Job description and selection criteria

Job title Statistician (for Biomedical Informatics)

Division Medical Sciences

The George Institute for Global Health / Nuffield Department Department of Population Health

New Richards Building, Old Road Campus, Location Headington, Oxford

Grade and salary Grade 7: £29,541 - £36,298

Hours Full-time or part-time (at least 50%)

Contract type Fixed-term, 18 months

Reporting to Dr Kazem Rahimi

Vacancy 111004 reference

Introduction

The University

The University of Oxford is a complex and stimulating organisation, which enjoys an international reputation as a world-class centre of excellence in research and teaching. It employs over 10,000 staff and has a student population of over 22,000.

Most staff are directly appointed and managed by one of the University’s 130 departments or other units within a highly devolved operational structure - this includes over 6,500 ‘academic-related’ staff (postgraduate research, computing, senior library, and administrative staff) and over 2,700 ‘support’ staff (including clerical, library, technical, and manual staff). There are also over 1,600 academic staff (professors, readers, lecturers), whose appointments are in the main overseen by a combination of broader divisional and local faculty board/departmental structures. Academics are generally all also employed by one of the 38 constituent colleges of the University as well as by the central University itself.

Our annual income in 2011/12 was £1,016.1m. Oxford is one of Europe's most innovative and entrepreneurial universities: income from external research contracts exceeds £409m p.a., and more than 80 spin-off companies have been created.

For more information please visit www.ox.ac.uk/staff/about_the_university.html

The Medical Sciences Division

The Medical Sciences Division is an internationally recognized centre of excellence for biomedical and clinical research and teaching, and the largest academic division in the University of Oxford.

World-leading programmes, housed in state-of-the-art facilities, cover the full range of scientific endeavour from the molecule to the population. With our NHS partners we also foster the highest possible standards in patient care.

For more information please visit: http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk

Nuffield Department of Population Health

The newly established University Department of Population Health provides an excellent environment for multi-disciplinary research and teaching. The Department contains world- renowned population health research groups, including the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU), the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) and other groups working on public health, health economics, ethics and health record linkage. The wide range of opportunities for research within the department includes access to very large data-sets from clinical trials, meta-analyses and epidemiological cohorts. These research programmes are well supported by scientific teams which include statisticians, analyst programmers and research coordinators, and by excellent computing and laboratory facilities. In recent years, trainees and junior research fellows have obtained MRC, BHF, and CR-UK and Wellcome Fellowships, DH scientist awards, as well as established academic posts in Oxford and in other universities.

The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford

The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford has been established as a joint venture between The George Institute for Global Health (headquartered in Sydney, Australia) and the Oxford Martin School of the University of Oxford. It is situated within the Nuffield Department of Population Health of the Medical Sciences Division at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

The vision of the founders is to create the world’s pre-eminent translational research facility devoted to global health. The George Institute at Oxford is building a major new program of research and development focused in large part, on the health priorities of disadvantaged populations, including those in China, India and other large emerging economies. These countries, while geographically and culturally disparate, have many shared healthcare needs, such as practical solutions for the control of diabetes and other chronic health conditions, the prevention and management of road injury and other trauma and the provision of rehabilitation services.

In an effort to find such solutions, The George Institute at Oxford is working with partners around the world to establish four complementary streams of research and development. The first, entitled Healthcare Innovation, strives to develop innovative approaches to the delivery of essential affordable health services in primary care clinics and hospitals across a range of resource poor settings worldwide. The second, entitled Affordable Health Technologies, focuses on facilitating the development of effective affordable health care products tailor-made for the world’s major populations, including those of China and India. The remaining two streams of work focus specifically on developing collaborative research between the University of Oxford and colleagues in China and India respectively.

In each of these four areas of endeavour, the specific activities undertaken involve substantial end-user input to ensure that the Institute’s research projects answer priority questions of the funders, providers and consumers of healthcare in relevant regions. In addition, each of the streams seek academic input from a wider range of disciplines than has normally characterised biomedical research and development: specifically, we involve experts in social sciences, economic sciences and engineering sciences from a range of countries including China and India. Finally, each stream includes a capacity development programme, the major goal of which is to support the development of expertise in healthcare innovation for the populations of the world’s major emerging economies.

The George Institute at Oxford will also become the main European hub of The George Institute for Global Health, an international not-for-profit health research organization devoted to finding solutions for the major health challenges facing disadvantaged populations in both higher and lower income countries. The George Institute for Global Health was established just over a decade ago and today has annual revenues of about £40 million and employs more than 350 people across its facilities in the UK, Australia, China and India. In each of these countries the Institute has a primary academic partner; in the UK it is the University of Oxford, in the Australia it is the University of Sydney; in China it is Peking University Health Science; and in India it is the University of Hyderabad. All these academic partners are world-class research-based universities. The George Institute’s global research and development program is focused around four themes: Chronic & Critical Conditions; Injury Frailty &Disability; Healthcare Innovation; and Health of Disadvantaged Populations. The George Institute at Oxford will contribute to all these themes.

Oxford Martin School The Oxford Martin School was founded as the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford in 2005 through the vision and generosity of Dr James Martin. The

School is a unique, interdisciplinary research initiative addressing key global future challenges. The School is working on the frontiers of knowledge in four broad areas: health and medicine; energy and environment; technology and society; and ethics and governance. Institutes, Programmes and individuals (known as James Martin Fellows) that receive funding are members of the Oxford Martin School. Together they constitute a unique, interdisciplinary community of scholars who collectively are tackling the challenges of the 21st century. www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk

Ethos The George Institute at Oxford aims to undertake research and develop capacity in an effort to improve the health of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations worldwide. Its focus is on innovative strategies that are affordable and accessible to a wide cross-section of communities for whom such strategies may be worthwhile. The Institute seeks to recruit staff who share this interest and wish to pursue it in a mutually supportive and caring environment. We strongly believe in the pursuit of excellence but we also believe that this is best achieved if our staff enjoy their work and the fellowship it provides.

Overview of the role

A Statistician (for Biomedical Informatics) is required to join the Healthcare Innovation and Evaluation Programme of the George Institute for Global Health. The successful candidate will support the team in analysis and visualisation of ‘Big Data’. In this context, ‘Big Data’ is a term used to describe the rapidly expanding body of digital information available from a wide range of sources (both medical and non-medical) that is relevant to healthcare funders, systems, providers and consumers. Initial work will focus on the analyses of several large and complex datasets, which include data from several hundred thousands of individuals (national hospital registries, primary care records (CPRD), UK Biobank, and individual patient data from several clinical trials). In addition, granular longitudinal data from digital home monitoring in heart failure is currently being collected, which provides an opportunity for more advanced Bayesian analyses to devise and validate early risk prediction algorithms. The purpose of the analyses is to assess the performance of healthcare systems, to develop accurate models of risk prediction for patients with chronic conditions, and to develop algorithms to support clinical decision-making.

The successful applicant will report to the Deputy Director of the Institute, Dr Kazem Rahimi and will work under the co-supervision of Prof Mark Woodward (Professor of Statistics and Epidemiology) and the head of our newly established Machine Learning / Biomedical Informatics programme.

Responsibilities / Duties

- Conduct statistical analyses of clinical datasets with the use of both traditional regression methods as well as more innovative statistical models such as hierarchical Bayesian models. - Support and advise researchers within the Institute with statistical aspects of their work, including external grant applications where statistical support is required. - Prepare reports, publications and presentations for academic and non-academic audiences. - Undertake any other reasonable duties appropriate to the grade and role that may be assigned by the directors to meet changing demands.

For an informal discussion about the post please contact Dr Kazem Rahimi, Deputy Director (01865 617201 or [email protected])

Selection criteria The successful applicant will be expected to meet the following criteria:

Essential

 MSc or PhD in Epidemiology, Biomedical Engineering or Biostatistics.  Experience in programming and the use of statistical software (R, Matlab/Octave, Python, Stata or SAS, C++).  Experience in statistical modelling (e.g., linear, logistic or Cox regression)  Good communication skills, both written and verbal, including the ability to review and summarise complex material clearly and succinctly.  Ability to work to very tight deadlines calmly and efficiently with great attention to detail  Excellent organisational and time management skills, and the ability to prioritise and manage own workload.  Ability to contribute to, and take lead responsibilities within a multidisciplinary team.

Desirable

 Interest in healthcare management, service delivery and biomedical informatics.  Ability to develop statistical analysis plan  Interest in chronic disease and injury management.  Experience of contribution to publications and grant applications  Interest and experience in data visualisation (e.g., JavaScript)

Working at the University of Oxford For further information about working at Oxford, please see: http://www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/jobs/research/

How to apply If you consider that you meet the selection criteria, click on the Apply Now button on the ‘Job Details’ page and follow the on-screen instructions to register as a user. You will then be required to complete a number of screens with your application details, relating to your skills and experience. When prompted, please provide details of two referees and indicate whether we can contact them at this stage. You will also be required to upload a CV and supporting statement which explains how you meet the selection criteria for the post. The supporting statement should explain your relevant experience which may have been gained in employment, education, or you may have taken time away from these activities in order to raise a family, care for a dependant, or travel for example. Your application will be judged solely on the basis of how you demonstrate that that you meet the selection criteria outlined

above and we are happy to consider evidence of transferable skills or experience which you may have gained outside the context of paid employment or education.

Please save all uploaded documents to show your name and the document type.

All applications must be received by midday on the closing date stated in the online advertisement.

Checklist for applicants

In order for your application to be considered you must include the following:

 a completed online application form  details of referees  an uploaded CV  an uploaded covering letter

Information for Priority Candidates

A priority candidate is a University employee who is seeking redeployment owing to the fact that he or she has been advised that they are at risk of redundancy, or on grounds of ill- health/disability. Priority candidates are issued with a redeployment letter by their employing departments and this letter must be attached to any application they submit.

Full details of the priority application process are available at: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/personnel/end/red/redproc/prioritycandidate

Should you experience any difficulties using the online application system, please email [email protected]

To return to the online application at any stage, please click on the following link www.recruit.ox.ac.uk

Please note that you will be notified of the progress of your application by automatic e-mails from our e-recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk mail regularly to ensure that you receive all e-mails.