Job Description

Position Description:

This is an ideal research assistant position for a student who is interested in a career in the health care or clinical research, and is divided into two components:

1. providing research support in the GBM TCE, and
2. providing research support for medical oncologists and other clinical research coordinators in the cancer clinics.

Clinic - You will be the lead biobanking coordinator for one of our major study areas (for example, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, glioblastoma, etc). You will communicate with oncologists, clinical research staff, and patients as you screen for study inclusion, recruit and consent subjects, and arrange laboratory procedures. There may be opportunities to attend autopsies.

Laboratory - You will learn how to handle human specimens, process and bank samples, and ship samples to collaborators. Training may include plasma collection, harvesting of leukocytes, and DNA extraction. You will learn Good Document Procedure in paper and digital record keeping, how to conduct preliminary analyses, and how to prepare summary figures and texts for manuscripts.

As a part of a highly collaborative team, you will assist and receive support from your colleagues in other study areas, broadening your understanding of several different projects. Excellent organization and communication skills are critical in this position, as daily operations follow clinical schedules.

You will learn how to perform data entry in clinical study databases such as REDCap, VELOS Clinical Trial Management System, patient medical charts, and Excel files, and abstracting data from medical records.

You may also independently design study databases and perform database quality control checks with minimal supervision.