Research Manager, Neonatal and Child Health
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. Our vision is to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base so all people live long lives in full health.
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 outstanding opportunity for a Research Manager on the Neonatal and Child Health team focused on multiple topics related to maternal, perinatal, and child health including birth defects, cerebral palsy, preterm birth, low birth weight/fetal growth restriction, neonatal encephalopathy, neonatal sepsis, hemolytic disease of the newborn, malnutrition and child growth failure, pregnancy care coverage, and oral disorders. The Research Manager provides leadership, management, and supervision within the assigned research team. Working with a Research Team Lead or manager, the individual helps drive effective resource allocation, team building, and coordination that result in the production of estimates and interim deliverables on a timeline basis. This position will be integral to the annual goal-setting and scoping processes, and monitoring progress against them. The incumbent brings deep subject matter expertise in maternal, neonatal, and child health and has high intellectual agility and deft strategic planning skills to push the team to meet high-pressure deadlines for research deliverables. The Research Manager is a key driver in the performance, quality, and efficiency required to routinely produce high-quality, policy-relevant health indicators for their team(s). The Research Manager must be adept at facilitating communication among technical and project staff with varying degrees of experience and from a variety of cultural settings and disciplines.
The position is integral to IHME’s progress on key research projects and its production of deliverables such as research articles, policy-relevant estimates of health indicators, conferences, and reports. 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 Research Manager will be a critical member of an agile, dynamic team.
This position is contingent on project funding availability and need.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
Research command
- Thorough command of the relevant research subteam(s)’ intellectual underpinnings, main goals, and the data, methods, and analytic approaches that achieve them. The Research Manager exhibits an astute understanding of the material presented in journal articles, policy reports, and presentations that result from the projects on which they work.
- As a knowledgeable resource on a subteam’s intellectual substance, the individual will be integrally involved with helping the team achieve the goals of its projects in their myriad details. Individual must understand complexities of the analytic process itself while being consistently aware of deadlines imposed as part of the larger research portfolio’s mandate.
- Demonstrate a command of the computational, diagnostic, and data needs of the team(s) and the associated competencies, skills, and resources required to achieve deliverables.
Team facilitation
- Work with faculty, researchers, and staff to set intellectual agendas and translate them into action plans that can be implemented effectively across multiple project participants.
- Manage workflow components within the team, ensuring clear coordination on data identification, transformation, storage, analysis, diagnostics, critique, and presentation. Help to achieve continual improvements to efficiency and performance and ensure timely completion of key milestones.
- For specific projects centered within a given team, monitor allocation of resources and make recommendations to the Team Lead or manager on how to allocate people to achieve best results.
- Produce and review study materials including project training materials, presentations, and scientific progress reports in consultation with senior researchers and others as needed.
- Manage high-quality data collation, cleaning, and integration into the analytic process.
- Expertly carry out communications, relationship building, and project management with faculty and senior leaders from governmental, nonprofit, research, academic, and donor organizations to attain project goals and facilitate productive collaboration.
- Help to manage donor relationships, write donor reports, and prepare presentations.
- Organize and support research team meetings to coordinate deadlines and address issues and/or problems.
- Assist the Team Lead in annual goal-setting and scoping processes. Coordinate consultation with other team members.
- Facilitate assessment of data, methods, and results with colleagues and collaborators.
Supervisory/Management
- Supervise employees, to include hiring and training, assigning work hours, managing workflow, priority setting, contributing to professional growth and performance development, resolving complaints, and provide course-correcting guidance when necessary.
- Help Team Leads to identify and carry through on recruitment needs within the team.
- Mentor Project Officers, Researchers, and Post-Bachelor Fellows by providing guidance in the development of professional skills and helping them to understand how analytic and methodological undertakings link to project deliverables.
- With Team Leads and managers, formulate and implement effective strategies for motivating teams and helping to ensure high achievement among all individuals on them.
- Identify, develop, and give trainings to familiarize team staff with specific project-based needs.
- Uphold strong principles of two-way communication, respectful debate, and engagement with the team and colleagues as a whole to ensure clear communication and common understanding of priorities and the rationale behind them.
General
- Give input to proposals and make recommendations for resource needs on proposed projects in conjunction with the Team Lead.
- Represent research team work to external audiences, including researchers, collaborators, donors, and other interested stakeholders. Cultivate relationships and manage high-level collaborations as needed.
- Manage events and meetings with high-level attendees.
- Directly engage with high-level external partners and collaborators, including decision-makers in government, donor, inter-governmental, and scientific organizations as related to research-specific topics.
- Other duties as assigned.
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
- Master’s degree in social sciences or related field plus 4-5 years of related project management experience in a highly complex scientific environment, 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:
- Previous project management and relationship management experience, organized and detail-oriented, with an ability to work both independently and collaboratively to achieve objectives.
- Demonstrated outstanding intellectual capability and knowledge of global health and development issues.
- Strong desire and ability to learn intellectual content to facilitate highly complex scientific projects.
- Demonstrated record of oral and written communication skills with multiple audiences required.
- High-level relationship management skills are critical to communicate with stakeholders at multiple levels, including donors, researchers, field site representatives, administrators, and other external audiences.
- Adept diplomacy and exemplary interpersonal skills required. Must be agile at forming respectful and rewarding relationships with people with different levels of experience and expertise from a variety of cultural, linguistic, and professional settings.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, a cooperative team player, energetic, able to develop productive relationships with IHME colleagues and external collaborators.
- Experience supervising and developing employees who are high performing, collaborative, and mission and goal oriented.
- Exceptional listening skills and ability to relate to, influence, and coach employees of all levels in the organization.
- Experience in one or more of the following: coordinating computational and analytic processes; designing and giving training in the social sciences; coordinating systematic reviews and other research-related tasks; facilitating research production activities; organizing and assessing data and results on a large scale.
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced and collaborative environment to manage multiple priorities while coordinating resources needed to meet deadlines.
- 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 here: http://www.healthdata.org/get-involved/careers/dei.
WORKING CONDITIONS:
- Weekend and evening work sometimes required.
- This position is open to anyone authorized to work in the US. The UW is not able to sponsor visas for staff positions.
- Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote in the US; work schedule required to overlap 50% of IHME office hours, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific Time.
Application Process:
The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process. These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others. Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.