Posts Tagged ‘jobs’

Medical/Life Sciences Graduate or Undergraduate Student Hourly – Biomedical Literature Annotation for Citation Accuracy/Integrity (10 hours per week, spring semester) – School of Information Sciences – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

January 13th, 2023

The ScienceNLP Lab and the Information Quality Lab at the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) are seeking a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student to read and annotate health-related literature. Knowledge and training and knowledge in a medical/life sciences field such as biology, chemistry, bioinformatics, food science and nutrition, or bioengineering is essential. The hourly will work an average of 10 hours per week for spring semester, under the co-supervision of Dr. Halil Kilicoglu and Dr. Jodi Schneider. The project focuses on assessing biomedical publications for citation accuracy and integrity. Your role in this project will be to locate citation statements in biomedical articles and assess their accuracy with respect to the cited articles. You will collaborate with other annotators on this task. This work is part of the project Natural Language Processing to Assess and Improve Citation Integrity in Biomedical Publications, funded by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Project Description: While citations play a fundamental role in scientific knowledge diffusion and research assessment, they are often inaccurate (e.g., citation of non-existent findings), undermining the integrity of scientific literature and distorting the perception of available evidence. A recent meta-analysis showed that 25.4% of medical articles contained a citation error. A bibliometric analysis revealed that inaccurate citations of a letter published in 1980 may have contributed to the opioid crisis. The project will develop and validate resources and models that aid stakeholders in assessing biomedical publications for citation accuracy and integrity. The publicly available annotated corpus you help create will be used to develop natural language processing/artificial intelligence (NLP/AI) models for assessing reporting quality in biomedical articles.

Duties include:

  • Reading and annotating biomedical publications for citation integrity/accuracy
  • Contribution to development of annotation guidelines
  • Contribution to scientific presentations and publications

Required qualifications:

  • Background in a field such as: medicine, life sciences, including biology, chemistry, bioinformatics, food science and nutrition, bioengineering, or a related field.
  • Excellent English reading comprehension skills
  • Excellent communications skills in written and spoken English
  • Excellent analytical/critical thinking skills
  • Effective time management skills, attention to detail

Preferred qualifications:

  • Interest in topics such as trustworthy science, research rigor/quality, reproducibility
  • Interest in biomedical data science, bioinformatics, or related fields
  • Availability for multiple semesters

Interested candidates should send their CV/resume and a short statement of purpose drawing attention to their training in medicine or life sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, bioinformatics, food science and nutrition, bioengineering, or a related field) to Halil Kilicoglu (halil@illinois.edu) and Jodi Schneider (jodi@illinois.edu). Review of applications will begin immediately. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Posted on Handshake and the Virtual Job Board.

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Graduate Hourly – Annotation (10 hours per week, up to 9 months) – School of Information Sciences – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

June 29th, 2022

The ScienceNLP Lab and the Information Quality Lab at the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) are seeking a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate student to read and annotate health-related literature. The graduate hourly will work an average of 10 hours per week for up to 9 months, under the co-supervision of Dr. Halil Kilicoglu and Dr. Jodi Schneider. The project focuses on assessing biomedical publications for citation accuracy and integrity. Your role in this project will be to locate citation statements in biomedical articles and assess their accuracy with respect to the cited articles. You will collaborate with other annotators on this task. This work is part of the project Natural Language Processing to Assess and Improve Citation Integrity in Biomedical Publications, funded by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Project Description: While citations play a fundamental role in scientific knowledge diffusion and research assessment, they are often inaccurate (e.g., citation of non-existent findings), undermining the integrity of scientific literature and distorting the perception of available evidence. A recent meta-analysis showed that 25.4% of medical articles contained a citation error. A bibliometric analysis revealed that inaccurate citations of a letter published in 1980 may have contributed to the opioid crisis. The project will develop and validate resources and models that aid stakeholders in assessing biomedical publications for citation accuracy and integrity. The publicly available annotated corpus you help create will be used to develop natural language processing/artificial intelligence (NLP/AI) models for assessing reporting quality in biomedical articles.

