Postdoctoral Research Scientist

A Postdoctoral Research Scientist position in foundation models for health AI is available in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. We are looking for a Postdoctoral Research Scientist to join the lab of Dr. Matthew McDermott in the Department of Biomedical Informatics to help to build state-of-the-art frontier models to better understand medical data.

This is an in-person position in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the Columbia University Medical Center campus in New York City. Some hybrid options will be considered, but a regular, strong in-person presence is required without significant exigent circumstances.

Duties and Responsibilities:

- Build Foundation Models for Health AI: Build models capable of zero-shot reasoning and nuanced data understanding over medical record data (e.g., EHR or multi-modal data). In contrast, this role won't focus on using or evaluating LLMs or CV Diffusion models on medical text or imaging, respectively.

- Deliver Generalizable Methodological Contributions: This role aims at producing generalizable insights into the science of how to build effective models on general health data for health problems. In contrast, this role focuses less on deployment of models into individual health systems (though such may often be an indirect priority for individual projects).

- Collaborate and Publish in an Interdisciplinary Manner: Work with and lead highly collaborative teams spanning methodological and clinical contributors, working with key thought leaders in the field at Columbia DBMI and beyond. Candidate will publish in top tier CS and Health Informatics venues.

- Independently Lead Projects with Students and Collaborators: Independently lead projects with students and collaborators with minimal oversight. An ideal candidate must be intrinsically motivated and an independent learner/leader and will have the opportunity to publish last-author papers in this role.

- Help Write Grants: Help write grants in this space, offering valuable experience for a future academic career.

- Contribute to a Reproducible, Open-source Health AI Ecosystem: Develop code and research contributions in a manner highly conducive to communal use, through the MEDS framework and ecosystem. This means some degree of effective software development is important in this role.

Ph.D. in computer science, health informatics, or equivalent.

Columbia University is an Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran

Pay Transparency Disclosure

The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialty, and training. The above hiring range represents the University's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting.