Post-Doctoral Research Fellow - MaineHealth Institute for Research

Description

Professional - Nonclinical
Req #: 71902

Position Summary:

The Jin Laboratory at the MaineHealth Institute for Research, Scarborough, ME is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence methods for healthcare and biological discovery.

The Jin lab focuses on building robust, interpretable and uncertainty-aware AI systems that can improve clinical decision-making and uncover biological mechanisms of disease development. Our work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, clinical research and biology, with the goal of making real impact to improve patient care. We are privileged to have the lab located at MaineHealth, the largest healthcare system in the state of Maine, enabling significant clinical data access and a unique opportunity of implementing our AI tools in real-world settings for improving patient care. Jin Lab has developed a wide collaboration across multiple institutions including Brigham and Women's hospital, Harvard Medical School, Roux Institute at Northeastern University, Jackson Laboratory, Van Andel Institute and A*STAR Institute.

The Research Fellow will conduct research under the guidance of the Principal Investigator, Dr. Qingchu Jin. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to lead and contribute to projects addressing a range of clinically and biologically motivated research questions. All projects are grounded in either clinical problems or biological discovery. Current research in the lab involves the analysis of large-scale biomedical datasets, including longitudinal electronic health record (EHR) data, unstructured clinical notes, and multi-omics datasets such as DNA methylation, RNA sequencing, genomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, and microbiome data. The Research Fellow is encouraged to develop their own research ideas in the research directions described in the following text. The Fellow is also encouraged to apply for postdoctoral fellowships and career development grants. The Research Fellow will have access to substantial computational resources, including local GPU clusters, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and the Explorer high-performance computing cluster at Northeastern University. The Research Fellow will work closely with clinicians, clinical scientist, biologist and computational scientist across MaineHealth and partnered institutions. The Fellow will have the opportunity to publish in high-impact journals, top-tier computer scientist conferences and contribute to collaborative grants.

Research Directions:

* Real-time AI-driven Patient Risk Prediction for Cardiac Surgery Patient. (with Maine Medical Center, Roux Institute at Northeastern University, Nihon Kohden Digital Health Solution and Brigham and Women's hospital) This project aims to develop an AI-driven real-time prediction model to monitor the risk of patient in the ICU after the cardiac surgery. We will have the opportunity to perform multi-center external validation and implement our algorithm at the cardiovascular ICU to examine the clinical benefits and potentially improve patient care!

* Childhood Growth Trajectory Research (with A*STAR, Singapore and Van Andel Institute and Roux Institute at Northeastern University) This project aims to identify early life multi-omics data to predict the childhood and adolescent growth trajectory. A wide spectrum of omics data at early life stage including genomics, RNAseq, methylation, lipidomics and microbiome will be available for analysis. We expect to identify novel multi-omics signatures that enable the discovery of new patient subgroups and may ultimately inform the development of new therapeutic strategies.

* Personalized Treatment Suggestion for Severe Hyponatremia Patients (with Maine Medical Center). This project aims to develop causal machine learning models to identify and recommend optimal treatment strategies for patients with severe hyponatremia. Maine Medical Center provides a unique opportunity to translate these AI tools into clinical practice, including potential evaluation through prospective clinical studies. The project will also incorporate large language models (LLMs) to extract and integrate information from unstructured clinical notes.

* Gestational Weight Retention and Diabetes Research (with Maine Medical Center and Harvard Medical School) This project aims to identify pregnant women at high risk of progressing from gestational diabetes and postpartum weight retention to long-term diabetes and persistent weight retention using clinical and metabolomics data. The project will leverage foundation models and few-shot learning approaches to improve predictive performance and evaluate model generalizability in small-sample, high-dimensional biomedical datasets.

* Uncertainty Quantification for AI models. This methodological project addresses an important unmet need in clinical AI applications. In real-world healthcare settings, multiple factors contribute to uncertainty in predictive models, including missing data, measurement variability, and model uncertainty. This project aims to develop principled approaches, such as Bayesian methods, to rigorously quantify predictive uncertainty in clinical AI models.

Expectations:

* Develop novel, robust and reproducible AI and computational tools in the area described above. And/or develop generalizable AI framework and computational methodology that benefits the fields described above.

* Publish scientific contributions in journals and at conferences.

* Collaborate with clinical and biological partners to understand the needs and develop novel computational tools.

* Mentor junior lab members, providing mentoring in relevant fields.

* Work with PI to develop new emerging research directions and contribute to the grants.

Special consideration will be given to candidates with the following:

* Doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering, Data Science, Applied Math, Computational Biology, Computer Sciences, Biostatistics, Medical Informatics.

* Proficiency in Python (optionally in R), Linux, deep learning (Pytorch, Tensorflow), machine learning, High performing cluster, GPU computing.

* Strong expertise in AI and/or biomedical fields.

To apply:

Interested candidates please submit the MaineHealth employment application with your cover letter, resume, list of 3 references, and a statement (<=1 page) of your research interests, experience and career goals.

More:

MaineHealth Institute for Research (MHIR) is committed to providing postdoctoral Research Fellows a robust research training experience within an engaged and inclusive community of scientists. We support the continued research training of postdoctoral fellows who have earned a PhD, MD, or MD/PhD degrees. The goal of our program is to provide a rigorous, mentored research experience that focuses on the design, implementation, and completion of novel research projects.

Research Fellows at MHIR are compensated based on years of experience and are eligible for the generous benefits package provided to MaineHealth employees.

Research Fellows participate in a robust training program that includes a seminar series with networking with local and national speakers, and presentation of their own research progress. Responsible Conduct of Research programming is run throughout the year to ensure that Research Fellows are adequately trained. We expect our postdoctoral fellows to present research findings at annual meetings and publish in peer-reviewed journals. Research Fellows are also encouraged and supported to submit applications for fellowship support or early career grants.

MHIR has an active and engaged Student and Postdoc Association that promotes professional development and a sense of community for students and postdocs. The MHIR Research Training and Education Office supports research trainees in all aspects of their training throughout their time at MHIR, including facilitation of Individual Development Plans, and annual reviews and meetings with MHIR scientific leadership. MHIR is a sustaining member of the National Postdoc Association, providing all of our students and Research Fellows the opportunity to have a free Affiliate Membership, and Research Training and Education Office Staff are members of the Graduate Career Consortium and the American Association of Medical Colleges Group on Research Education and Training (GREAT Group), connecting us with the larger national conversations about student and postdoctoral affairs.

The work location for this position is from our Scarborough, Maine research headquarters.

Learn more about the MaineHealth Institute for Research in this short video!

The Research Fellow - Bench role conducts a variety of complex laboratory procedures and conducts independent research in consultation with the principal investigator. The research fellow has a sufficient level of experience, expertise and independence to conduct a defined research project, including project inception and design, implementation, and completion, with reporting of results in a peer reviewed forum consisting of oral and written presentation.

Required Minimum Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)

1. Education: Doctoral Degree (e.g. PhD, MD, DO, DVM, PharmD) required.
2. License/Certifications: N/A
3. Experience: N/A
4. Additional Skills/Requirements Required: N/A
5. Additional Skills/Requirements Preferred: N/A

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Additional Information

If you have questions about this role, please contact sharon.nightingale@mainehealth.org