Several full time research positions are available at the Massachusetts General Hospital for graduating seniors interested in spending a year or two before continuing their education in medical or graduate school, as well as for individuals with somewhat more experience, including students with Masters Degrees. Previous holders of this type of position have had the opportunity to work on research projects and to publish scientific papers on their work, and many individuals have published first-authored papers on their work. For students with an interest in medicine, exposure to clinical medicine is encouraged.

The work of our group has concerned:

• The assembly of data.
• The development of improved mathematical methods for predicting the outcome for cancer patients.
• The identification of screening schedules for reaching the maximal possible reduction in cancer death achievable by cancer screening.
• The application of modern computer speech and telephony for developing scheduling/reminder systems for increasing the use of preventative medical interventions such as mammography and influenza immunization.

The first position concerns the assembly and analysis of data on cancer and its outcome. An interest in medicine, and a familiarity with the use of Excel and Access would be desirable, but the candidate need not have a strong background in mathematics or computer science.

The second position concerns the analysis of the systems that hospitals use to make medical appointments, with the aim of improving utilization of preventive service such as cancer screening.

The third position concerns the refinement, implementation, and testing of a system that sends computer generated telephone reminder messages for increasing the use of breast cancer screening. Knowledge of, or ability to learn, ASP, ASP.NET, AJAX, C#, HTML, MS SQL Server, Windows Server 2003 security, and general database and server administration is required. Skill with VXML and computer speech would also be desirable.

The fourth position concerns the development of improved mathematical methods for predicting cancer outcome.  Related work concerns the development and implementation of novel mathematical methods for Web-based calculators that physicians can use for predicting the risk of cancer recurrence, as well as the development of computer simulation models of cancer progression.

The fifth position concerns the creation of telephone reminder scripts, which our systems will launch to recruit patients to schedule
appointments for cancer screening.  This position would be suitable for a person with interests in advertising, copywriting, English, marketing, social marketing, persuasion psychology, health communication and public health.

These positions will be available June 1.  In addition, opportunities for working part time this semester to "try out" the work are possible.

Reply by email to:

James S. Michaelson, Ph.D.
Department of Pathology
Harvard Medical School & Departments of Pathology and Surgery
Massachusetts General Hospital
Email: james.michaelson@gmail.com