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[COGDEVSOC] Research Coordinator Opportunities in Connecticut

Research Coordinator, Connecticut Project

 

The TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health (TMW Center) develops science-based interventions, tools, and technologies to help parents and caregivers interact with young children in ways that maximize brain development. A rich language environment is critical to healthy brain development, however few tools exist to measure the quality or quantity of these environments. Access to this type of data allows caregivers to enhance interactions in real-time and gives policy-makers insight in how to best build policies that have a population-level impact.

Job Summary

The Research Coordinator will report to the Senior Project Manager and shall provide on-the-ground coordination, implementation, and research support. The Research Coordinator will work closely with Connecticut-based infant and toddler childcare providers and TMW Center research and curriculum staff. The Research Coordinator shall be responsible for recruiting and consenting study participants, providing regular implementation and technical support to study participants, data collection, and operational and logistical coordination of various study activities.

As a primary on-the-ground point of contact for study participants, the Research Coordinator shall build positive relationships with childcare centers, classroom teachers, families and OEC staff to ensure strong communication and a successful research partnership with the TMW Center.

Responsibilities

Participant Outreach, Recruitment & Data Collection:

  • Serves as a primary point of contact for current and future research study participants.
  • At the direction of TMW staff, conducts targeted outreach and recruitment to study participants (child care sites, early educators, parents, etc.). Organizes and coordinates recruitment activities, in collaboration with TMW staff.
  • Obtains and maintains consents for all program participants in accordance with IRB protocol and TMW research standards.
  • Ensures ongoing and new research subjects are on-boarded properly.
  • Regularly reports updates on participant recruitment, study progress, and study completion to relevant parties.
  • Partners with TMW Center staff members and other stakeholders to ensure current and upcoming studies have adequate amounts of participants.
  • Collaborates actively with TMW Center staff members and external stakeholders to strategize approaches for pursuing new participants and partners. 
  • Maintains regular contact with study participants, updating them on study progress and ensuring that their contact information is updated on a routine basis. Maintains records of all communication efforts with participants.
  • Implements data collection at the direction of TMW Center staff. Ensures quality of data collection and adherence to best practices. 
  • Supports TMW Center researchers with other aspects of outreach, recruitment, consent, data collection and support as requested.

Implementation & Participant Support:

  • Under the direction of TMW staff, implements the TMW Center’s ECE professional development strategy and novel technology within study sites (childcare and early education classroom settings) and provides ongoing support for implementing teachers and site leadership.
  • In coordination with and under the direction of TMW staff, provides implementation support, coaching, and training to study participants, ensuring that study activities are delivered with fidelity and that technical support is available promptly. This includes but is not limited to: regularly visiting study sites across Connecticut for routine in-person check-ins; providing technical assistance, troubleshooting and on-call technical and implementation support to study participants (including outside of business hours, as needed); ensuring proper implementation and delivery of TMW program in accordance with study protocol; tracking data related to these processes and other aspects of implementation; supporting TMW Manager of Training and other TMW staff by coordinating and/or facilitating training sessions and regular meetings for implementing staff.

Research Support:

  • With other TMW teams, helps coordinate and implement formative testing, early pilots and research studies in partner sites.
  • With other TMW teams, engages with study participants and other partners to collect data and gather user feedback to inform device optimization, program refinement, professional development model and implementation model.
  • Supports implementing staff within study sites (childcare and early education classroom settings).
  • Facilitates and coordinates video recording, data collection and other classroom-based research activities, as needed, under the direction of TMW’s Research team.
  • Issues payments and other incentives to study participants.  Ensures all payments are issued correctly and tracked with fidelity. Ensures full compliance with all University and funder obligations related to human subject payments and recordkeeping.
  • Distributes technology and assists with inventory management, coordination and delivery logistics for technological devices and other materials provided to study sites.

Partnership Building:

  • Builds and nurtures relationships with child care centers, classroom teachers, families, OEC staff and other stakeholders to ensure strong communication and ultimate success between the TMW Center and these individuals and groups.
  • Helps identify additional childcare providers or organizations that could serve as future research partners. 
  • Serves as an ambassador of the TMW Center’s mission and resources to partners, families/caregivers, and the public.

Project Support:

  • Provides technical, administrative and logistical support to the Connecticut early childhood research project team.
  • Participates in meetings and planning sessions with TMW staff to share implementation observations and provide updates to inform program and process improvement. 

