Description

Deputy Director, Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of Medicine

The NIH National Library of Medicine’s Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications (LHNCBC) is looking for a Deputy Director to share responsibility with the Director for overall program development, program evaluation, policy formulation, direction, and coordination of all LHNCBC activities.  In addition, the Deputy Director will serve in a key leadership role in assisting the LHNCBC Director in overseeing the diverse scientific and technical staff.  Specifically, the Deputy Director will be responsible for the following in coordination with the Director:

• Providing guidance to the LHNCBC branch chiefs and staff within the Office of the Director including:

• Reorganization and modernization of the technology product development activities, and assessment of processes supporting them, in the recently reorganized and refocused Applied Clinical Informatics Branch (ACIB).
• Coordination and assessment of research technology, as well as product transitions to real-world production environments.  Facilitating the transfer of research activities to improve health and health care through methodological advances in clinical informatics in the Computational Health Research Branch (CHRB) to productization within the Applied Clinical Informatics Branch in close collaboration with the LHNCBC Director and NLM Scientific Director.
• Research, assessment, and production activities of the Scientific Computing Branch (SCB) to design, develop, and maintain leading-edge, cost-effective computational infrastructure and computing resources that support research and development across all LHNCBC activities, as well as the NLM Intramural Research Program.

• Developing assessment criteria for reviewing projects to continue, deciding new areas to pursue, and providing oversight to the expanding portfolio of new and continuing projects,
• Ensuring that appropriate administrative and scientific computing support is available to scientists,
• Developing LHNCBC organizational goals and assessing progress toward them,
• Directing the LHNCBC financial budget of $13 million (FY23), excluding the CHRB in the IRP
• Directing day-to-day LHNCBC operations.

In addition, the LHNCBC is executing a reorganization to modernize its longstanding mission as a research and development center to better reflect the evolution of biomedical communications as relying on interoperable data, scalable methods, and translation of research discoveries into operations.  The reorganization also spotlights the fact that the future of LHNCBC will be centered around application and software development (transitioning research into production) and the need for continuous technological improvements to provide staff the resources they will need to do this work.

As a result, LHNCBC has begun to assess all legacy projects and plan for future projects that fit the new vision of LHNCBC.  A Deputy Director with a well-rounded background in technology, research, and product assessment is needed to support the assessment process.  These activities will require that the Deputy Director have a broad knowledge of the involved technologies and domain expertise consistent with the new vision for LHNCBC.

Another facet of the LHNCBC’s current reorganization plan is that the entire leadership team consists of leaders who are currently in acting positions.  The Deputy Director will support the recruitment, development, and retention of diverse leadership talent to fulfill the new and future objectives of the LHNCBC.  

About the LHNCBC

The LHNCBC was established by the United States Congress in 1968, to further biomedicine through data science research and application product development. Since its creation 55 years ago, the evolution of LHNCBC resulted in operations around key themes including research and development of computational products, technology transfer, and scientific computing.  The LHNCBC consists of the Immediate Office of the Director and three branches including the Scientific Computing Branch (SCB), Applied Clinical Informatics Branch (ACIB), and the Computational Health Research Branch (CHRB).  Following the reorganization of NLM, the CHRB is part of the NLM Intramural Research Program (IRP) directed by the NLM Scientific Director (SD), however is organizationally housed within the LHNCBC to utilize LHNCBC equipment, space, IT, and administrative platforms.  The LHNCBC has an operating budget of $13 million and human resources support of approximately 70 personnel, excluding the CHRB.  LHNCBC personnel include a diverse mix of scientific and technical staff consisting of federal employees, contractors, fellows, and special volunteers who have backgrounds in medicine, biomedical informatics, clinical informatics, imaging, computer science, data science, library and information sciences, linguistics, cognitive science, scientific computing, cloud computing, and engineering.

Requirements

About the LHNCBC Deputy Director Position 

The Deputy Director will be appointed into a position in the Senior Biomedical Research and Biomedical Product Assessment Service (SBRBPAS). Candidates for this position must have outstanding and broad expertise in program administration, software development and deployment, and scientific computing as they relate to the fields of biomedical and clinical informatics. The responsibilities require experience in the full cycle from Research and Development to Production in the client/server and cloud environments. The position serves as a senior technical leader of NLM who collaborates across NLM, NIH, and the broader research community by providing expert advice and consultation on clinical and biomedical informatics. The position oversees design and implementation of programs supporting NLM and NIH intramural research that provide development of methods to gain insights from large health databases while learning the strengths and weaknesses of datasets and improving them, when possible; development and evaluation of computer algorithms for automated text analysis; and, data science research in biomedical image and signal processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to support automated clinical decision-making.  Candidates should be customer-focused, service oriented, and have experience in working in a biomedical research environment. Outstanding communication skills and a collaborative work style are critical.  This is a full-time leadership position located at NIH facilities at the Bethesda, Maryland area campus and could be performed at a remote location duty station.

Required Qualifications

To be eligible for this this position, candidates must be a U.S. Citizen or U.S. National. Foreign nationals or legal permanent residents are not eligible for consideration. Candidates must indicate their U.S. citizenship status on their CV or within their email application submission.

In order to qualify for this position, candidates must possess either a doctoral-level degree in biomedicine or a biological related field, or a Master's level or higher degree in:

• Engineering;
• Bioinformatics; or,
• an emerging or related scientific field.

In addition, candidates must have at least one year of experience related to the position, including achievements in one or more of the following areas to demonstrate the individual has received recognition as an expert in the field:

• Has significant experience dealing with complex, precedent-setting evaluation, scientific policies or development issues (e.g., those associated with novel biomedical products, novel approaches to biomedical product manufacturing, or use of novel evaluation methods);
• Demonstrated cutting-edge expertise in a scientific or technical discipline critical to design, development, manufacturing, clinical performance assessment, or technical aspects of effective oversight of biomedical products;
• Played a leadership role in planning and conducting public meetings to seek public input and communicate regulatory scientific policies;
• Received invitations to speak at or chair major national or international meetings and symposia; or,
• Meets other criteria demonstrating sufficient rigor or accomplishment in a relevant or closely related activity or field that is necessary to the accomplishment of NIH's mission.

If you are a current Federal Title 5 employee, you must have one year of equivalent experience at the GS-14 level or above. 

For more information and how to apply, go here - Deputy Director, Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications | Office of Human Resources (nih.gov)