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Call for candidates: Senior experts at data science excellence center in medical imaging

At the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), Linköping University, Sweden, there are several ground-breaking initiatives to support data-driven research on large-scale data from clinical sources.

The operations are ramping up within existing commitments, and there are imminent opportunities to expand both size and scope dramatically. To drive this development, we will need additions to the leadership of the data science management team in the form of senior experts on IT architecture, data protection and other data science operations.

In essence, the objective is to enable science advances for the benefit of future healthcare, based on AI training and other data-driven research. Our efforts target the key issue of providing access to vast amounts of realistic data from healthcare. This entails a number of challenges, not the least to preserve the integrity when handling sensitive personal data.

The ongoing initiatives and future plans are further described below.

Competences needed

There are interesting multi-faceted challenges to address, mapping to a spectrum of technical competences which we believe a combination of two additional experts is suitable for, in addition to our current team.

• IT architecture for data sharing platforms
• Design and development of shared compute systems for AI
• Data protection expertise - technical, organizational & legal
• Development of educational programs for data science researchers

To a large extent, the technical building blocks needed are available. These roles are expected to - using a deep technical understanding - address the strategic design challenges regarding technical systems, organizations, and workflows, to set a new standard for use of medical data in computer science research.

At a personal level, candidates for these positions are required to have high social competence and a pragmatic mindset. They must have an ability to deal with highly complex problems and a wide range of tasks. A can-do attitude is important, as well as an enthusiasm for quickly learning.

AIDA Data Hub

One of the platforms operated out of CMIV is the AIDA Data Hub. We offer data sharing, policy support, and services for researchers in Swedish medical imaging AI, and operate the currently largest national AI research system for sensitive personal data in Sweden. AIDA Data Hub is part of the Analytic Imaging Diagnostics Arena (AIDA), and of the SciLifeLab Bioinformatics Platform (NBIS) and its BioImage Informatics facility (BIIF). The senior experts to be recruited would be involved in operating and developing the AIDA Data Hub together with the AIDA Data Director, leading a team of junior engineers.

Assignments could include:

• Advising on information security practices and legal interpretations to Swedish parties involved in research and innovation from academia, healthcare and industry
• Sharing of sensitive personal data and anonymous data for research
  • System development and administration for the sharing platform
  • Ensuring interoperability with related systems external to the platform
• Running a national compute service secure enough for sensitive personal data
  • Offering easy-to-use and isolated compute access (Linux management, KVM, NFS)
  • Operating and developing information security (firewalls, network configuration, authentication, etc)
• Leading junior engineers on running less critical systems (NextCloud, PACS, Wiki, GitHub, Slack, etc.)

BIGPICTURE

BIGPICTURE is a 70 MEUR EU project in the Innovative Medicine Initiative program. Starting in 2021, the mission is to build a multi-petabyte platform for digital pathology data to be used for AI training. CMIV is responsible for the infrastructure development, in close collaboration with Uppsala University (NBIS/SciLifeLab) and CSC in Finland.

The senior experts to be recruited would be involved in operating and developing the BIGPICTURE platform.

Assignments could include:

• Advising on information security practices and legal interpretations, from a Swedish perspective in a European collaboration, to parties involved in research and innovation from academia, healthcare and industry
• Designing and developing backend for a sharing platform for sensitive personal data and anonymous data for research
  • Leading and performing devops for the sharing platform as part of a local+distributed Scrum team
  • Interaction with stakeholders such as data owners (healthcare, pharma companies) and data users (AI researchers)
  • Ensuring interoperability with related systems external to the platform
• Advising on platform strategy, from a variety of technical and business perspectives

CMIV Data services

In addition to, and in close interplay with, the running initiatives above, CMIV is creating the next generation of data services for research on medical imaging data. The envisioned data lakes will dramatically increase the access to relevant healthcare data for research purposes and the efforts are mirrored by Region Östergötland. This development is highly in line with LiU top priorities and is run in tight conncetion with LiU initiatives towards hosting large-scale computing for sensitive personal data, both locally and nationally.

The senior experts to be recruited will have key roles in designing, developing and operating the next generation of data services, employing skill sets similar to those outlined for the AIDA Data Hub and BIGPICTURE.

Contact

Qualified candidates are warmly welcome to contact AIDA Data director Joel Hedlund or AIDA Director Claes Lundström to discuss ways forward.