Other Responsibilities:

  • Maintains technical and administrative support for a research project.
  • Installs, sets up and performs experiments; interacting with students and other laboratory staff under the direction of the principal investigator.
  • Maintains recruiting and scheduling research subjects; assisting with developing or amending study protocols; assisting with developing data collection tools; assisting with building databases; and providing general administrative support. Has general awareness in research techniques or methods, regulatory policies and procedures, and relevant scientific field.
  • Performs other related work as needed

Hot off the Press: IBACS 2022/2023 Brain Digest

We are excited to share the recently finalized IBACS 22/23 Brain Digest that features the Cognitive Science Program. Thank you to all of the faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students who have contributed- especially our graduate student editors, Cynthia Boo and Lee Drown! We hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it. Please email Institute Coordinator, Crystal Mills, at crystal.mills@uconn.edu if you’d like physical copies mailed to you.

IBACS-Brain-Digest_FY2023

 

Announcing *NEW* IBACS Leadership

The IBACS executive committee is thrilled to announce the appointment of three new directors who will assume leadership of the Institute this fall. Their selection culminates from a major visioning process involving community feedback (2021-22), a University-wide request for nominations (fall 2022), a review of qualifications and candidates' willingness to serve, candidate interviews with the executive committee (winter 2023), and a final review of recommendations by the CLAS Dean Juli Wade. 

New IBACS Directors

Emily Myers, Director of Training
Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences;
Professor of Psychological Sciences; Perception, Action, and Cognition Research Program

Photo of Emily Myers

Our new Director of Training will work to connect and publicize UConn’s many outstanding training programs in the brain, cognitive, and neurosciences space. Myers will work with leadership of existing programs to build strengths and optimize use of shared resources. She will coordinate with departments to support and grow opportunities for cross-training (e.g., inter- disciplinary training programs that cross over traditional degree programs). She will also manage IBACS Graduate and Undergraduate Student Summer Award programs, and work with the Director of Research to support and coordinate graduate lines (RAs) for students working in our service cores.

John Salamone, Director of Communication and Outreach
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences; Behavioral Neuroscience Research Program

Our new IBACS Director of Communication and Outreach will manage the outward face of IBACS, including the curation of our website/media presence – both inside and outside the University. John will work to enhance integration and cooperation among departments, programs, and centers critical to the thriving brain, cognitive, and neurosciences space at UConn. This will include improving the coordination of related talk and seminar series, ListServs, etc. Salamone will work to engage new IBACS stakeholders, and to build new interdisciplinary connections and breadth of representation within the Institute and its initiatives. 

Photo of John Salamone

Inge-Marie Eigsti, Director of Research
Professor of Psychological Sciences; Clinical Research Program

Photo of Inge-Marie Eigsti

Our new Director of Research will work to support existing and promote new interdisciplinary research in the brain, cognitive and neurosciences space. Eigsti will strive to increase external funding and sustainability of IBACS-affiliated programs and service cores. She will manage the IBACS Seed Grant Programs and work with IBACS-affiliated service cores in support of their respective missions – including a newly refurbished EEG/eye-tracking lab, and our new Science Alliance Mobile (SAM), which will bring cutting-edge mobile research facilities to new off-campus test sites and outreach locations. She will organize speaker events, and work together with the Director of Training and Director of Communication/Outreach where missions overlap.

All three directors will begin their positions in Fall 2023 and serve three-year terms.

Post-doc Position Available at the University of California San Diego

Postdoc Position – Corey Miller Lab

 The Miller lab at the University of California San Diego [http://millerlab.ucsd.edu] is seeking highly motivated post-doctoral fellows to participate in research program aimed at elucidating the neural basis of spatial navigation and memory in primate brain.These experiments build on our recent identification of place cells and theta activity in marmoset hippocampus during free-navigation to further explicate spatial encoding and memory in the medial temporal lobe.  

 The positions are funded through a new NIH R01 grant and are available immediately. Salaries will be based on experience and the NIH post-doctoral scale.  Candidates should have a strong scientific background in systems and/or computational neuroscience.  Individuals with expertise in neurophysiological recordings in behaving animals (in primate or non-primate models), molecular technologies and/or computational analysis are particularly encouraged to apply.

For more information or to apply for the position, please contact corymiller@ucsd.edu

Applicants should send a CV, brief statement of interest and a list of 2 references. 

 

Announcing the Educational Playcare Fellowship

IBACS is pleased to announce the creation of the Educational Playcare Fellowship.  This fellowship provides up to 20 weeks of free, full-time daycare to IBACS-affiliated students, to be used within the first year of their child’s life. The fellowship is intended to support students who become new parents during their graduate studies, and to facilitate their return to their studies/research.  Two fellowships will be available each year. The fellowship is made available through a generous gift from Educational Playcare.

