Staff Scientist - Behavioral Insights Team

Location:

Work from home (Pennsylvania)

Shift:

Days (United States of America)

Scheduled Weekly Hours:

40

Worker Type:

Regular

Exemption Status:

Yes

Job Summary:

Geisinger seeks an outstanding behavioral scientist to serve as a Staff Scientist for its Behavioral Insights Team (BIT). The BIT was created in 2018 to apply behavioral science methods to the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of “nudges” and other lightweight behavioral interventions intended to improve outcomes and experiences for patients, clinicians, employees, and other stakeholders of the Geisinger Health System and beyond. In addition to internal colleagues, the BIT collaborates closely with external leading behavioral scientists and research partners, including those at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard, and MIT via the NBER Roybal Center for Behavior
Change in Health by executing 1 or 2 NIH-funded field experiments per year at Geisinger. BIT field experiments often involve tens of thousands of patients and successful interventions are expected to become standard practice at Geisinger. Project areas include encouraging vaccination, increasing health and wellness, improving clinician decision-making, and helping patients make better choices about their health.

Job Duties:

The Staff Scientist will support the BIT in developing, executing, and analyzing data (preferably in R) and reporting for the team’s projects, including taking the lead on BIT projects as appropriate and first- or coauthoring scientific publications. BIT projects have been published or are forthcoming in high-impact journals, including PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, JAMA Network Open, and The Journal of Pediatrics. The Staff Scientist will also be responsible for sharing findings at scientific conferences and with lay audiences (e.g., non-scientist teams at Geisinger), and for engaging in open-science best practices (e.g., preregistering projects, preparing and sharing de-identified data and code). The Staff Scientist will report to Gail Rosenbaum, PhD, the BIT Program Director, with oversight and mentorship by Professors Michelle Meyer, PhD, JD, and Christopher Chabris, PhD, the founding Faculty Co-Directors of the BIT. The Staff Scientist will also support program evaluations that the BIT conducts as part of the greater Geisinger Program Evaluation (GPE) team (led by Amir Goren, PhD, GPE Director), whose purpose is to conduct rigorous evaluations of high-cost and potentially high-impact interventions intended to improve patient health, or efficiency at Geisinger. Additional responsibilities as follows:

• Develops and leads research projects within the defined scope of the supervising faculty member’s research program.
• Responsible for gathering preliminary data for grant applications, completion of objectives of funded external grants, and preparation of completed work for publication.
• Contributes to writing grant applications and manuscripts.
• May submit authored grants with permission of the supervisor.
• Performs literature searches to gather information pertaining to research projects or procedures in order to develop new protocols, projects or grants applications for assigned work group.
• Responsible for determining experimental design, collecting data, performing calculations, and analyzing results.
• Responsible for reviewing research or data controls and determining that the research results are valid.
• Maintains and completes appropriate records of the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions from each research project.
• May oversee the work of support personnel in the work group at the discretion of the supervising faculty member.
• Participates in research meetings and formal seminars to present, explain, and discuss research conducted by the work group.
• May deliver presentations to extramural audiences at national meetings and academic institutions.

Work is typically performed in an office environment. Accountable for satisfying all job specific obligations and complying with all organization policies and procedures. The specific statements in this profile are not intended to be all-inclusive. They represent typical elements considered necessary to successfully perform the job.

Position Details:

The ideal Staff Scientist candidate will have experience both in conducting original behavioral science research and in implementing research results within organizations. A Ph.D. in psychology, economics, decision sciences, marketing, management, or another relevant scholarly discipline is strongly preferred, and track records of publishing original empirical research, collaborating with others, and applying for research funding are required. The Staff Scientist may be based in Danvi