Senior Research Associate

Job Profile Summary

This role focuses on performing work related to research and development of new products, innovation, and improvement of products and processes. In addition, this role focuses on performing the following Research Programs and Projects duties: Supports the development of new products and innovation. Includes Clinical roles focused on research projects. Positions in this family perform basic, translational, and/or clinical research towards solving a specific problem for an entity or community. A professional individual contributor role that may direct the work of other lower level professionals or manage processes and programs. The majority of time is spent overseeing the design, implementation or delivery of processes, programs and policies using specialized knowledge and skills typically acquired through advanced education. A specialist level role that is a recognized subject matter expert in job area typically obtained through advanced education and work experience. Typically manages large projects or processes with limited oversight from manager, coaches, reviews and delegates work to lower level professionals, resolving difficult and often complex problems.

Job Overview

The Senior Research Associate will be a member of the Center of the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health, within the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. The Senior Research Associate will work both independently and with the research team to develop and implement complex social science, health policy research and data analysis plans and lead project reports and publish manuscripts, analyze large datasets (e.g., health care claims data and electronic medical record) to estimate health care costs and benefits, identify appropriate statistical techniques and write computer programs to conduct data analyses including descriptive analyses, regressions to estimate associations, survival analyses to determine the impact of interventions on survival, as well as analyses on other related health policy social science questions. Will review and program approximate implementations of published decision analysis simulation models. Will conduct independent research, including literature reviews, to develop background sections for research articles and reports, and to support assumptions for health economic models. Will write manuscripts as both primary and collaborating author for publication in academic journals and reports for project sponsors, focusing on the background, methodology, and results sections. Responsible for producing other research deliverables, i.e., development of questionnaires and data collection forms, as needed. Will analyze claims data and other primary health care data sources todevelop assumptions for health economic models.

Job Description

Minimum Qualifications:

1. Doctoral Degree OR Master's Degree OR Bachelor's Degree AND Two (2) years of related experience.

2. Five (5) years of experience in a research environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

1. Seven (7) years of research concerning multi-institutional observational studies and clinical trials.

Duties and Responsibilities: The duties and responsibilities listed below are intended to describe the general nature of work and are not intended to be an all-inclusive list. Other duties and responsibilities may be assigned.

1. Develops and optimizes project methods and protocols in order to achieve research objectives; develops new protocols to be used by co-workers and future researchers

2. Interprets experimental data and unusual findings.

3. Presents summaries of research data during group meetings.

4. Performs research activities to achieve goals set by the Principal Investigator and/or supervisor

5. Conducts all work with careful attention to detail, using reproducible techniques.

6. Maintains a complete, well organized, documented clearly research record and spreadsheet databases containing study data and other research information.

7. Assists a large number of collaborating investigators in the development of research proposals and manuscripts for a wide variety of research projects.

8. Works with multidisciplinary teams of research staff, off-site investigators, consultants, administrative personnel and project officers to manage day-to-day operations of research studies including grant maintenance, budget review, and data collection.

9. Helps supervise Research Assistants and Admin Assistants.

10. Organizes complex data collection efforts.

11. Assists in preparing documentation of data files for all study team members and works with computer programmer to maintain data file system for each project.

12. Works closely to manage the overall conduct of multiple research projects - generating the timeline for each, delegating the tasks required and formulating meeting agendas to address the study's principal objectives.

13. Performs literature searches for manuscripts and grant applications.

14. Participates as an author in the writing of manuscripts for journal publication.

15. Supervises student interns and junior staff when necessary.

16. Assists with Grant Development.

17. Oversees the updating of the study database with all information received from the off-campus sites.

18. Participates in review of collected data.

19. Consults with Principal Investigator and other researchers to determine future program direction.

Physical Requirements:

1. This is largely a sedentary role, which involves sitting most of the time, but may involve movements such as walking, standing, reaching, ascending/descending stairs, and operating office equipment.

2. Frequently required to speak, hear, communicate, and exchange information.

3. Ability to see and read computer displays, read fine print, and/or normal type size print and distinguish letters, numbers and symbols.

4. Requires manual dexterity using fine hand manipulation to operate computer keyboard.

Skills & Abilities:

1. Expert knowledge of medical literature searching and retrieval.

2. Expert knowledge of internet-based searching.

3. Computer skills including word processing (Microsoft Word or Word Perfect), spreadsheets such as Excel, database managers such as Access and reference software such as Endnote.

4. Extreme attention to detail and precision.

5. Enjoys participating in a team process.

6. Highly self-disciplined, motivated, and capable of self-direction within a defined scope of work.