Staff Associate II

Position Summary:

Dr. Yoshira Ornelas Van Horne’s lab in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is seeking an enthusiastic and reliable candidate to join our team as a Staff Associate II. The team conducts community-based justice-oriented research on air pollution, metal exposures, and environmental reparations. Examples of recent work by the group include analyses of injustices in air pollution monitoring; advances in exposure assessment methods; and evaluations of the impact of federal environmental settlements on community wellbeing. The hire will support a variety of research studies in these and related areas.

 Responsibilities:

The successful candidate will be responsible for data management (e.g. maintaining and updating data repositories, codebooks), data analysis (including spatial and epidemiological analyses of environmental settlements, conducted in R), and manuscript preparation for several related and interdisciplinary research projects. As the lab conducts many community-based initiatives, the candidate will also be responsible for coordinating primary data collection for ongoing field studies. Additional responsibilities include supporting other team members in their statistical analyses, meeting internal and external deadlines under minimal supervision, attending regular team meetings to present research findings, and preparing materials for fact sheets, story maps, publications, IRB applications, and grant applications. If desired, the hire will be supported in leading analyses and writing manuscripts, ideally resulting in first author publications. Through this role, the hire will have the opportunity to a) enhance existing skills in advanced statistical methods, including spatial modeling, advanced mixtures methods, and emerging methods in environmental epidemiology, b) gain experience in manuscript preparation and writing, ideally resulting in first author publications, and c) develop a deep understanding of epidemiologic and environmental justice issues. Dr. Ornelas Van Horne will work with the hire to identify and create opportunities for the candidate toward their professional goals (e.g. workshops, trainings).

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

· Bachelor’s degree and at least four years of experience.

· Proficiency in R and prior experience conducting research related to environmental epidemiology, exposure science, spatial epidemiology, social epidemiology, environmental health sciences, or biostatistics.

 Preferred Qualifications:

· Prior experience in mixed-methods research, conducting focus groups, and project management.

· As the team works with Spanish-speaking communities, a bilingual candidate is preferred.

· Prior experience in research intersecting epidemiology, biostatistical modeling, and environmental health sciences is preferred.

· Preference will be given to an individual with specific research experience in spatial modeling, mixtures modeling, and other advanced statistical methods for epidemiologic research.

· Ability to prioritize work assignments, proactively identify problems, and work independently with minimal oversight.

· Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, and the ability to communicate professionally with colleagues across departments and institutions.