Sr. Staff Scientist, Clinical Informatics Center

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

PPO medical plan

Paid Time Off

Retirement programs

Tuition reimbursement

Parental leave

Job summary

UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas seeks a Health Informatics Senior Staff Scientist to lead clinical informatics projects, leveraging EHR data, NLP, and large language models to advance brain health research and patient care.

You will supervise staff, manage budgets, and collaborate with clinicians, data scientists, and investigators across the IMAGINe Lab and affiliated centers.

The role emphasizes ethics, regulatory compliance, and dissemination through grants and manuscripts.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent terminal degree in a relevant discipline.
• 8 years of job-specific experience post‑graduation in biomedical informatics or related fields.

Responsibilities

• Leads, supervises, and manages clinical and research informatics projects leveraging EHR data and NLP/LLMs.
• Oversees development of biomedical informatics applications and data warehousing.
• Mentors researchers and staff, and ensures compliance with policies and research ethics.

Skills

NLP

LLMs

Informatics

Education

PhD or equivalent terminal degree

Job description

WHY UT SOUTHWESTERN?

With over 75 years of excellence in Dallas‑Fort Worth, Texas, UT Southwestern is committed to excellence, innovation, teamwork, and compassion. As a world‑renowned medical and research center, we strive to provide the best possible care, resources, and benefits for our valued employees. Ranked as the number 1 hospital in Dallas‑Fort Worth according to U.S. News & World Report, we invest in you with opportunities for career growth and development to align with your future goals. Our highly competitive benefits package offers healthcare, PTO and paid holidays, on‑site childcare, wage, merit increases and so much more. We invite you to be a part of the UT Southwestern team where you’ll discover a culture of teamwork, professionalism, and a rewarding career!

JOB SUMMARY

Through our partnership with the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute, the department is building state‑of‑the‑art facilities for drug and device testing and fostering collaborative research on brain disease therapy. At the interface of this partnership and the UT Southwestern Clinical Informatics Center is the IMAGINe Lab (Informatics for Multidisciplinary Advancement, Guidance, and Innovation in Neuroscience), which specializes in clinical and research informatics with a mission to advance brain health research and care using biomedical and electronic health record (EHR) data through development, implementation, and evaluation of biomedical informatics applications and methods. Our lab seeks to identify, harvest, and make pertinent biomedical and health care data and information accessible and usable to support evidence‑based clinical decisions, information sharing through transitions of care, and health research through methods including natural language processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI, information extraction, standard ontologies and terminologies, computable phenotyping, and data warehousing.

The IMAGINe Lab connects the O'Donnell Brain Institute, the Neurology Biostatistics and Clinical Informatics Section, and the UT Southwestern Clinical Informatics Center, which is a vibrant, interdisciplinary community of physicians, scientists, students, researchers, and developers whose goal is to leverage the knowledge from research and experience in biomedical informatics, data sciences, social sciences, clinical sciences and other domains for the generation of knowledge and informatics‑based products or services to improve quality and safety, the efficiency of patient care, and the health of people in general. We are seeking a motivated Health Informatics Senior Staff Scientist to lead, supervise, and manage a portfolio of clinical and research informatics projects leveraging EHR and multimodal research data through NLP, LLMs, computable phenotyping, and data management and warehousing, to advance both patient care and discovery across the neurosciences.

This individual would utilize research and analytical skills for scholarly excellence in a research setting. They would be the lead researcher, responsible for overseeing, development, modification, execution and supervising research projects and activities. They would manage the technical, budgetary, and scheduling aspects of scientific research projects. Responsibilities include understanding all facets of the research program; overseeing research trainees and laboratory staff; gathering information about institutional and state and federal government procedures, regulations, laws, and policies regarding the particular topic of research; ensuring that research activities comply with all institutional and governmental policies and/or regulations; and comply with the highest standards of research ethics.

The Health Informatics Senior Staff Scientist participates in all phases of clinical informatics research projects, from study design to analysis and writing manuscripts for submission to academic journals. They work closely with research participants and with other research team members, including data scientists, database analysts, informaticists, electronic health record analysts, members of collaborating research groups, research coordinators, fellow staff in the Clinical Informatics Center, and study physicians.

BENEFITS

UT Southwestern is proud to offer a competitive and comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees. Our benefits are designed to support your overall wellbeing, and include:

• PPO medical plan, available day one at no cost for full‑time employee‑only coverage


• 100% coverage for preventive healthcare-no copay


• Paid Time Off, available day one


• Retirement Programs through the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS)


• Paid Parental Leave Benefit


• Wellness programs


• Tuition Reimbursement


• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Qualified Employer


• Learn more about these and other UTSW employee benefits!

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

Required

• Education PhD or equivalent terminal degree in a relevant discipline


• Experience 8 years of job-specific experience post‑graduation Relevant disciplines include any field of biology, chemistry, biomedical engineering, computational biology, or related scientific discipline.

JOB DUTIES

Within the Lab:

• Works with Principal Investigator or Core Facility Director to develops and implements strategic goals for the lab.


• Manages scientific research projects and activities to include developing, compiling and editing supplemental materials that support written communication.


• Develops and leads new research and/or innovation projects of substantial importance to the field.


• Evaluates and implements published procedures and emerging technologies and methods for specific scientific investigation related to laboratory or core facility.


• Independently prepares data for, and assists with, writing/editing grants and manuscripts.


• Supervises laboratory personnel including students, technicians, and advanced degree holders in research techniques and protocols. Leads and manages a team of scientists in solving challenging problems, including providing technical instruction and allocating work for the team.


• Manages projects on budget and on schedule.


• Documents all technical information about models, experiments, and outcomes.


• May oversee regulatory compliance for the lab (chemical, animal, radioisotopes, etc.), including the preparation and submission of protocols and other compliance documentation.


• Prepares Annual Report for core fac

Within the UT Southwestern community:

• Sought out as expert and provides advice and assistance to investigators at UT Southwestern with respect to research laboratory and/or core facility expertise.


• Proactively seeks to bring new approaches and technologies to laboratory and UT Southwestern, including through participation in conferences, workshops, and/or formal classroom instruction.


• Leads coordination efforts with colleagues in multiple aspects of project pipelines.

Within larger scientific community:

• Sought out as an ad hoc reviewer for publications submitted to scientific journals.


• Invited to present research at local and national conferences as appropriate.

SECURITY AND EEO STATEMENT

Security This position is security-sensitive and subject to Texas Education Code 51.215, which authorizes UT Southwestern to obtain criminal history record information.

EEO UT Southwestern Medical Center is committed to an educational and working environment that provides equal opportunity to all members of the University community. As an equal opportunity employer, UT Southwestern prohibits unlawful discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, or veteran status.