Scientific Director
: Job Details :

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

The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialty, and training. The above hiring range represents the University's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting.

Position Summary

The Department of Systems Biology, AlQuraishi and Rabadan Labs, is 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 ensuring scientific progress and/or deliverables occur in a timely fashion, communication of progress among collaborating laboratories within and outside of Columbia, and communicating scientific progress 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, 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 team members, including federal institutes, private foundations, and companies.
• Assist with grant writing including preparing and editing the scientific and administrative portions of proposals, ensuring that the team is on schedule and submissions are timely.
• Oversee the scientific grant and financial operations of the entire program, ensuring that scientific and operational processes occur daily and that the goals and objectives of the program are met.
• Manage the budget in accordance with financial goals and expectations of the program, evaluating productivity to ensure that all federal research grant deliverables are met in a timely manner and communicated to funding agencies.
• Establish mechanisms to continually evaluate and respond to short- and long-term operational and fiscal needs.
• Oversee operations for the PMG cluster, including occasional meetings with lab members to approve methodologies developed by the lab and answer relevant questions.
• Build strategic relationships with key leaders in academia, industry, non-profit organizations, CU departments, and research administration to closely link their activities with the Program of Mathematical Genomics capabilities; plan and provision program growth based on information collected from these partnerships.
• Maintain oversight of all personnel working for the program in collaboration with the PIs.
• Work with the PI to establish strategy and standards for hiring, performance appraisal, and competency assessment, including job expectations and performance standards for all personnel.
• Support PIs in other labs and departments in developing collaborative research administrative systems, products, and services responsive to current and future needs.
• Represent the PI at various meetings, managing relationships and ensuring communication with numerous stakeholders, providing regular updates on progress with current projects, available funding opportunities, and program planning.
• Coordinate with Human Resources and administrative leadership in developing and implementing policies and procedures that apply to the program.
• Work with the Grants and Contract Office and Sponsored Projects Finance to ensure effective and compliant grant administration.
• Interface with DSBIT, CUIT, CUIMC IT, and AWS to oversee effective lab-generated large data storage, data transfer, and backup, 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 NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) and Data Management Policies, including 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

• 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

• 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 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.