Duties include:

  • Reading and annotating biomedical publications for citation integrity/accuracy
  • Contribution to development of annotation guidelines
  • Contribution to scientific presentations and publications

Required qualifications:

  • Excellent English reading comprehension skills
  • Excellent communications skills in written and spoken English
  • Excellent analytical/critical thinking skills
  • Effective time management skills, attention to detail

Preferred qualifications:

  • Background in a field such as:
    • life sciences/medicine, including biology, chemistry, bioinformatics, foodscience/nutrition, bioengineering, or a related field
    • library/informationsciences
    • linguistics
  • Interest in topics such as trustworthy science, research rigor/quality, reproducibility
  • Interest in biomedical data science, bioinformatics, or related fields
  • Availability for multiple semesters

Interested candidates should send their CV/resume and a short statement of purpose to Halil Kilicoglu (halil@illinois.edu) and Jodi Schneider (jodi@illinois.edu). Review of applications will begin immediately. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Posted on Handshake; note that Halil is also hiring an NLP Research Assistant (50% RA) and an NLP hourly (10 hours per week) for related work on the same project.

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Spring 2022 Graduate Research Assistantship 25-50% – Information Quality Lab – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

November 12th, 2021

Start date – January 16, 2022

Description, Responsibilities, & Qualifications:
Mixed methods research assistant to Information Sciences faculty. The incumbent will join the Information Quality Lab under the direction of Dr. Jodi Schneider to work on a newly-funded, three year IMLS grant, Strengthening Public Libraries’ Information Literacy Service Through an Understanding of Knowledge Brokers’ Assessment of Technical and Scientific Information. This project will conduct mixed methods case studies—COVID-19 year 1; climate change (year 2); and AI and labor (year 3)—to understand how knowledge brokers such as journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists/advocates, public librarians assess and use scientific and technical information. Ultimately, the project will develop a conceptual model about sensemaking and use of information. Starting in 2023, the team will co-develop services for knowledge brokers and the public, in collaboration with public library test partners. Results from the project will have implications for public access, information literacy, and understanding of science on policy-relevant topics.

Duties may include:

  • Synthesizing a collection of existing literature related to knowledge brokers.
  • Collecting a sample of about 250 public-facing documents and multimedia, including news (e.g., online print outlets), Wikipedia pages, membership-based online forums, documentaries, and data visualizations, that report, quote, or analyze scientific products (research papers, preprints, datasets, etc.).
  • Using topic modeling, argumentation analysis, and other document analysis techniques to analyze documents and multimedia.
  • Preparing for and conducting interviews with knowledge brokers (journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists/advocates, public librarians).
    • Developing an interview protocol to solicit information from journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists/advocates, public librarians, etc. to understand how they assess the quality of scientific and technical information.
    • Identifying COVID-19 knowledge brokers to interview, by using the document/multimedia collection, organizational directories, etc.
  • Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts (including correcting automatically generated interview transcripts).

Required Qualifications:

  • Excellent communication skills in written and spoken English
  • Excellent analytical/critical thinking skills and effective time management skills
  • Interest in topics such as misinformation, information diffusion, science/technology policy, etc.
  • Interest or experience in one or more methods such as: mixed methods, document analysis, altmetrics, semi-structured interviewing, critical incident technique, or qualitative data analysis

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Available for multiple semesters, including summer
  • Experience conducting and/or transcribing interviews
  • Experience with qualitative analysis software such as ATLAS.TI, NVivo, Taguette, RQDA, etc.
  • Experience as a journalist, Wikipedia editor, activist, advocate, public librarian, information conduit, or knowledge broker
  • Enrollment in the Master’s in Library and Information Science program or in a PhD program
  • Previous completion of one or more CITI Program ethics trainings modules
  • Experience in academic and/or scientific writing

Application Procedure: Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume in a single pdf file named Lastname_IMLS_RA.pdf (e.g., Schneider_IMLS_RA.pdf) to ischool-infoquality@illinois.edu

Review of applications will begin immediately. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. All applications received by November 15, 2021 will receive full consideration.

