they want

• Interest in acquiring skills and implementing clinical, sociodemographic, cognitive, affective, and behavioral assessments of child, adolescent, and adult study participants.
• Ability to work in collaboration with clinics in Neurology and Psychology to ensure ethical practices and consistency in the collection of participant research data.
• Ability to evaluate the safety of participants entering the MRI environment (e.g., researching various implants/devices, conducting thorough screening to ensure no adverse events in the scanner).
• Ability to identify problems and crises that arise (angry or upset participants, participants getting lost en route to studies, etc) and resolve them or report to supervisor.
• Proficient with Microsoft Office products, technology-oriented.