Senior Project Manager, Sociome

Department
 

BSD PED - Hematology, Oncology, and Stem Cell Transplantation - Pediatric Cancer Data Commons: Operations

About the Department
 

The Biological Sciences Division’s ‘Data for the Common Good’ (D4CG), is a rapidly growing team of experts in medicine, clinical research, public health, data standards, data infrastructure and programming, data governance, and international data sharing. Headquartered in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, Data for the Common Good works to connect and share disparate data sets in order to alter long-standing research paradigms and enable the study of new research questions that drive cures. Its signature flagship project, the Pediatric Cancer Data Commons (PCDC), houses the world’s largest set of clinical data for pediatric cancer, uniting clinical data from across five continents for almost all types of pediatric cancer. Leveraging its expertise in establishing data commons, Data for the Common Good has expanded to create similar infrastructure across other rare diseases, including rare forms of diabetes, pediatric epilepsy, Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, penetrating brain injury, and adult cancers, as well as a university-wide initiative called the Sociome, a scalable and extensible infrastructure and architecture that will ultimately assemble, quantify and organize the entirety of social context experienced by every individual.

Non-clinical aspects of life, such as social, environmental, behavioral, economic and psychological factors play significant roles in shaping patient health and health outcomes and contribute to health disparities. We refer to the entirety of these non-clinical factors as a patient’s ‘sociome’. D4CG has created a repository of pre-harmonized, geospatial sociome datasets, called the Sociome Data Commons, that can be used in concert with clinical data to predict a variety of outcomes by developing a data governance framework using a structured, standardized metadata model that conforms to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles. The Sociome Data Commons is now poised for scaling to be used by researchers across clinical, life, and social sciences disciplines.

Job Summary
 

The Senior Project Manager will be responsible for managing the development of the Sociome Data Commons (SDC). The role will liaise with technical teams on the development of data structures and workflows as well as with investigators across Chicagoland to build the SDC into a resource that is easy to access and use. The Sr. Project Manager will maintain product delivery according to milestones and report on overall project progress. The job uses best practices of managing projects from conception to completion.The Sr. Project Manager assembles teams and develops detailed work plans, schedules, project estimates, resource plans, and status reports while being the point of contact for the SDC.

​​Our department follows a hybrid work structure that fosters productivity, collaboration, and employee well-being. Working from the office is encouraged for tasks that require a high degree of collaboration.

This at-will position is wholly or partially funded by contractual grant funding which is renewed under provisions set by the grantor of the contract. Employment will be contingent upon the continued receipt of these grant funds and satisfactory job performance.

Responsibilities

• Develops and implements plans for SDC data and infrastructure plans. 

• Assembles and leads a project team, assigns individual responsibilities, identifies appropriate resources needed, and develops schedules to ensure timely completion of projects. 

• Coordinates the successful integration of vendor and/or consultant tasks and tracks and reviews vendor and/or consultant deliverables. 

• Plans, coordinates, and arranges meetings with stakeholders to gather, detail and refine specifications for the SDC. 

• Works with the university, affiliates and the client community to develop detailed program requirements. 

• Develops and ensures quality control of the SDC methodology and contributes to the further enhancement and application of the SDC. 

• Creates and maintains project specification documents, meeting agendas and minutes. 

• Ensures project deliverables are completed according to both internal and stakeholder timelines, notifies D4CG leadership when project timelines are at risk, and works with team members to ensure corrective measures are taken to ensure successful project completion. 

• Is responsible for tracking progress, conducting analyses, as well as preparing for and facilitating project meetings. 

• Acts as a resource for a project team and provides analytical guidance. Interprets complex project issues and provid