Healthy Regions & Policies Lab

The Healthy Regions & Policies Lab (HEROP) is hiring three new Research Assistant (RA) positions for the Fall 2021 quarter. These positions are open to undergraduate and graduate students. Pay starts at $15/hr, with a time commitment of 8-10 hrs/week. See below for full descriptions. Interested students can apply here. Returning RAs should also indicate their interest in continuing work with HEROP in the fall quarter using this form. 

Fall 2021 open RA positions:  

• HEROP Data Engineering
• ATLAS Design and Communications
• ATLAS Spatial Data Science

HEROP Data Engineering

HEROP seeks a research assistant to support data engineering needs across multiple projects. The data engineer will focus on data wrangling, issues of data integrity, developing & refining automated data processes, and communicating findings via dashboards or code notebooks. The RA is expected to support two coding sprints: (1) aggregating air quality sensor readings for weekly insights for a policy audience; and (2) monitor complex spatiotemporal COVID data for inconsistencies, failures to update, and to identify problems in the data pipeline. The coding used to wrangle and reformat data is open to any AWS Lambda compatible language, but the final integration will be different according to project type (i.e. air quality readings will be piped into an R-shiny application, whereas COVID data flows into a Javascript application). Key skills include data management, AWS integration, data metrics, charting and highly legible data visualization.

Required Skills:

• Proficiency with Python, R, Node.js, or another AWS Lambda compatible language 
• Background with temporal data, spatial data, or ideally both 
• Demonstrated experience in developing, testing, and implementing automated data processing procedures 
• Self-directed capacity to explore possible solutions to problems without direct supervision
• Interest in exploratory data analysis and attention to detail

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with AWS services to develop, secure, and deploy applications.
• Background with geospatial data and geoprocessing/computation
• Understanding of Serverless functions and computing
• Understanding of SQL, basic data formats, and JSON

ATLAS Design & Communications

The US Covid Atlas project seeks a research assistant to help design materials for community engagement; write tutorials for how to use the US Covid Atlas; and communicate with a variety of stakeholders on ongoing research in the lab. This may include updating the Atlas website with new content, working with literacy and community experts to translate best practices on using the Atlas, making short 2-minute instructional videos, and sketching out potential designs for new community reports. Students should be interested in how users engage, interact with, and experience technology.

Required Skills:

• Excellent writing and communication abilities for a general audience;
• Maturity, capability of working with a wide range of community stakeholders;
• Self-directed capacity to explore possible solutions to problems without direct supervision.

Preferred Skills:

• Graphic design, UI/UX interest and experience;
• Interest and/or experience in visual diagramming of ideas for a variety of stakeholders (ex. Lucidchart).
  
  

ATLAS Spatial Data Science

The Atlas project seeks a research assistant to support ongoing research and analysis to measure, explore, and decompose how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts differing communities in differing ways, within an equitable health framework. The student will help develop community typologies and should have demonstrated interest and ability in exploratory spatial data analysis, for example dimension reduction, clustering, spatial clustering and related spatially extended machine learning techniques, as well as classical statistical descriptive statistics. In addition to supporting the analysis, the student will be expected to help with the literature review, generate publication-ready figures and tables, and participate in manuscript preparation. 

Required Skills:

• Genuine curiosity, interest, and extensive coursework/applications with geographic information science, spatial data science (R or Python + GeoDa preferred);
• Demonstrated interest in healthy equity and social justice;
• Excellent reading, writing, and composition skills for an academic audience;
• Self-directed capacity to explore possible solutions to problems without direct supervision.

Apply here.