Sr. Research Technology Specialist, Tufts University, Medford, MA
Posted September 25, 2015
Tufts Technology Services (TTS) is a university-wide service organization dedicated to the strategic planning, implementation, and support of technology products and services that anticipate and meet the academic, research, and business needs of the Tufts community. TTS offers technical leadership and services to our customers with a focus on providing innovative solutions, delivering exceptional customer service, and creating a reliable infrastructure that demonstrates value to the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Tufts University. TTS works in partnership with schools, business units, and other academic support organizations to provide campus-wide IT services in the areas of academic and research technology, enterprise application systems and services, networking and telecommunications, information security, data center operations, web services, classroom and computer lab technology support, and user support, training and outreach.
TTS Research and Geospatial Technology Services (RGTS) is a university-wide resource that covers all aspects of University-wide technology services and programs in support of research across all 10 schools and 3 campuses. These centralized core services include high-performance computing, networked storage, bioinformatics, software licensing, virtualization in support of research, geospatial services, collaboration and communication services, visualization, and grant planning. By providing the Tufts research community with the highest quality services and by anticipating its technology needs, the goal of our directorate is to enable Tufts researchers to become world leaders in their domain.
Reporting directly to the Director of Research and Geospatial Technology Services (RGTS), the Sr. Research Technology Specialist provides timely, quality support for researchers using the Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and Electronic Content Management (ECM) vendor solutions (currently provided by Agilent and LabArchives). In this role, the Specialist will act as the Tufts Technology Services (TTS) Service Owner, serving as the responsible party for coordinating the provisioning and the support of these solutions on behalf of the university’s researchers across Tufts 10 schools and 3 campuses.
In addition to supporting the vendor solutions, this position will generate solution templates, checklists, project plans and other materials, which will aid in the analysis, set-up, and installation of these solutions on an ongoing basis to different types of researchers The many unique sets of technologies and services found at the lab level (including web, applications, storage, databases, instrumentation, networking, etc.) require analyzing which vendor solution and solution configurations may best meet the lab’s data management needs and this may require working directly with the vendor in the process.
Research Data Management Services (RDMS) Service Owner:
- Lead the rollout of a research data management solution to researchers across Tufts’ three campuses:
- Maintain a prioritized list of installation candidates and a project plan for those that have been scheduled
- Document configuration, processes and policies.
- Prioritize tasks within and across labs to meet overall research data management installation goals.
- Develop written materials (training manuals, FAQ, tip sheets, videos, etc.) to facilitate product use and acceptance
- Maintain accurate information and documentation on web pages, knowledge bases, wikis, videos, and printed materials.
- Provide ad-hoc email, Web, and phone support for general research data management questions
- Design a support model for research data management in collaboration with Tier 1 (Service Desk) and Tier 2 (RDMS) – 3 support (vendor).
- Create, update, and distribute reports related to support and service operations and take appropriate action to improve key performance indicators or address support trends.
- Perform software licensing updates and renewals.
- Test new software installations.
- Identify opportunities and implement plans to improve service design and delivery through process, technical, or other related means.
Client Outreach & Consultation:
- In concert with team members from the Tish Library and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR), proactively identify potential candidates for a research data management solution
- Serve as the primary liaison to faculty researchers who have expressed a need for a research data management solution.
- Analyze laboratory research data management processes and requirements, select an appropriate solution, design a configuration and workflow to best meet the requirements while setting user expectations within scope of deliverables.
- Train researchers in the implementation and use of laboratory research data management software.
Collaboration with Partners:
- Act as primary liaison with Tier 1 (Service Desk) and Tier 2 Desktop support to cross-train and document RDMS services and customer environments as well as to identify opportunities to improve support continuity.
- Work with members of The Tufts Libraries research data management planning teams and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research to pro-actively identify potential users.
- Organize events, training, vendor demos, and workshop to IT colleagues involved in the support of RDMS services.
- Represent RDMS IT Service Management functions such as change management or other ITSM related initiatives (e.g. Incident Management, Configuration Management, etc.).
- Work closely with Enterprise Infrastructure, Information Security, and Contracts/Licensing to ensure RDMS services are configured and delivered in a secure, sustainable manner.
- Work closely with OVPR and The Tufts Libraries research data management teams as needed to provide comprehensive consulting and support to client community.
Research New & Emerging Solutions:
- Represent research data management in the planning process for developing, managing, and supporting the core IT services that support research activities at Tufts University.
- Research new and emerging data management best practices solutions.
- Attend research data management community and vendor-sponsored events.
- Perform product evaluations for future technology purchases.
QUALIFICATIONS: Basic Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in a scientific / engineering discipline or related field with a preference for disciplines using lab instrumentation for data acquisition.
- 5-10 years of related experience in a higher education, research, or scientific environment.
- Familiarity with the research procedures in many disciplines (e.g., medical and biological sciences, engineering sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, humanities) with previous experience providing direct support to diverse, multi-disciplinary teams and students and researchers from a wide range of academic backgrounds.
- 3-5 years of experience in the management of research data (including large data sets) in any of the above mentioned fields with exposure to data storage, retrieval, sharing with the public, transfer to repositories and any other technologies, processes, procedures and policies encountered across the entire data lifecycle.
- Strong communication (oral and written) with superb customer service skills to deliver innovative solutions that enable the Tufts community to utilize the RDMS solutions to meet their data management plan while still achieving their academic and research goals.
- Ability to demonstrate project management skills with experience in outreaching to various audiences and in prioritizing multiple concurrent tasks to meet demanding deadlines.
- Comfortable with configuration, installation, and troubleshooting of data management or related software in a Microsoft Windows (all versions) or Mac OS X 8.0 and above environment, Unix, as well as in handheld devices (mobile, tablets, PDAs).
- Some experience with Web Development programming using technologies such as, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, and MySQL. Experience in a Web Development framework (e.g. Angular JS, Ruby on Rails) a plus.
- Project management experience in a software development project or in the installation of a software application in a multi-site customer environment.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Masters of Science degree in Computer Science, Library Science, or other engineering/scientific discipline
- Graduate or post-graduate experience working in a research lab environment.
- 3-5 years in the management of large data sets in any scientific or engineering fields, including data storage, retrieval, sharing, metadata dictionary, etc.
- Experience using functional programming environments such as Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, R, or Stata, NVivo.
- Experience with lab instrumentation computers and software (e.g. LabView, Matlab Data Acquisition toolbox, virtual applications, and desktops, databases (e.g. FileMaker).