Research Assistant in Wearables Data Capturing and Management in Clinical Trials

The Spinal Cord Injury Artificial Intelligence - SCAI - Lab  with the Department of Health Sciences and Technology (D-HEST) of ETH Zurich, and Swiss Praplegic Research is seeking a research assistant in the field of data capturing and management for wearable technology development. The focus is on personalized healthcare monitoring to improve the prognosis of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). 

The SCAI Lab founded from the Sensory-Motor Systems Lab of ETH-Zurich (Prof. Robert Riener) is located within one of the largest and most prestigious health providers in Switzerland: the Swiss Paraplegic Center (SPZ) in Nottwil, Luzern.

You will be supervised by Dr. Diego Paez-Granados and Prof. Robert Riener. The position is fully funded for 1 year with yearly renewal possible.

Ideal starting date: January 2025 (shortly after).

Conditions such as pressure injuries, autonomic dysreflexia, and other cardiovascular conditions are highly prevalent affecting large portions of the SCI population, representing a huge risk for the patient’s health and the healthcare system.

You would join a team of clinical and research scientists in the task of improving the long-term prognosis of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI). 

In this project, we are working with multimodal and heterogeneous data from diagnosis, physiotherapy, clinical interventions, physiological measurements, body metrics, and rehabilitation. We are developing advanced methods for feature extraction, data integration, and clustering from this growing body of clinical data. 

We will extract and analyze a large amount of information from longitudinal multi-modal clinical data and wearables (clinical systems and embodied sensing studies), to model the conditions and risk factors for making predictions about disease phenotypes, and disease progression.

The general goal of this project is to leverage advanced machine learning and statistical modeling to improve personalized disease models on spinal cord injury individuals.

More concretely, as a research assistant, you will be responsible for the execution of clinical study protocols, data collection, and data manamgent from vital wearable devices, as well as, healthcare records .

The main application subject will be on SCI comorbidities, elderly tracking, and cardiovascular disease using digital biomarkers. e.g., cardiovascular conditions, urinary tract infections, autonomic dysreflexia, among others. 

The ideal condiadte has a Master's degree from a recognized university (or will be close to completion) in Health Science, Bioengineering, Biomedicine, Biomedical, or related fields, with a proven track record in wearable technology (desirable). The applicant cannot hold a PhD degree obtained previously.

• Very good knowledge of German
• Has a Good Clinical Practices certifcate.
• Has first-rate oral and written English skills and an interest in writing are required.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Adaptable and flexible to the continuous changes associated with research demands.
• Desire to work with patients and clinicians and a strong interest in neurorehabilitation, healthcare and the use of digital technologies in healthcare.
• Is closely familiar with bio-signals / biomarkers - either through studies or work experience and has a passion for healthcare support.
• Experience with Python (preferred)
• Self-motivation and independent learning, and not afraid to develop and test novel ideas.
• Highly motivated, self-driven, and shows excellent performance in his/her studies. 

We offer a full-time research position (100%) with a competitive salary in accordance with ETH standards. Presence is estimated at 80%~100% at SPZ Nottwil, LU, with flexibility for some remote work possible.

You will become part of an ambitious research team (with clinical researchers, statistic and machine learning experts, and scientific researchers) offering an outstanding research environment and team spirit.