Postdoctoral Fellow - Radiation Oncology - Research
Komen Graduate Training Program UT MDACC is focused on advancing research in oncology. The Postdoctoral Fellow will lead technical research and data engineering efforts for NIH-funded studies, developing data standards and predictive models related to oral and dental toxicities in cancer patients.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain production-quality research data pipelines supporting prospective and retrospective oncology cohorts
- Implement ETL / ELT workflows to ingest, transform, validate, and harmonize structured and unstructured data from: Electronic health records (EHR), Imaging metadata and derived features, Patient-reported outcomes (ePROs), Dental and oral health assessments, Research databases and external registries
- Proactively identify opportunities to improve data quality, completeness, and reproducibility across research workflows
- Serve as a technical resource for data model design, schema evolution, and versioning
- Support the development and maintenance of research ontologies and common data elements (CDEs) aligned with national standards (e.g., clinical, imaging, and outcomes domains)
- Translate existing research data models into ontology-based representations to support analytics, interoperability, and AI workflows
- Document data schemas, ontologies, transformations, and analytical assumptions to support transparency and reuse
- Collaborate with investigators to refine data structures that improve extensibility, semantic clarity, and downstream analysis
- Prepare structured and unstructured datasets for predictive, descriptive, and exploratory modeling, including AI/ML and statistical analyses
- Support LLM-based workflows for extraction of clinical concepts from free-text (e.g., clinical notes, imaging reports, pathology reports)
- Assist with feature engineering, cohort construction, and data serialization for modeling and visualization platforms
- Build and manage data assets using modern analytics platforms; experience with Palantir Foundry is desired but not required
- For Foundry users: Create and maintain backing datasets, transformations, and ontology objects; Implement data validations, permissions, and pipeline monitoring; Design and deploy interactive, ontology-driven workflow-specific Workshop Apps
- For non-Foundry users: Apply equivalent best practices using relational databases, Python/SQL workflows, and cloud or on-prem research environments
- Work closely with clinicians, research coordinators, statisticians, and informatics teams to translate scientific questions into data solutions
- Produce clear technical documentation (data dictionaries, pipeline descriptions, SOPs)
- Support IRB-compliant data governance, including secure handling of PHI and research data
- Assist with onboarding and training of research staff in data systems and best practices
- Contribute to abstracts, figures, and analytic summaries for publications and grant reporting
Skills
- The appointee recently (within three years) completed their education (doctorate) or completed previous postdoctoral experience or graduate medical education
- The appointment is temporary
- The appointment involves substantial full-time research or scholarship
- The appointment is viewed as preparatory for a full-time academic and/or research career
- The appointment is not part of a clinical training program
- The appointee works under the supervision of a senior scholar or a department in a university or similar research institution (e.g., national laboratory, National Institutes of Health (NIH), etc.)
- The appointee has the freedom to and is expected to publish the results of his or her research or scholarship during the period of the appointment
- Experience with Palantir Foundry is desired but not required
Benefits
- Medical
- Dental
- Paid time off
- Retirement
- Tuition benefits
- Educational opportunities
- Individual and team recognition
Company Overview
Company H1B Sponsorship