Careers

Description:

HME has an outstanding opportunity for a Research Manager on the Pandemics team. The Research Manager provides leadership, management, and supervision within assigned research team(s). 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 team management, division and driving of work, and health data and data systems; they have a high intellectual agility and deft strategic planning skills in order 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 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 towards 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 must exhibit 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. The 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 in order 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 challenges.
• 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 lead 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.

• 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.
  
  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.
• Excellent interpersonal skills; a cooperative team player, energetic, able to develop productive relationships with IHME colleagues and external collaborators.
• Experience supervising and developing employees that 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 leading 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.
  
  Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.
  
  
  
• Weekend and evening work sometimes required.