Statistical Programming Specialist
: Job Details :

Overview:

The EPA National Student Services Contract has an immediate opening for a full time Statistical Programming Specialist position with the Office of Research and Development at the EPA facility in Cincinnati, OH.

The Office of Research and Development at the EPA supports high-quality research to improve the scientific basis for decisions on national environmental issues and help EPA achieve its environmental goals. Research is conducted in a broad range of environmental areas by scientists in EPA laboratories and at universities across the country.

What the EPA project is about

The Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE) supports ORD by providing solutions-driven research to rapidly evaluate the potential human health and environmental risks due to exposures to environmental stressors and ensure the integrity of the freshwater environment and its capacity to support human well-being. CCTE researchers are developing and applying cutting edge innovations in methods to rapidly evaluate chemical toxicity, transport, and exposure to people and environments. Within CCTE, the Scientific Computing & Data Curation Division (SCDCD) develops the knowledge and information architecture necessary for integrating, transforming, and managing large scale data streams related to assessing the risk of chemicals. SCDCD creates and manages online tools and ensures they are compatible with existing chemistry, toxicology, and other experimental data sources.

Responsibilities:

As a team member, you will support research under multiple national research programs for statistical software tool development and support. The team member will assist with package maintenance, scientific data management, statistical methods, data analysis, and visualization needs for CCTE. This includes supporting several of CCTEs R statistical programming packages which are tools developed to support data formatting, statistical analyses, visualization, data quality evaluation, and other similar support needs across multiple research domains in the center. The team member may also support database integration efforts and the application of statistical/mathematical modeling, machine learning, and other data science techniques.

The duties of the team member will include, but are not limited to:

• Provide support for statistical software tools particularly R packages including but not limited to package documentation, function/package testing, and writing/updating R scripts to support package updates and new functionality;
• Utilize version control software for tracking updates to code in software tool and data analyses;
• Manage, manipulate, and assess scientific data (new and existing) for statistical analyses and incorporation into analysis tools (e.g. R packages) supporting researchers in the center;
• Contribute to documentation/manuscripts to communicate results, software updates or features, statistical methods/models, and data analyses with stakeholders and researchers; and
• Contribute to the design and implementation of methods that address goals including, but not limited to, developing best practices for data reporting, model assessment, package management, and similar efforts to increase transparency, reproducibility, and efficiency.

Communications-related responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Contribute to an interdisciplinary team of scientists and developers;
• Communicate with development team and researchers on existing issues and/or questions as directed by the EPA mentor;
• Thoroughly document all work as directed by EPA mentor to comply with EPA quality assurance procedures for transparency and reproducibility of work;
• Create data visualizations to communicate results to package user and stakeholders;
• Communicate information regarding package updates, statistical methods, and how-to-utilize packages to EPA technical staff and stakeholders via package documentation, tutorials, meetings, etc.;
• Present work in internal reports/memorandums to be used by EPA technical staff; and
• May have the opportunity to present work at internal seminars, scientific conferences, or contribute to scientific manuscripts.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Work Experience, and Education

• Domain knowledge of mathematical and statistical modeling techniques;
• Experience with the R statistical programming language and data analysis tools, as well as version control tools (e.g. GitHub or similar technologies); and
• Strong reading comprehension and communication skills to interpret information from a variety of data source types and convey information about data, software tools, statistical methods, etc.

Desired Knowledge, Skills, Work Experience, and Education

• Experience or familiarity with databases, mathematical writing tools such as LaTeX, and biological data generated from high-throughput assays.

Location:This job will be located EPAs facility in Cincinnati, OH.

Salary: Selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU and will receive an hourly wage of $32.26 for hours worked.

Hours: Full-time.

Travel: Travel related to the position is not anticipated. Travel for training and presentations at national meetings may be possible.

Expected start date: The position is full time and expected to begin October 2024. The selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU working as a contractor to EPA.

For more information, contact ...@orau.org. Do not contact EPA directly.

Qualifications:

• Be at least 18 years of age and
• Have earned at least a Masters degree in biostatistics, statistics, mathematics, data science, or a related field, including training or coursework in computer programming from an accredited university or college within the last 24 months and
• Be a citizen of the United States of America or a Legal Permanent Resident.

EPA ORD employees, their spouses, and children are not eligible to participate in this program.