Careers

Description:

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 Research Operations team to contribute to driving progress from start to finish on complex endeavors centered in a research portfolio. The individual helps drive effective resource allocation, team building, and coordination that result in the production of estimates and interim deliverables. The individual must be agile in managing complexities, demonstrate the ability to look across competing intellectual and practical considerations to assess tradeoffs, and deft strategic planning skills. The incumbent has multi-faceted knowledge of multiple research areas, the methods and analytic machinery needs and brings intellectual agility and deft strategic planning skills in order to properly sequence and meet interdependent deadlines and research deliverables. The incumbent 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. This position is contingent on project funding availability and need.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Research command

• Thorough understanding of the intellectual material and main goals related to the position’s research portfolio, 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.
• Demonstrate a complete understanding of how methods and analytic techniques map to interdependent project deliverables, and be agile in navigating and overcoming the challenges that can occur in development and production of the intellectual enterprise.

Project management

• Guide, advise on, and monitor cross-cutting strategic priorities that are developed as part of the research portfolio which requires teams across the organization to accomplish.
• Help to interpret and translate cross-cutting goals into concrete resource needs and actionable work plans.
• Manage workflow, achievement of milestones, and resolution of roadblocks across functional and research teams to maximize attainment of goals related to the research portfolio.
• Manage communication, hand-offs, and prioritization amongst key components including data identification, transformation, storage, analysis, diagnostics, critique, and presentation in visualizations and publications.
• Monitor progress across teams, ensure clean and clear reporting of progress across research teams and key functional areas, and identify risks and solutions.
• Make strategic planning recommendations regarding the allocation of people, time, financial, and intellectual resources. Track resource use and needs across projects and make future projections. Facilitate project-specific scoping against available resources.
• Produce and review study materials including project training materials, presentations, and scientific progress reports in consultation with senior researchers and others as needed.
• Cultivate strong relationships and facilitate communication with a wide range of staff across research and functional teams to ensure efficient completion of deliverables. Expertly carry out communications, relationship building, and project management with faculty and senior leaders from governmental, nonprofit, research, academic, and donor organizations.
• Organize and support project-wide management meetings to coordinate deadlines and address challenges.

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.
• Mentor junior staff by providing guidance in the development of professional skills and helping them to understand how analytic and methodological undertakings link to project deliverables.
• Identify, develop and give trainings meant to improve employee’s technical and professional skills necessary for the research portfolio, in coordination with Organizational Development and Training team.
• Formulate and implement effective strategies for motivating teams and helping to ensure high achievement among all individuals on them.
• 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.
• Other duties as assigned.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Master’s degree in public health, business administration, public administration, data 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.
• Must exhibit 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.
• 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 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