Clinical Informatics Intern

Center for Data Intensive Science

Mentors

Michael Fitzsimons, Ph.D., Director of User Services and Outreach, Center for Translational Data Science
Tara Lichtenberg, Clinical Data Curator, Center for Translational Data Science

About Us

The Center for Translational Data Science is pioneering translational data science to advance biology, medicine, healthcare, and the environment. We’re a dedicated team of researchers and engineers drawing from different backgrounds and ideas to push the boundaries of data-intensive science. We work closely with researchers at the University of Chicago, along with other research groups and consortia. We develop and operate large-scale open-source data clouds and data commons for the scientific research community, including the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud, OCC Open Science Data Cloud, and the NCI Genomic Data Commons. These computational platforms support thousands of users across the world with varying technical skills, backgrounds, and research objectives.

Internship Description

Clinical data is central to the Genomic Data Commons’ mission of furthering precision medicine in cancer treatment. Having well curated and accurate clinical data allows researchers to correlate outcome or prognosis with genetic markers. We are currently working to apply external reference standards from the NCI Thesaurus (NCIt), a widely recognized standard for biomedical coding and reference, to all GDC clinical variables. The clinical data intern will organize this information and coordinate communications with the NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Service, which operates the NCIt. Adding NCIt values to the GDC Data Dictionary will enable easier data submission and also provide ontologic groupings of submitted data, which will make data query more intuitive and understandable. This experience will be valuable for learning more about clinical data and medical terminology.

Work will be performed in a fast-paced entrepreneurial-like setting where the intern will be expected to drive efforts with a well-organized project management approach.

Learning Objectives

There is room for customization of tasks to fit the skills and interests of intern(s). Opportunities include:

● Understand the GDC Data Dictionary and Data Model
● Understand the structure of NCIt terms and their attributes
● Organize NCIt terms for hundreds of GDC properties and values
● Provide NCIt terms to internal groups for integration into the GDC Data Dictionary
● Provide additional support as needed for clinical data curation

Qualifications

● Strong interest in Biology, Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Translational Medicine
● Eagerness to learn new skills and tools
● Creativity, curiosity, empathy, and observational skills
● Meticulous and good attention to detail
● Experience with healthcare and medical terminology a plus
● Experience with bioinformatics a plus

Your application must include a current CV and a cover letter describing why this internship is relevant to your career goals.