Further details are available on the IBACS website. An article about the Fellowship appears in UConn Today.

Call for applications: IBRAiN Program

The Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (CT IBACS), is inviting graduate students to apply to the IBACS-BIRC Research Assistantships in Neuroimaging (IBRAiN) Program. 

 

The CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) is offering graduate assistantships of 10 hours per week during the Fall (2019) and Spring (2020) semesters at the Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC). During the first year, assistants will be trained in neuroimaging methods, data science, and reproducibility. Assistants will spend the remaining allocated hours at BIRC, supporting users of BIRC facilities. This could involve helping design and implement experimental procedures for fMRI, EEG, tDCS, TMS etc., recruitment and prepping of participants, data analysis, or overseeing use of equipment by others. Applicants will be expected to commit to the full duration of the assistantship (Fall & Spring). Funds may be available during Summer 2019 to enable IBRAiN students to pursue their own research at BIRC. IBRAiN students also receive an allocation of 20 hours of MRI time to be used at BIRC during the course of the fellowship.

We anticipate three 10-hour assistantships starting Fall 2019, joining the existing IBRAiN students who have already completed their first year at BIRC and are starting their second year on the program.

 

The deadline for receipt of applications will be midnight on February 28, 2019.

 

Priority may be given to applicants whose research will involve, or has involved, neuroimaging methods (fMRI, dEEG, tDCS, or TMS), and who will incorporate these methods into their master’s or dissertation research. Subject to funding and other constraints, these assistantships could be renewed for a further year.Please refer to the full details here.

 

Students can apply both to this program and to the IBACS Graduate Fellowship program (details here).

Funded summer opportunity: Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

Note: ECOM Director Dorit Bar-On is among the international faculty this summer!
From Erica Cartmill, Assistant Professor at UCLA:
I am writing to share the news about an exciting funded summer opportunity for graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty. In 2018, I launched a new summer program, the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI for short), with my colleague Jacob Foster, a computational sociologist at UCLA. You can find more details about last summer’s DISI, as well as a short video, at www.diverseintelligencessummer.com.
The basic idea behind DISI is simple: to bring together promising graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty interested in the study of mind, cognition, and intelligence for several weeks of transdisciplinary exploration. The first year was a great success, and we are delighted to be expanding the scope of DISI in 2019! We are increasing the number of participants, welcoming back alumni, and broadening the topics offered by faculty. We are also introducing a new “storytellers” track to host artists-in-residence at DISI. We hope that this vibrant community will work together to develop new ways of engaging with big questions about intelligence, cognition, and the mind.
We are holding the 2019 Summer Institute at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, from June 30 to July 20. As you probably know, this is a beautiful seaside location, easily accessible from Edinburgh International Airport, and a picturesque train journey North from London. We’ve already assembled an outstanding international faculty (www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/faculty), and more are yet to be added. In addition to lectures and discussions, DISI offers participants the opportunity to develop collaborative interdisciplinary research projects with support from faculty and staff.
I’ve attached a flyer advertising the Institute, and included a link to our website below. I would be grateful if you could forward this announcement to talented graduate students, postdocs, and other early career researchers who might be interested. We are also hoping to reach writers and artists of all types for our storyteller track! In both the academic and storyteller tracks, we are looking for creative, open-minded participants who want to take intellectual risks and break down disciplinary barriers in the spirit of dialogue and discovery.
 
The main application deadline is February 15. Storyteller and alumni applications will be rolling. Application portals can be found at www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/apply
If potential applicants have any questions, they can reach out to our wonderful Associate Director, Dr. Kensy Cooperrider, at disi@ucla.edu.
Thanks so much for helping us build an exciting new intellectual community!

How the Brain Controls Speech

UConn research to better understand how the brain applies meaning to words could ultimately help people with communication disorders. (Christa Tubach/UConn Image)
UConn research to better understand how the brain applies meaning to words could ultimately help people with communication disorders. (Christa Tubach/UConn Image)

Emily Myers, assistant professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at UConn, was recently featured in an article in UConn Today regarding her recent aphasia research in collaboration with Carl Coelho and Jennifer Mozeiko. By using UConn’s powerful new fMRI scanning software, Myers has been able to identify the specific neural regions in the brain that are impacted by aphasia. This new information can help shape therapies for people with language disorders.

Click here to read more.