Graduate Research Assistant

Job Posting Title:

Graduate Research Assistant

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Hiring Department:

Population Research Center

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Position Open To:

All Applicants

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Weekly Scheduled Hours:

20

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FLSA Status:

Exempt from FLSA

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Earliest Start Date:

Immediately

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Position Duration:

Expected to Continue Until Aug 31, 2027

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Location:

UT MAIN CAMPUS

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Job Details:

General Notes

The LifeHD Lab conducts interdisciplinary research on social experiences, stress, health, and inequality across the life course. This Graduate Research Assistant position will support the development of data-processing pipelines for a larger study examining how the loss of family members shapes stress, health, and inequality among young adults. The position is especially well-suited for a graduate student in engineering or a related technical field with interests in wearable sensors, physiological data, signal processing, data engineering, reproducible research workflows, and human-centered health data science. The GRA will gain experience working with intensive longitudinal biosensor and daily diary data in an interdisciplinary research setting.

What benefits do I receive with UT?  As a student employee of the university, you may be eligible for certain kinds of benefits. For more details on benefits, please see: https://hr.utexas.edu/student/student-employee-insurance-benefits.

UT Learn and LinkedIn Learning are free professional development programs offered to student employees, as well as the SEED Programs under the Student Employment Office:

https://hr.utexas.edu/learning-development

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/?u=36306084

https://hr.utexas.edu/student/SEED

https://hr.utexas.edu/student/SEED/seed-workshops

For more information about the College of Liberal Arts, please visit: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/.  

Purpose

The LifeHD Lab seeks a Graduate Research Assistant to help develop reproducible data-processing pipelines for high-frequency ambulatory data collected from wearable sensors worn continuously by research participants over a two-week study period. The primary device is the Empatica EmbracePlus. The GRA will support the organization, quality assessment, processing, documentation, and integration of survey data, two-week daily diary data, ambulatory sensor data, and data from a lab-based electrophysiological experiment. This work will contribute to a larger interdisciplinary research project examining how family member loss shapes stress, health, and inequality across young adulthood.

Appointment Information

This is a Graduate Research Assistant appointment for Summer 2026 and Fall 2026, with the possibility of continuation in Spring 2027, subject to funding, project needs, and performance. The position is supervised by Jacob E. Cheadle, PhD, Professor of Sociology. The appointment is expected to involve 20 hours of work per week.

Responsibilities

• Develop and refine reproducible data-processing pipelines for high-frequency ambulatory sensor data collected from a wearable device, with primary emphasis on the Empatica EmbracePlus.
• Organize, clean, and perform quality assessment on raw and processed Empatica data, including electrodermal activity, heart rate, PPG-derived measures such as HRV, accelerometry-derived measures such as activity and sleep/wake patterns, skin temperature, and related time-stamped sensor streams.
• Develop procedures for data quality assessment, signal review, feature extraction, and preparation of analysis-ready datasets from two-week ambulatory sensor collection periods.
• Support the integration of ambulatory sensor data with survey data, two-week daily diary data, and related participant metadata.
• Develop and maintain code for data pre-processing, post-processing, and integration. MATLAB is preferred, though e