Scientific Director

• Job Type: Officer of Administration
• Bargaining Unit:
• Regular/Temporary: Regular
• End Date if Temporary:
• Hours Per Week: 35
• Standard Work Schedule:
• Building:
• Salary Range: $90,000 - $120,000

Position Summary

The Department of Systems Biology, AlQuraishi and Rabadan Labs, are seeking a candidate, preferably with a Ph.D., who has expertise in project management, including simultaneous administration of several machine learning and computational biology projects and programs, scientific writing, and advanced grant administration experience. The Scientific Director will work in the Program for Mathematical Genomics within the Department of Systems Biology with AlQuraishi and Rabadan's laboratories devoted to developing computational and mathematical methods to understand biological systems.

Working with the Principal Investigators (PIs), the candidate will be responsible for identification of funding opportunities, assisting with grant writing, the management, operations and administration of multiple NIH, NSF and foundation supported grants and the coordination of Rabadan Lab and AlQuraishi Lab activities as they relate to grant and other deliverables. This includes making sure scientific progress and/or deliverables occur in a timely fashion, communication of progress occurs amongst collaborating laboratories within and outside of Columbia, scientific progress is communicated in oral or written form to funding institutions. The candidate will initiate and lead meetings among the scientific staff and will work closely with the PI and research team members to ensure that research studies are completed on time and within budget. Will assist in manuscript preparation and grant writing as needed.

This is a position for a highly organized person with good management skills and includes cross-disciplinary project coordination, scientific communications, budget management, liaising with several internal and external collaborators including: NSF, liaising with NIH and NCI Program Directors, technology transfer activities, IRB proposal generation and maintenance, and a wide range of advanced support activities.

Responsibilities

• Identify funding opportunities for members of the teams, including in federal institutes, private foundations and companies.
• Assist with grant writing including preparing and editing the scientific and administrative portions of the proposals, making sure that the team is in schedule and submissions are on time.
• Oversee the overall scientific grant and financial operation of the entire program and ensure that scientific and operational processes occur daily and on an ongoing basis and the goals and objectives of the program are being met.
• Oversee the development and management of the budget in accordance with financial goals and expectations of the program. Evaluate productivity to ensure that all federal research grants deliverables are met in a timely manner and communicated to the funding agencies.
• Establish mechanisms to continually evaluate and respond to short- and long-term operational and fiscal needs.
• Oversee operations for the PMG cluster. Occasional meetings with lab members in to approve methodologies developed by the lab and answer relevant questions.
• Builds with PIs strategic relationships with key leaders in academia, industry, non-profit, CU departments and research administration, to closely link their activities with the Program of Mathematical Genomics capabilities; plans and provisions program growth with information collected from these partnerships.
• Work with the PIs to maintain oversight of all personnel working for the program.
• Work with the PI to set the strategy and establish standards for the hiring, performance appraisal and competency assessment. Establish job expectations, performance standards, and methods for measurement of standards for all personnel.
• Provide support to PIs in other labs and departments in the development of collaborative research administrative systems, products and services responsive to current and future needs.
• Represent the PI at various meetings, provide relationship management and ensure communication with the numerous stakeholders, providing regular updates on progress with current projects, available funding opportunities and program planning.
• Coordinate with Human Resources and administrative leadership in the development and implementation of policies and procedures that apply the program.
• Work with the Grants and Contract Office and Sponsored Projects Finance to ensure effective and compliant grant administration.
• Interface with the DSBIT, CUIT, CUIMC IT, and AWS to oversee effective lab-generated large data storage, data transfer and back-up, including continuous evaluation of new, reliable and cost-effective cloud storage options.
• Interface with the IRB and Clinical Collaborators to oversee protocol preparation and submission processes for IRB and committees.
• Manage, document and ensure adherence to the NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) and Data Management Policies and effective data revision and submission to NCI's Synapse database.
• Maintain awareness of team engagement; identify and respond to key challenges and areas of opportunity.

Minimum Qualifications

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  Bachelor's degree required or equivalent in education and experience plus 4 years of related experience; or Master's degree and two years of related experience; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

  
  

Preferred Qualifications

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  A Ph.D. degree in a relevant field is strongly preferred. Published scholarly work in a related field.

  
  

Other Requirements

• Position requires strong familiarity with computational biology/bioinformatics, molecular biology, cancer research, and systems biology. Relevant postgraduate experience in a related position is required.
• Experience with writing scientific components of grant proposals and reports. Sufficient familiarity with scientific aspects of research to draft text independently.
• Project management experience, preferably experience overseeing a large, multi-component project with complex computational and human research components.
• Strong familiarity with administrative aspects of managing large sponsored research projects, including knowledge of federal compliance requirements.

Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran

Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.