Postdoctoral Scholar, Transplant Medicine, Cumming School of Medicine

Position Description

Area: Transplant wellness research
Duration:  Up to 3 years 
Start Date:  January 1, 2024
Salary: $50,000 - $65,000 CAD, commensurate with qualifications
 
The Division of Transplant Medicine in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary is accepting applications for a Postdoctoral Associate in the Transplant Wellness Program. 

Job Description:

The Transplant Wellness Program (TWP) is a comprehensive wellness initiative designed to benefit solid organ transplant patients (kidney, liver, and lung transplants). TWP provides programming to support physical health goals (i.e., decrease frailty and improve physical activity levels), behavior change, and mental wellness, to enhance the overall quality of life of solid organ transplant patients. 
The TWP includes educational resources and wellness interventions to help transplant patients become more physically active pre-and post-transplant surgery. The goal of TWP is to drive innovation by gathering the evidence required to implement sustainable wellness practices. Furthermore, TWP aims to impact change at both individual and system levels, evaluating patient quality of life and economic benefits to the system. TWP is supported by Transplant Medicine and the O’Brien Institute for Public Health at the University of Calgary. 
The O’Brien Institute for Public Health brings academic scholars, health practitioners, citizens, governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations together to collectively tackle public health challenges. It is an institute that champions research that promotes population health and high-quality sustainable health care for all. The institute supports stakeholder engagement and the generation and mobilization of knowledge. The University of Calgary will provide the successful candidate with a stimulating and conducive environment to collaborate with local and international scientists and clinicians and provide opportunities to learn from a large network of talented professionals.
The post-doctoral scholar will be supervised by the core Transplant Wellness team, including Dr. Stefan Mustata (Cumming School of Medicine), Dr. Kelly Burak (Cumming School of Medicine) and Dr. Nicole Culos-Reed (Faculty of Kinesiology). The postdoctoral scholar will perform research, including management of the TWP database, a prospective cohort, as well as interventions that will be examined with effectiveness-implementation frameworks. TWP is designed to gather best evidence to inform practice that ultimately improves the wellness and quality of life of transplant patients. Within this role, the postdoctoral scholar will be encouraged and supported to build their independent research program, including applying for external awards locally and nationally.
The postdoctoral scholar will lead research, under the supervision of the TWP core team, which will include assisting with writing grant applications, performing systematic reviews, analyzing the prospective cohort dataset, conceptualizing, and designing, executing, analyzing, and disseminating the findings from effectiveness-implementation research studies (including writing manuscripts and presenting findings to stakeholders). The postdoctoral scholar will also liaise with all relevant stakeholders including patient partners, clinical team members, and researchers across the TWP.
 

Qualifications:

• PhD in epidemiology, kinesiology, biostatistics, community health sciences/public health, or closely related discipline is required (completed within the last 3 years). 
• Strong track record of scholarly achievements for stage of development, and advanced expertise in quantitative data analysis and interpretation.
• Must have demonstrated success in academic knowledge translation such as publications and presentations.
• Experience with the delivery of behaviour change trials.
• Must be interested in pursuing health services research in transplant medicine and wellness.
• Methodological skill sets:
  • Knowledge of and experience with a variety of health services research methods.
  • Strong background in research design, methodology (clinical and health services research and/or qualitative research), biostatistics and knowledge translation including preparation of manuscripts and research papers.
  • Knowledge of secondary data sources for research such as electronic medical records and administrative data an asset. 
  • Advanced skills in statistical software (Stata, SAS, or R).
  • Experience in database management.
• Excellent organization skills, including the ability to work independently and to multitask.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, leadership, and organizational skills
• Excellent attention to details is a must.
• High level of effective time management, personal initiative, and teamwork.
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills is essential.
• Strong team skills as this position will have a high degree of interaction/contact with patients, clinicians, researchers, students, and other stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently, and collaboratively in a team.
• Experience working with clinical populations is highly preferable, but not required.
• Experience providing mentorship to graduate and undergraduate students.
• Strong interpersonal skills and professional demeanor.
• Ability to thrive and deliver results in a fast-paced team environment.
• Intermediate to advanced skills in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint), advanced internet skills. .

Please review the Postdoc Eligibility Guidelines for more information prior to applying for this position.

Application Details:

Candidates must submit the completed application package as a single PDF file with the subject line: Transplant Wellness Postdoctoral Application. All applications must include:

• A brief cover letter including date of availability, suitability, and motivation for the role, including your interest in this project, qualifications or related experience, general research/goals statement
• Detailed curriculum vitae (CV), including reprints of 1-2 relevant publications
• Official or unofficial copy of diploma(s)/university certificate(s)
• Contact information including email addresses for three (3) references to support the application
• Application should be submitted to Maneka Perinpanayagam (Sr. Research Program Manager for TWP) at [email protected]. 

Closing date: Review of applications will begin August 2023, until the position is filled.
Expected start date: January 1, 2024, or negotiable

Additional Information

To learn more about postdoctoral scholar opportunities at the University of Calgary and all we have to offer, view our Postdoc Careers website. For more information visit Careers in the Cumming School of Medicine.

The University strongly recommends all faculty and staff are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

About the University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is Canada’s leading next-generation university – a living, growing and youthful institution that embraces change and opportunity with a can-do attitude. Located in the nation’s most enterprising city, the university is making tremendous progress on its Eyes High journey to be recognized as one of Canada’s top five research universities, grounded in innovative learning and teaching and fully integrated with the community it both serves and leads. The University of Calgary inspires and supports discovery, creativity and innovation across all disciplines. For more information, visit ucalgary.ca.

To succeed as one of Canada’s top universities, where new ideas are created, tested and applied through first-class teaching and research, the University of Calgary needs more of the best minds in our classrooms and labs. We’re increasing our scholarly capacity by investing in people who want to change the world, bringing the best and brightest to Calgary to form a global intellectual hub and achieve advances that matter to everyone. For more information visit research.ucalgary.ca/postdocs.

About Calgary, Alberta

Calgary is one of the world's cleanest cities and has been named one of the world's most livable cities for years. Calgary is a city of leaders – in business, community, philanthropy and volunteerism. Calgarians benefit from the strongest economy in the nation and enjoy more days of sunshine per year than any other major Canadian city. Calgary is less than an hour’s drive from the Rocky Mountains and boasts the most extensive urban pathway and bikeway network in North America.

The University of Calgary has launched an institution-wide Indigenous Strategy in line with the foundational goals of Eyes High, committing to creating a rich, vibrant, and culturally competent campus that welcomes and supports Indigenous Peoples, encourages Indigenous community partnerships, is inclusive of Indigenous perspectives in all that we do.

As an equitable and inclusive employer, the University of Calgary recognizes that a diverse staff/faculty benefits and enriches the work, learning and research experiences of the entire campus and greater community. We are committed to removing barriers that have been historically encountered by some people in our society. We strive to recruit individuals who will further enhance our diversity and will support their academic and professional success while they are here. In particular, we encourage members of the designated groups (women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, members of visible/racialized minorities, and diverse sexual orientation and gender identities) to apply. To ensure a fair and equitable assessment, we offer accommodation at any stage during the recruitment process to applicants with disabilities. Questions regarding [diversity] EDI at UCalgary can be sent to the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion ([email protected]) and requests for accommodations can be sent to Human Resources ([email protected]).