Project Officer, Neglected Tropical Diseases

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills, and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits, and natural beauty.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research center at the University of Washington. Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice. IHME carries out its mission through a range of projects within different research areas including the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors; Future Health Scenarios; Cost Effectiveness and Efficiency; Resource Tracking; and Impact Evaluations.

IHME is committed to providing the evidence base necessary to help solve the world’s most important health problems. This requires creativity and innovation, which are cultivated by an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment that respects and appreciates differences, embraces collaboration, and invites the voices of all IHME team members.

IHME has an exciting opportunity for a Project Officer to support the estimation of malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs), and anemia and hemoglobinopathies within the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. A systematic, scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss due to diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and geography over time, the GBD is the largest and most comprehensive effort to date to measure epidemiological levels and trends worldwide. The GBD’s aim is to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base to make decisions that achieve better health. The primary purpose of this position is to ensure the timely production of high-quality estimates on a regular basis in a way that maximizes efficiency and coordination across the team and enhances team morale. This individual must bring high intellectual agility and deft planning and organizational skills to push the team to meet high-pressure deadlines for research deliverables. The Project Officer is a key driver in the performance, quality, and efficiency required by the team to routinely produce high-quality, policy-relevant health indicators. This individual must excel at facilitating communication among technical and project staff with varying degrees of experience and from different disciplines.

This position is integral to IHME’s production of research deliverables such as estimates of health indicators, data visualizations, scientific publications, and presentations for a variety of audiences (conferences, key collaborators, policy-relevant country governments, etc.), among other items. The Project Officer will manage the results development, production, and dissemination workflow, including cross-cutting coordination between teams within IHME. The Project Officer will help facilitate the modeling of estimates and help manage various analytic processes that are used to apply innovative analytic methods.

To succeed, the Project Officer must develop a sufficient understanding of the team’s intellectual and analytic approach, as well as the inner workings, timelines, and goals. They must also become familiar with the methods and modeling approaches used by the research team. Progress toward project goals and delivery on objectives is crucial to IHME’s success at expanding the quantitative evidence base for population health. Overall, the Project Officer will be a critical member of an agile, dynamic team. This position is contingent upon project funding availability.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Research command

• Develop a command of malaria, NTDs, VPDs, and anemia and hemoglobinopathies, including the intellectual material and relevant data, methods, analytic approaches, and results. The individual is expected to develop an astute understanding of the material presented in journal articles, policy reports, and presentations that result from the projects on which they work.
• Become thoroughly familiar with the details of complex interdisciplinary projects included in the team’s portfolio including their goals, objectives, and activities. As a knowledgeable resource on a project’s intellectual substance, be integrally involved with all processes and key activities during the lifecycle of the project and be able to summarize the project’s progress to internal and external audiences.
• Develop a command of the computational, diagnostic, and visualization needs of the portfolio and the associated competencies, skills, and resources required to achieve the research goals.

Project management

• Facilitate routine and timely development, production, and dissemination of results for complex projects involving cutting-edge quantitative data collation, analyses, and tools for dissemination.
• Turn intellectual agendas set by researchers into action plans that can be implemented effectively across multiple project participants to achieve demanding and time-sensitive project milestones. Confidently and effectively participate in project assignments with a solid grounding in project specifics and status. Track progress and manage coordination and communication across the team.
• Drive research forward by managing workflow across a dynamic team of researchers and professional staff. Monitor and assess adherence to data and code quality protocols among researchers, data professionals, and other staff; track progress against deadlines; and help resolve roadblocks.
• Expertly carry out communications, relationship building, and project management with faculty and senior leaders from government, non-profit, research, academic, and donor organizations to attain project goals and facilitate productive collaboration.
• Manage high-quality data collation, cleaning, and integration into the analytic process.
• Develop study protocols, process descriptions, and training materials to ensure efficient operations across the team.
• Coordinate needs and actions across multiple teams internally to ensure data access, analyses, and diagnostics are appropriately connected and undertaken efficiently to produce results in a timely manner.
• Facilitate routine analytic processes and modeling efforts to derive key indicators and estimates based upon set protocols and parameters.
• Monitor, report, and forecast workflow and deadlines through effective portfolio management.
• Work with modelers to coordinate their implementation of research code and documentation versioning, improvements to code, and documentation of out-of-code processes.
• Facilitate creation of estimates documentation for the purpose of institutional knowledge sharing.
• Manage overall workflow of the team in close collaboration with team lead and senior staff on projects. Develop overall work-plan timeline and task assignments.

Supervisory/management

• Supervise employees to include hiring and training, leading workflow; priority setting; reviewing work and establishing quality standards; conducting regular performance assessments, providing mentorship and professional development for employees, and making recommendations for disciplinary action as needed.
• Identify training needs and opportunities for team members to grow their skills and advance their careers; ensure that the team has the necessary resources to complete their tasks effectively.
• Promote positive morale and positive progress towards objectives across all teams; lead effective and efficient team meetings that are structured, inclusive of consultation and constructive feedback, and result in identifiable next steps for team members.
• Keep team members motivated and engaged, recognizing their achievements, and addressing any issues that may affect morale.
• Monitor individual and team performance, providing feedback, and helping to resolve any performance issues; assist the team in overcoming obstacles, making decisions, and resolving conflicts.
• Ensure that the team adheres to company policies, procedures, and regulatory requirements.
• Attend required trainings about team leadership, management, and related topics as designated by ODT and the IHME Director.

General

• Manage events and meetings including logistical support and materials creation. Participate in internal or external trainings, as needed.
• Formulate effective strategies for motivating research teams and helping to ensure high achievement among all individuals on the team.
• Perform additional duties as assigned that fall within the reasonable scope of this position as a member of the research team and of IHME overall.
• Other duties as assigned.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, sciences, or related field plus three years’ related experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Must exhibit a strong desire and ability to learn new intellectual content across different disciplines in a timely fashion.
• Demonstrated management and supervisory experience required.
• Interest in global health, research, and/or quantitative population science.
• Incumbent must be able to work independently, be flexible, and juggle competing priorities.
• Strong oral and written communication skills and relationship management skills are critical.
• Strong project management skills including demonstrated ability to take multiple priorities and translate them into project completion through expert planning.
• Experience using Microsoft Office suite required.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, a cooperative team player, energetic, and able to develop productive relationships with colleagues and external collaborators.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• A commitment to working to alongside others at IHME to illuminate the health impacts of systemic racism and to work within IHME to make our organization more diverse and inclusive. See IHME’s DEI statement herehttps://www.healthdata.org/about/careers/dei.

WORKING CONDITIONS

• Evening and weekend work may sometimes be required.
• Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote. Work schedules for fully remote staff must overlap at least 50% with standard Seattle business hours of 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. Pacific Time as agreed upon between employee and supervisor.
• This position is open to anyone authorized to work in the US. The UW is not able to sponsor visas for staff positions.
• Working internationally is only allowed for IHME sponsored work that requires in-country participation.