Posted on the Assistantship Clearinghouse.

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Graduate Hourly position – Information Quality Lab – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

November 12th, 2021

Start date – ASAP

Description, Responsibilities, & Qualifications:
Mixed methods research assistant to Information Sciences faculty. The incumbent will join the Information Quality Lab under the direction of Dr. Jodi Schneider to work on a newly-funded, three year IMLS grant, Strengthening Public Libraries’ Information Literacy Service Through an Understanding of Knowledge Brokers’ Assessment of Technical and Scientific Information. This project will conduct mixed methods case studies (first topic: COVID-19) to understand how knowledge brokers such as journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists/advocates, public librarians assess and use scientific and technical information. Ultimately, the project will develop a conceptual model about sensemaking and use of information. Starting in 2023, the team will co-develop services for knowledge brokers and the public, in collaboration with public library test partners. Results from the project will have implications for public access, information literacy, and understanding of science on policy-relevant topics.

This position may become a tuition waiver generating assistantship for the Spring 2022 semester for eligible Master’s and Doctoral students.

Initial duties will include:

  • Developing an interview protocol to solicit information from journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists/advocates, public librarians, etc. to understand how they assess the quality of scientific and technical information
  • Synthesizing a collection of existing literature related to knowledge brokers
  • Collecting a sample of about 250 public-facing documents and multimedia, including news (e.g., online print outlets), Wikipedia pages, membership-based online forums, documentaries, and data visualizations, that report, quote, or analyze scientific products (research papers, preprints, datasets, etc.)
  • Identifying COVID-19 knowledge brokers to interview, by using the document/multimedia collection, organizational directories, etc.

Future work will include:

  • Conducting interviews with knowledge brokers (journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists/advocates, public librarians)
  • Correcting automatically generated interview transcripts
  • Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts
  • Using topic modeling, argumentation analysis, and other document analysis techniques to analyze documents and multimedia
  • Case studies on climate change (year 2) and AI and labor (year 3)

Required Qualifications:

  • Excellent communication skills in written and spoken English
  • Excellent analytical/critical thinking skills and effective time management skills
  • Interest in topics such as: misinformation, information diffusion, science/technology policy
  • Interest or experience in one or more methods such as: mixed methods, document analysis, altmetrics, semi-structured interviewing, critical incident technique, or qualitative data analysis

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Available for multiple semesters, including summer
  • Experience conducting and/or transcribing interviews
  • Experience with qualitative analysis software such as ATLAS.TI, NVivo, Taguette, RQDA, etc.
  • Experience as a journalist, Wikipedia editor, activist, advocate, public librarian, information conduit, or knowledge broker
  • Enrollment in the Master’s in Library and Information Science program or in a PhD program
  • Previous completion of one or more CITI Program ethics trainings modules
  • Experience in academic and/or scientific writing

Compensation: minimum $18/hour for Master’s students or $20/hour for PhD students (negotiable commensurate with experience)

Application Procedure: Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume in a single PDF file named Lastname_IMLS_hourly.pdf (e.g., Schneider_IMLS_hourly.pdf) to ischool-infoquality@illinois.edu.

Review of applications will begin immediately. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. All applications received by November 15, 2021 will receive full consideration.

Posted on the University of Illinois Financial Aid Virtual Job Board and Handshake.

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Paid hourly student research programmer position at UIUC for Fall 2021: network visualization in Python with NetworkX

September 11th, 2021

My Information Quality Lab is seeking a student research programmer (graduate hourly/undergraduate hourly) to do network visualization in Python with NetworkX this semester.

