Program Manager, Data Sciences

The Research Program Manager (“PM”) plays a pivotal role in facilitating and supporting research activities ensuring alignment across multiple projects, stakeholders, and initiatives within the Data Science portfolio at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. The incumbent collaborates closely with faculty and staff to coordinate and integrate research activities, optimize program performance, and support the successful execution of institutional research priorities.

The incumbent is responsible for managing program-level planning, resource coordination, and process improvement efforts across the research lifecycle. This position maintains a comprehensive view of interrelated initiatives, identifies dependencies and risks across projects, and drives standardization, scalability, and continuous improvement in research operations.

The Research Program Manager serves as a central point of coordination across the Data Science team, strengthening collaboration, enhancing operational infrastructure, and ensuring research activities are executed efficiently, compliantly, and in alignment with strategic goals.

Responsibilities

Research Operations & Program Management

• Oversees day-to-day operations for the Data Science team of the Irving Institute, aligning proposed projects with CTSA funding priorities, goals and timelines.
• Provides central coordination of multidisciplinary teams across the CUIMC research informatics ecosystem including the data, tools & solutions, and infrastructure domains. The PM will ensure connectivity and effective communications with research informatics leaders.
• Develops meeting presentations and generating reports as well as working with the Irving Institute team to contribute content to websites, develop research informatics marketing materials, and awareness campaigns.
• Leads in supporting the Data Science Council including scheduling meetings, documentation and meeting notes, coordinating reporting from the research informatics domains and prioritizing urgent items for their review.
• Develops and contributes to research navigation, guides, checklists, and templates to enable efficient delivery of research informatics services to the research investigator ecosystem at CUIMC.

Scientific Writing, Progress Reporting & Grants

• Support progress reporting, and grant writing needs for the CTSA grant related to the Data Science team.

• Serves as subject matter expert and leads faculty teams in preparing grants and manuscripts, offering coaching and strategic advice to enhance competitiveness, while also partnering with staff involved in grant preparation, drafting, editing and coordination amongst collaborators.
• Organizes and coordinates quality assurance activities across the portfolio of research informatics services.

Strategy & Continuous Improvement

• Partners with the Irving Institute’s Strategic Management Team on the identification, development, demonstration, and dissemination of all programs and activities.
• Engages with research informatics communities and industry experts to identify and apply best practices aligned with CUIMC/Irving Institute priorities.
• Supports program-level process improvement initiatives to enhance operational efficiency, participant experience, and research outcomes.
• Analyzes performance metrics, stakeholder feedback, and operational needs to identify opportunities for improving research workflows, tools, support services, and overall program effectiveness.
• Benchmarks research informatics operations and recommends enhancements to support continuous improvement and optimize program performance.

People & Training

• Oversees the full scope of daily operations, including management team workflows, data management, and process improvement.
• Guides and coaches team members and peers to facilitate high performance and continuous professional development, including via team meetings, and educational sessions related to research informatics. Mentor and coach team members to enhance their skills and abilities to foster a high-performing team culture.
• Promote best practices in team science to enhance collaboration and project outcomes.
• Works with Irving Institute and other institutional training and education specialists to develop training programs and materials as determined by the data sciences leadership.
• Serve as a member of the larger Irving Institute team including working with other program managers of the Irving Institute to fully execute Irving Institute goals and mission. This may include joining the team to provide support for major Irving Institute events including the annual External Advisory Board, Internal Advisory Committee, retreats and symposia, and other Institute-wide projects and programs, as needed.

Other

Performs related duties & responsibilities as assigned/requested.

• Requires bachelor’s degree or equivalent in education and experience, plus four years of related experience.
• Experience managing people or a project. The ability to motivate, professionally develop, and successfully manage a team as a leader or peer-leader and/or managing multiple projects of a research portfolio
• At least two years of experience working with research data and/or e-tools for research
• Incumbents must be self-directed and able to make independent decisions within the parameters of all federal, state, institutional and departmental guidelines.
• Excellent verbal, written communication, organizational and interpersonal skills
• Interpersonal and emotional intelligence skills focused on establishing and maintaining productive relationships with research subjects, faculty, peers, and other stakeholders.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (especially Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), * Bachelors or Masters Degree in research informatics, computer sciences, applied health informatics, health information management, information systems, analytics, or other related fields
• Candidates with at least four years of work experience in any of the above as well as working in large academic medical center setting(s), project management, IT, clinical trials, research networks, or research IT will be viewed as extremely competitive.
• Knowledge of the clinical research life-cycle at a large academic medical center
• Experience working with research and health system data platforms such as Snowflake, REDCap, and/or CTMS software such as Velos, Encore, and others.
• Familiarity with clinical data standards (e.g., ICD, CPT, LOINC, RxNorm) and workflows; experience with relational databases and writing SQL queries
• Experience and knowledge of medical terminology specifically related to research domains.
• Familiarity with Columbia health and research systems.