(Post-Doctoral) Research Assistant in Medical Data Mining

Computer Science, University of Hull

The successful candidate will be employed (for 36 months) on the BRAVEHEALTH project. BRAVEHEALTH (Patient Centric Approach for an Integrated, Adaptive, Context Aware Remote Diagnosis and Management of Cardiovascular Diseases) is a European Union funded large-scale integrating project. The project is funded under FP7-ICT-2009-4 (overall for 4 years, starting in March 2010), and addresses the programme Objective ICT-2009.5.1: Personal Health Systems: a) Minimally invasive systems and ICT-enabled artificial organs: a1) Cardiovascular diseases.

The research at the Department of Computer Science, University of Hull addresses Data Mining and Decision Support, in collaboration with a number of university and clinical partners, primarily in Finland, Italy and Poland. The main activity of the successful candidate will be in the research, development and deployment of an Intelligent Decision Support System that combines Data Mining (across multiple data and information sources) with clinical expertise.

Specific tasks that the appointed researcher will be involved in are:
•       Developing specifications for the decision support system with context provisions, and diagnostic and prognostic algorithms
•       Decision Support and Data Mining Strategy Definition. This will establish the interface to other aspects of the BRAVEHEALTH project and the data/decision interfaces to other software. It will define the detailed objectives in performing the data mining and define the specific requirements of the Decision Support system.
•       Data Analysis and Knowledge Engineering. Explore existing data and biosensor data specifications and establish a data ontology for Data Mining and Decision Support System.
•       Data Exploration And Definition for Data Mining. Formalising a Patient Data Ontology prior to full Data Mining. The data Ontology will also be used as filter system in interfacing the Decision Support system to the multiple data sources available in the BRAVEHEALTH project.
•       Data Mining and Classifier Definition. Investigate the parameterisation of data mining techniques to suit each task and classifier type required.
•       Decision Support Development. Knowledge engineering of all data mining outcomes, classifiers and build decision models (based on clinical and accepted medical risk analysis models) to work within a Decision Support system.
•       Data Mining and Decision Support System Deployment Building of the Decision Support System and subsequent embedding in the BRAVEHEALTH software.


We are looking for a (post-doctoral or equivalent) Research Assistant who matches the following criteria.
•       1st Class Honours in Computer Science (or related Discipline) with relevant full-time work experience OR higher class Honours in Computer Science (or related Discipline) with research degree in a project related area.
•       They should have post-doctoral or research experience, ideally in data mining, decision support or medical informatics
•       They should have experience or a good understanding of knowledge ontologies, with a strong mathematics background.
•       Work or research experience in computer science, medical informatics or a project related area is essential.
•       Good programming skills in object oriented languages (e.g. C++).
•       Good understanding of the principles of data mining and decision support, particularly in medical domains.
•       Good written and verbal communication skills are essential. The project will involve communication with a number of partner institutes and the ability to communicate technical issues is essential. Publications arising from the project are expected at both international conference and in journals.
•       Training in Training in Project Management and Risk Analysis would be an asset.


Salary £31,671 pa

You can learn more about this position and apply online at www.hull.ac.uk/jobs (vacancy ref: FS0032).
To discuss this role informally, please contact Dr Darryl N Davis on 01482 466460 or email: D.N.Davis@hull.ac.uk

Closing date: 28 June 2010

Information on Research within the Department can be found at;
www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/dris/index.htm.

Summary information on the project may be found at; www2.dcs.hull.ac.uk/NEAT/dnd/bhealth/bhealth.html