Opportunities

Temporary Employment Opportunity: Junior Data Scientist

BC Cancer Data and Analytics, Vancouver, BC

Start Date: as soon as possible

End Date: March 31, 2022

BC Cancer provides a comprehensive cancer control program for the people of BC in partnership with regional health authorities. Data and Analytics is a department within BC Cancer that provides analytic support to the diverse group of clinical, operations and research programs across the organization. Our team includes a diverse mix of analytic skills with backgrounds in epidemiology, statistics, data sciences, business analytics and intelligence and engineering. A core function of our team is to generate information about cancer in the population of BC to motivate research, plan future care, monitor cancer risk and mortality in the population, and evaluate cancer control programs in the province.

We are seeking a motivated data science professional to work with our cancer surveillance team in generating applications to disseminate cancer information and data to end users around the province. You will work with analytic team members to generate code pipelines in R to estimate measures of cancer burden in the population and prepare the release of these analytic tools and products via web-based applications. This is a short-term placement until the end of March, 2022.

Qualifications/Skills:

• MSc in Data Science, Statistics or a related discipline. Current students that otherwise meet qualifications who are able to commit to a reasonable number of weekly hours would be considered.
• Experience with developing and working with the Shiny (R) data visualization platform
• Deep fluency with and cultivation of modern coding practices in R (building complex functions, tidyverse, R markdown, documentation, project management in Rstudio)
• Experience with key software development frameworks (version control, unit testing, modularization) an asset
• Experience with collaborative software development (GitHub) an asset
• Experience in Java Script, CSS an asset
• Experience generating creative data visualizations that inform and engage broad audiences
• Interest and experience bringing high-level customer experiences to dashboards and web products that rely on thoughtful design and aesthetics
• Able to work effectively with other analytic team members
• Effective communication skills
• Careful attention to detail and validation of products

For more information please contact Ryan Woods, Director, Data and Analytics, BC Cancer; rwoods@bccancer.bc.ca

Ryan Woods, PhD

Director, Data and Analytics

Scientist, Cancer Control Research

BC Cancer

200 - 601 W Broadway

Vancouver, BC

Postdoctoral Fellowship: Electronic Health Records (EHR) Analytics

Description: The UBC Data Science Institute is seeking at least two post-doctoral fellows to join our new program specializing in Electronic Health Record (EHR) analytics. This is a joint program with the British Columbia (BC) Provincial Health Services Authority, the BC Centre for Disease Control and the Department of Medicine at UBC. As key members of this program, you will work across these health organizations to build cutting-edge data platforms and conduct interdisciplinary research at the intersection of data science, machine learning and public health. Research topics of interest include, but not limited to, predictive modelling, longitudinal analysis, natural language processing, data visualization, and data privacy. You will also work closely with a team of postdoctoral fellows and students. If you are interested in teaching, there will be opportunities for you to contribute to course development in data science and health for graduate students in the Department of Medicine. Each post-doctoral position is guaranteed for one-year, with a second-year extension given satisfactory progress in the first year.

Stipend: $65,000 to $90,000 annually (inclusive of benefits; actual stipend will depend on experience).

Applications closed.

The Data Science Institute and UBC believes that equity and diversity are essential to research excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Metis, Inuit, or Indigenous person. While all qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

The UBC Data Science Institute is a Faculty of Science initiative designed to incubate and accelerate research, innovation and training in data-intensive science. Working across the university’s data science community and advanced computing teams, the DSI focuses on building interdisciplinary research teams tackling data-rich problems. Visit: dsi.ubc.ca/research to view some of the most recently funded projects. Even though the DSI works in various application domains such as manufacturing, the DSI has a strong record of conducting diverse health and biomedical projects. The new program on EHR analytics builds upon such a foundation and seeks to make direct, if not immediate, impact to public health and health services in British Columbia.

Undergraduate Research Opportunity: Synthetic Data Researcher

Data Science Institute, UBC, Vancouver, BC

Start Date: January 3, 2022

End Date: August 31, 2022

The UBC Data Science Institute (DSI) is looking for a computer science (or related domains) undergraduate student to research privacy preserving synthetic medical image generation.

The DSI is leading the Cascadia Data Alliance's Privacy Preserving Machine Learning working group including Microsoft, Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, BC Cancer Research, and University of Washington and Knight Cancer Research. The collaboration aims to help health researchers and hospitals to share their data while preserving patients' privacy. To this end, we are organizing a competition to test the privacy of a novel privacy-preserving image generation method. The goal of the competition is for the participants to test the privacy of the synthetic images generated by our method. As part of this project, the student will contribute to the generation of the synthetic images and test it's privacy before the competition.

Research Objectives/Sub-Objectives:

• Apply generative algorithm to create synthetic medical images
• Apply privacy attacks and "utility" evaluation on generated images

Qualifications/Skills:

• UBC undergraduate student studying computer science, statistics, applied math, or related domains
• Experience with, or willing to learn about generative modelling; especially GANs
• Experience with, or willing to learn about privacy attacks such as membership inference attacks
• Experience with software development in Python
• Experience with machine learning and deep learning toolkits such as Tensorflow and Pytorch, or scikit-learn a bonus
• Basic understanding of statistical modelling or machine learning
• Domestic students will be given preference

Position will consists of hybrid work arrangements. For more information, or to submit an application (cover letter and resume), please send an email to dsi.admin@science.ubc.ca