Research Technician I - Psychological & Brain Sciences

Position Summary

The research technician will work with the PI to start up the Psychosis Prediction and Prevention Lab, which conducts a wide variety of behavioral, electrophysiology, and neuromodulation studies with healthy populations and adults and adolescents with psychiatric disorders. The employee will participate in the collection and analysis of data. In addition, this position will have various other lab management duties.

Job Description

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

• Recruiting and running participants through various research studies that are to be conducted in the lab.
• Collecting and analyzing behavioral and EEG data for various research studies that are to be conducted in the lab.
• Writing computer code to implement computerized experiments for the research studies that are to be conducted in the lab.
• Purchasing lab equipment (e.g., lab supplies, a printer, computers for new lab members).
• Revising and editing manuscripts.
• Supervising undergraduate research assistants.
• Occasional contact with the IRB to update (e.g., add new researchers) and maintain (submit renewal requests) research protocols.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Decision Making and Impact:

Typical decisions will include when to schedule a participant, how to troubleshoot data analysis or computer programming questions. These decisions will only impact the employee and the research team: scheduling will impact when other lab members will have their data, and troubleshooting will impact how we analyze our data.

Financial/Operational Impact:

No significant financial responsibilities or decisions. The research technician will be responsible for providing compensation to research participants. They will also manage laboratory purchases (e.g., a printer, lab supplies, software licenses).

Contacts:

Internal:

The research technician will have regular contact with other members of the Psychosis Prediction and Prevention Lab, such as graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduate research assistants. The research technician will meet regularly with the lab director, Dr. Osborne, to discuss projects, progress and to receive training. The research technician may also provide training to undergraduate research assistants. The research technician will also have occasional contact with the University’s IRB in order to update (e.g., add new researchers) and maintain (e.g., request renewal) research protocols.

External:

The research technician will regularly contact potential research participants. In addition, they might interact with researchers from other universities who are collaborating on projects with the lab.

Supervision:

Given:

The research technician will help oversee part-time undergraduate research assistants who perform recruitment and testing of research participants, as well as data analysis.

Received:

Frequent (at least weekly, but most likely daily) contact with the PI to discuss research, recruitment, data storage and analysis, and general state of the lab.

Confidential Information:

Research participants often have clinical disorders. Patient information provided by investigators and research staff includes study diagnosis and history of problems that may affect administration of clinical and cognitive assessment procedures. Results of diagnostic, cognitive or neuropsychological assessments are also confidential.

Working Conditions:

Job Location/Working Conditions:

• Normal office environment.
• Ability to travel between WUSTL Medical and Danforth campuses.
• Occasional work on weekends and evenings is required.

Physical Effort:

• Typically sitting at a desk or table.

Equipment:

• Office equipment.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all job duties performed by the personnel so classified. Management reserves the right to revise or amend duties at any time.

Required Qualifications

Education:

High school diploma or equivalent high school certification or combination of education and/or experience.

Certifications/Professional Licenses:

No specific certification/professional license is required for this position.

Work Experience:

No specific work experience is required for this position.

Skills:

Not Applicable

Driver's License:

A driver's license is not required for this position.

Preferred Experience:

• Previous experience with psychological, clinical, and/or neuroscience research.
• This position requires interaction with undergraduate students and community study participants experiencing symptoms across the psychosis spectrum, as well as interaction with lab members, so excellent communication and social skills would be highly preferable.
• Previous experience with computerized testing of cognitive phenomena and EEG.
• Experience with coding languages in order to process the behavioral and EEG experiments, as well as experience with statistical and computing programs (e.g., R, MATLAB, Python, SPSS).

Preferred Qualifications

Education:

Bachelor’s degree or combination of education and/or experience may substitute for minimum education. - Social Sciences

Work Experience:

Research (4 Years)

Grade

R04-H

Salary Range

$16.54 - $22.35 / HourlyThe salary range reflects base salaries paid for positions in a given job grade across the University. Individual rates within the range will be determined by factors including one's qualifications and performance, equity with others in the department, market rates for positions within the same grade and department budget.