Data Science Facilitator

The WID is seeking an individual to advance the research activities of faculty members, students, and staff in a broad range of scholarly disciplines that would benefit from data science methods. Facilitators will perform training and community engagement in data science across the UW-Madison campus. More specifically, the Facilitator will consult with researchers on campus to recommend appropriate solutions to data science problems impeding their research, where solution pathways for the researcher will consider resources on campus and beyond, including existing learning resources, data management services, computing resources, consultations and collaboration with data science and computational methods experts, identification and pursuit of funding opportunities, and/or pathways for leveraging effort from campus data science teams and associated faculty. The facilitator will also design workshops and teach existing trainings to help researchers learn data analysis tools and automation that will make their research more scalable and reproducible. The Facilitator will also collaborate closely with research groups on short term projects; specifically developing workflows, reviewing code, helping with project management, teaching coding and computation skills, and providing other guidance that supports the researcher’s work. The successful applicant will gain a wide range of skills at this job and will have the opportunity to work with experts in a range of research areas and data-centric technologies.

Responsibilities:

Works with researchers to provide advice and training on data preparation and data science analysis.

• 10% Advises researchers on how to organize and prepare data sets for analysis including cleaning/quality assurance, transformations, restructuring, and integration of multiple data sources
• 10% Advises researchers on how to use data science techniques to find data patterns and answer research questions, such as data visualization, statistical analysis, machine learning, and data mining
• 10% Advises researchers on how to compose and assemble reproducible workflows and patterns to researchers and/or administrators
• 15% Formulates reproducible research approaches based on interactions with research teams and contributes to the establishment of reproducible and well-documented research protocols through training and communication activities
• 35% Designs, develops, and implements training on data science and data science tools
• 20% Collaborates directly with research teams on short term projects or supports researchers through engagement in communities of practice and or other consulting efforts

Institutional Statement on Diversity:

Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background – people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.

For more information on diversity and inclusion on campus, please visit: Diversity and Inclusion

Education:

Required
Candidates with a bachelor’s degree and professional experience will be considered.

Preferred
A Master’s degree (MS or MA) or higher in a research focused area of study is preferred.

Qualifications:

Required:
-At least two years of experience in a data-and/or compute-intensive area is required. Academic experience does qualify.
-Strong oral and written communication skills, with attention to interpersonal relationships, and professionalism
-Ability to work independently and in a team setting to establish and maintain effective working relationships
-Demonstrate strong abilities in critical analysis and creative problem solving
-Possess a demonstrated interest and prior experience in helping others to elevate their work
-Possess basic skills with tools for data curation, analysis, and/or visualization, including scripting languages, databases, visualization software and/or platforms, use of large-scale computing systems, etc.

Preferred:
-Highly Preferred: Experience applying data science methods relevant to the social sciences or digital humanities, such as text analysis with natural language processing, network analysis, or geospatial data analysis and visualization
-Prior work as a data scientist (or similar position), whether in industry or academic research contexts
-An appreciation for a range of data-intensive research
-Experience in at least one research domain such as: humanities, social sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, or engineering
-Experience and demonstrated interest in education, outreach, mentoring, consulting, and community-building
-Contribution to a Software, Data, or Library Carpentry workshop or other data- or computation-focused training effort(s)