REQUIRED background:

  • Programming experience in Python
  • Elementary knowledge about network analysis including nodes, edges, attribute list, edge list, and adjacency matrices
  • How to read, store, and retrieve network data from a network object
  • Interest in or experience with NetworkX
  • Interest in or experience with visualization

PREFERRED background:

  • Experience in a research or R&D environment
  • Familiarity with publication and citation data

The immediate goal is to reformat dynamic network visualizations in a conference paper for a journal article to be submitted this semester (publication credit possible in addition to pay). Data for this is publicly available: https://doi.org/10.13012/B2IDB-9222782_V1
A conference paper describes the underlying ideas http://jodischneider.com/pubs/asist2020.pdf

This person will also develop utilities to be used in future network visualizations (e.g. an ongoing analysis of a similar but larger network where other aspects, e.g. co-authorship and data cleaning, will also be relevant).

Application details in Virtual Job Board

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Paid graduate hourly research position at UIUC for Spring 2021

December 3rd, 2020

Jodi Schneider’s Information Quality Lab (http://infoqualitylab.org) seeks a graduate hourly student for a research project on bias in citation networks. Biased citation benefits authors in the short-term by bolstering grants and papers, making them more easily accepted. However, it can have severe negative consequences for scientific inquiry. Our goal is to find quantitative measures of network structure that can indicate the existence of citation bias. 

This job starts January 4, 2021. Pay depending on experience (Master’s students start at $18/hour). Optionally, the student can also take a graduate independent study course (generally 1-2 credits IS 589 or INFO 597). Apply on Handshake

Responsibilities will include:

  • Assist in the development of algorithms to simulate an unbiased network
  • Carry out statistical significance tests for candidate network structure measures
  • Attend weekly meetings
  • Assist with manuscript and grant preparation

Required Skills

  • Proficiency in Python or R
  • Demonstrated ability to systematically approach a simulation or modeling problem
  • Statistical knowledge, such as developed in a course on mathematical statistics and probability (e.g. STAT400 Statistics and Probability I https://courses.illinois.edu/schedule/2021/spring/STAT/400 )

Preferred Skills

MORE INFORMATION:
https://ischool.illinois.edu/people/jodi-schneider
http://infoqualitylab.org

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Monday December 14th.

Apply on Handshake with the following APPLICATION MATERIALS:

  • Resume
  • Transcript – Such as free University of Illinois academic history from Banner self-service (https://apps.uillinois.edu, click “Registration & Records”, “Student Records and Transcripts”, “View Academic History”, choose “Web Academic History”)
  • Cover letter: Just provide short answers to the following two questions:
    1) Why are you interested in this particular project?
    2) What past experience do you have that is related to this project? 

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Paid Undergraduate Research position at UIUC for Fall & Spring 2020

August 18th, 2020

University of Illinois undergraduates are encouraged to apply for a position in my lab. I particularly welcome applications from students in the new iSchool BS/IS degree or in the university-wide informatics minor. While I only have 1 paid position open, I also supervise unpaid independent study projects.


Dr. Jodi Schneider and the Information Quality Lab <https://infoqualitylab.org> seek undergraduate research assistants for 100% REMOTE WORK. Past students have published research articles, presented posters, earned independent study credit, James Scholar research credit, etc.

One paid position in news analytics/data science for Assessing the Impact of Media Polarization on Public Health Emergencies, funded by the Cline Center for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences. (8hrs/week at $12.50/hour + possible independent study – 100% REMOTE WORK).
COVID-19 news analytics:
We seek to understand how public health emergencies are reported and to assess the polarization and politicization of the U.S. news coverage. You will be responsible for testing and improving search parameters, investigating contextual information such as media bias and media circulation, using text mining and data science, and close reading of sample texts. You will work closely with a student who has worked on the opioid crisis – see the past work following poster (try the link TWICE – you have to log in with an Illinois NetID):
https://compass2g.illinois.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_50281_1&nav=discussion_board&conf_id=_247818_1&forum_id=_417427_1&message_id=_6264991_1

Applications should be submitted here: https://forms.illinois.edu/sec/742264484

DEADLINE: 5 pm Central Time SUNDAY AUGUST 30, 2020

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