Post-Doctoral Fellow, Research - Center for Bionic Medicine
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago

Job Info

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By joining our team, you'll be part of our life-changing Mission and Vision. You'll work in a truly inclusive environment where diversity and equity are championed through words and actions. You'll contribute to an innovative culture that is second to none, one that embraces curiosity, discovery and compassion. You'll play a role in something that's never been done before as we integrate science and clinical care to help patients achieve better, faster outcomes - as we Advance Human Ability, together.

Job Description Summary
The overarching vision of the Center for Bionic Medicine is to develop, evaluate, and translate transformative technology to advance Human Ability. We seek a post-doctoral fellow to build on the most recent advances in human pose estimation, wearable sensors, and artificial intelligence to improve mobility outcomes in rehabilitation. Clinically applicable markerless motion capture, being pioneered by the Cotton Lab, now enables gait analysis during clinic visits, and a critical next step is to maximize health-related information to guide Precision Rehabilitation decision-making in the era of Big Data.

We seek a candidate to use human pose estimation techniques and gait analysis to connect gait parameters to functional outcome assessments, with a particular emphasis on predicting home mobility and falls. Candidates should be comfortable working with large datasets, both from our technology and the electronic medical record, and should be excited to use these datasets to improve clinical outcomes. Experience with biomechanics, deep learning, and causal inference are beneficial.

The Cotton Lab is a full-stack lab with almost all our technology designed in-house allowing complete control over the workflows and pipelines and the opportunity to learn the internals of these systems. This includes our markerless motion capture system, where the candidate can refine the human pose estimation algorithms producing the biomechanical estimates. It also provides the opportunity to observe how sensors are designed and fabricated, to modify the firmware and algorithms running on the sensors as well as the data acquisition pipeline through to the cloud infrastructure. The lab has a mature database-backed data management and computational pipeline infrastructure, that accelerates work with the large data produced by this system and keeps the focus on the important questions. We also have many strong collaborations with machine learning researchers across the world, providing a great opportunity to learn about and use cutting-edge methods.

The Post-Doctoral Fellow - CBM will consistently demonstrate support of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab statement of Vision, Mission and Core Values by striving for excellence, contributing to the team efforts and showing respect and compassion for patients and their families, fellow employees, and all others with whom there is contact at or in the interest of the institute.

The Post-Doctoral Fellow - CBM will demonstrate Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Core Attributes: Communication, Accountability, Flexibility/Adaptability, Judgment/Problem Solving, Customer Service and Core Values (Hope, Compassion, Discovery, Collaboration, & Commitment to Excellence) while fulfilling job duties.

Job Description

The Postdoctoral Fellow will:

• Designs, executes, and interprets kinematics during gait and function outcomes collected with both markerless motion capture and wearable sensors, including data collection, processing, and algorithm development.
  
• Related measurements collected during clinical assessments to real-world mobility outcomes measured with wearable sensors, analyzed within a causal framework for precision rehabilitation.
  
• Work with clinical populations with gait impairments including lower-limb prosthesis users and people with a history of a stroke and other neurologic conditions.
  
• Assists with the development of collaborative projects within and outside the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and test ideas for new project development.
  
• Applies for fellowships and grants for external lab funding and career development.
  
• Develops, submits, and publishes the results of research projects in high-quality journals and presents data to public conferences/seminars when needed.
  
• Participates in weekly lab meetings, journal clubs, and seminars.
  
• Builds and maintains a well-organized and accountable journal of own laboratory protocols, experiments, results, and analyses.
  
• Performs all other duties that may be assigned in the best interest of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
  

Reporting Relationships

• Reports directly to the assigned Principal Investigator
  

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities Required

• Requires the academic knowledge associated with a doctorate degree in Biomedical Engineering (PhD), or equivalent.
  
• Typically, less 4 years of postdoctoral training.
  
• Background in engineering with knowledge or interest in biomedical applications and data science.
  
• Strong computational skills are required, with proficiency in Python.
  
• Experience with biomechanics data, either from marker-based or markerless motion capture, is beneficial although not required.
  
• Experience with deep learning, including using human pose estimation algorithms or training computer vision algorithms are beneficial, although a willingness to learn may be considered.
  
• A moderate level of independence, including the ability to mentor undergraduate and graduate students.
  
• Able to work closely with patients, clinicians, and professional organizations.
  
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
  
• Strong interpersonal and organizational skills needed to participate as a creative member of a growing research team.
  
• Willingness to network within the organization and to independently strengthen/develop new external collaborations.
  
• Able to timely plan and to coordinate project completions.
  

Working Conditions

• Normal office environment with little or no exposure to dust or extreme temperature.
  

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required of personnel so classified.

Equal Employment Opportunity

ShirleyRyan AbilityLab is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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