Posting Date:
9/30/24
Anticipated Appointment Dates: 11/2024 – 10/2025
Introduction of School/Department:
The Yale Department of Psychiatry provides the highest quality education in the field of Psychiatry; to providing leaders and leadership for the field; and to acquiring and disseminating new scientific knowledge pertinent to the causes and treatments of severe neuropsychiatric disorders and to serving as a model of exemplary mental health care for students and society.
Overview of the Position:
We are seeking multiple highly motivated, postgraduate associates to join our interdisciplinary collaborative team conducting a large, longitudinal study of mental health, titled “Individually Measured Phenotypes to Advance Computational Translation in Mental Health (IMPACT-MH)”.
IMPACT-MH is a new NIH-funded endeavor spanning multiple research programs, largely in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale, and extending over five years. The primary aims of IMPACT-MH are to recruit 2400 subjects from 16 partnering clinics and research programs, extensively characterize them using clinical and behavioral tools, and follow them for ≥2 years, with repeated follow-up assessments.
Despite significant advances in research and clinical care for mental illness, prediction of clinical course at the individual level remains elusive, in part due to a dearth of longitudinal data collected using assessments sensitive to individual change over time. Thus, using a combination of ‘traditional’ clinical information (e.g., health records, standardized assessments) and more novel computational data (e.g., behavioral tasks with demonstrated sensitivity to latent constructs and to within-person change), this IMPACT-MH project will collect longitudinal data from a cohort of 2400 individuals, highly enriched for psychopathology across a range of domains. These data will be used to conduct person-centered analyses focused on (i) individual-level prediction of outcomes; (ii) characterization of diverse clinical trajectories; and (iii) data- driven analyses to identify subgroups (aka, ‘biotypes’) that predict differences in outcomes at 2 years. Associates working on IMPACT-MH will be exposed to cutting-edge clinical and computational research methods, including interacting with diverse patient groups and gaining expertise in administering advanced computational psychiatry assessments. IMPACT-MH is committed to cultivating an inclusive and collaborative environment. We encourage applications from scholars committed to our mission to build a thriving, collaborative, diverse, and inclusive research community
- Education: Postgraduate associates will receive education in clinical research science, via a combination of didactic, hands-on training (described below). In addition, associates will engage in the discussion of key papers and methods in their specific area of interest with one or more research mentors at an individual and group level. The education plan will be tailored to the individual associate based on their interests at the time of interview. Educational activities include attendance at journal clubs, departmental conferences and lectures that are relevant to the individual’s research project and the potential to contribute to research manuscripts.
- Training: Postgraduate associates will receive instruction in recruitment, screening, and data collection for human subject’s research in psychiatry. You will receive training to administer cognitive testing, clinical data acquisition, and structured clinical interviews. All training will occur in the context of Good Clinical Practice (GCP). Trainees will gain extensive clinical experience by interacting with faculty, staff, and participants. The trainee is expected to help with all study activities and participate in weekly lab meetings.
- Mentoring: Trainees will be mentored by Dr. Christopher Pittenger and Dr. Sarah Yip. Postgraduates will have the opportunity to learn from a variety of professionals, including clinicians, data scientists, computational psychiatry researchers, neuroscientists and biostatisticians. Efforts will be made to tailor the experience to the postgraduate’s goals and interests.
Location: 40 Temple Street
This position is a one-year appointment with a second-year contingent upon satisfactory performance and availability of funding.
Qualifications: Qualified candidates will have completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology, neuroscience, or a related field. The successful candidate will have:
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
- The ability to work both independently and in a collaborative environment
- Occasional evenings and weekend availability may be required to accommodate participant schedules
- Experience working with mental health a plus
Process for Apply:
Interested applicants should submit via e-mail a cover letter, resume or CV, and contact details for two references to: Lisa.Nichols@yale.edu (primary) and copy Dr. Christopher Pittenger at Christopher.Pittenger@yale.edu. Please make “Postgrad Position” the subject line of your e-mail. Reviews of applications will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled.
Job Type:
postgraduate positions
Posting Date Field:
Monday, September 30, 2024