Research Scientist

Description

The New York University Center for Brain Imaging seeks a full-time, in-person Research Scientist to ensure the efficient and safe operation of MRI scanning equipment and related technologies, while overseeing the training, supervision, and performance of researchers. This includes maintaining safety compliance, ensuring equipment efficiency, and managing maintenance and troubleshooting of hardware and software, as well as the facility as a whole. This position involves overseeing adherence to human subjects and animal research protocols, collaborating with faculty and researchers on experiment design, and supporting data management and analysis. The Research Scientist will also contribute to extramural research funding efforts and assist in developing tools for data processing, as well as staying updated on emerging technologies and instrument utilization.

Responsibilities include:

• Training and supervising all researchers on the operation of scanner equipment, software, and ancillary devices, and evaluating their performance. Ensuring compliance with safety standards and maintaining a service-oriented operation. Ensuring the efficiency of equipment and compliance with safety procedures and instrument maintenance. Overseeing adherence to human subjects and animal research protocols, serving as the primary contact for complaints, and ensuring proper records are maintained for legal purposes. Consulting with the contracted neuro-radiologist whenever concerns about potential abnormalities arise. Collaborating with NYU's Office of Veterinary Resources to ensure safety and sanitary procedures compliance during animal research. Overseeing instrument calibration, supervising software upgrades, and troubleshooting complex equipment malfunctions while providing after-hours support when necessary.
• Collaborating with faculty, post-doctoral, graduate, and undergraduate students to determine methodology and experiment design; assisting researchers and staff with reception of subjects and the interpretation of policies and procedures; overseeing the positioning and immobilization of subjects and phantoms; Operating MRI scanner and all ancillary equipment (e.g., physiological monitoring equipment, RF coils, Life Window monitor, audio system, video display systems, and computers); overseeing transfer and storage of images from the scanner host computer to the HPC.
• Conducting research individually and in collaboration with CBI faculty. Participating in helping CBI faculty secure extramural research funding. Maintaining up-to-date departmental technical information (e.g., resources, facilities, major equipment) for grant applications. Attending conferences and seminars to keep abreast of emerging technologies and instrument utilization, and maintaining expertise in equipment, operating systems, and current methods and practices. Organizing and participating in workshops, meeting with individual labs, and discussing research goals and methods.
• Acting as the primary liaison for facilities maintenance, including the environment, HVAC, building, and Center access. Conducting regular maintenance in the restricted areas of the Center and coordinating with Siemens Uptime to arrange regular preventive maintenance of equipment. Serving as a liaison with vendors to consult on proper instrument use to ensure a safe operating environment; negotiating costs of products and services; overseeing maintenance of scanner logs and service documentation (e.g., repair of machinery and equipment, and inventory of supplies and materials). Determining the need for equipment upgrade, repair, or replacement; overseeing instrument delivery and installation; inspecting the facility for renovation and maintenance needs; and ensuring smooth operations.
• Monitoring the extraction/preprocessing jobs on the High Performance Cluster (HPC), maintaining network connectivity, and troubleshooting issues as needed. Acting as the liaison between the HPC and users to ensure needs are met. Maintaining and updating non-human primate preprocessing tools as required. Developing and implementing automated software tools for pre-processing fMRI and related data.

Qualifications

Qualified applicants should have:

• Minimum 1 year post PhD in a science-related field;
• Highest research competence, attested to by PhD and equivalent level independent research and publications.
• Must include experience with magnetic resonance imaging, scientific and grant writing, technical facility management, training and/or teaching experience.
• Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills.
• Ability to effectively communicate with and assist individuals with various levels of experience.
• Ability to troubleshoot both software and hardware, and demonstrated skill working with databases, web-based applications (e.g., HTML), and good coding, computer, networking, statistics, and/or modeling skills.

 Preferred Experience

• Experience with an academic research environment
• Experience with Apple/Mac computers and office software programs, including coding skills in XNAT, Shell scripting, Python, and Matlab
• Must be well-versed in quality data collection to ensure adequacy, accuracy, and legitimacy of data in NYU systems and be able to strictly follow data privacy and security procedures for data handling and analysis to ensure adherence to legal and institutional standards.
• Grant and technical writing skills.

In compliance with New York City’s Pay Transparency Act, the base salary for this position is $82,500.00 annually, commensurate with experience. 

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