Three-year postdoc position in biostatistics and epidemiology at the Clinical Trials Unit

The Oslo University Hospital (OUH) is one of the largest hospitals in Scandinavia. More than 50% of all biomedical research in Norway is published by researchers affiliated with OUH. Research undertaken covers basic, translational and clinical research. This is the result of the hospitals research strategy and its extensive international network cooperation, together with the Medical Faculty of University of Oslo. In this way, OUH complies with its role as national reference hospital, responsible for introducing and developing new disease preventing strategies, new diagnostic methods, new treatments and follow-up plans.

Regional Research Support (https://forskerstotte.no/) is part of the Oslo Hospital Services division at Oslo University Hospital (OUH). The unit delivers services and advice to research groups and employees at OUH and other hospitals that are part of the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority. FST consist of the following 5 departments; Administrative Research Support, Oslo Center for Biostatistics & Epidemiology, Clinical Trials Unit, Biobank and Health Registry Support and Comparative Medicine. Research support has approximately 130 employees and collaborates closely with a broad range of academic areas and dicliplines within the University of Oslo.

The Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) has a broad clinical research skills base and currently employs 39 staff. We offer advising, courses and operational services to a wide spectrum of clinical trials within the health region. The CTU collaborates closely with Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE) to support our growing portfolio of clinical trials and research within this field. The CTU part-takes in several pan-European consortia with funding from the EU Commission through their Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes. Common to these initiatives is the set-up, design, implementation and dissemination of adaptive platform trials, with the aim to provide evidence-based treatment alternatives in infectious diseases.

We're seeking candidates for a three-year post-doctoral position who is motivated to take on challenges in designing and running adaptive clinical platform trials and collaborating with other global clinical trials to combine evidence and data. The person hired will join an international group of statisticians and trialists running trials in mpox and other infectious diseases through the EU-RESPONSE (eu-response.eu) and MPX-RESPONSE (mpx-response.eu) projects. The ideal candidate is eager to refine methodologies and procedures, bringing prior clinical and/or methodological research experience to the role, along with robust programming/coding capabilities. The CTU is eager to expand its biostatistical/epidemiological research activities, offering academic pursuits for statisticians at the PhD and post-doc level.

There will be possibilities to engage in other research activiteis and tasks, not only within the CTU but also across other units at OUH and in collaboration with OCBE colleagues. The position reports administratively to the head of the CTU, and is professionally led by the work package leader of the EU projects, Inge Christoffer Olsen.

Commencement upon agreement.

Oslo University Hospital is a workplace with great diversity. We believe this is a key quality to perform the tasks required from us. Therefore, we pursue diversity also among our job applicants, and encourage everyone to apply regardless of who you are and what background you have.

Duties and responsibilities

• Merging data from several clinical trials to prepare for joint analysis
• Contribute to the joint analysis
• Contribute to solving the methodological challenges of sharing data and how to do interim analyses on shared data while still maintaining the integrity of each participating trial
• Develop and expand on methodological challenges in adaptive platform trials for infectious diseases
• Work with the OUH work package leader in the EU/MPX-RESPONSE projects on project and data management and statistical tasks
  
• Join and contribute to the statistical/methodological group of EU/MPX-RESPONSE
  
• Contribute to research and development of new statistical methodology for clinical trials in collaboration with the OCBE Clinical Trials Research Group and other research teams nationally and internationally

Qualifications

• A PhD in statistics or epidemiology is required
  
• Experience from statistical analysis and reporting in R, Stata or SAS is required
• Experience with statistical analysis and writing of original peer-reviewed articles is required
  
• Excellent English language skills is required
• Knowledge of regulatory aspects from eg. pharmaceutical industry is preferred
• Experience in the analysis, publication and methodology of (academic) clinical trials is preferred
• A track record of research and development of methodology for adaptive clinical platform trials would count positive
  

Personal qualities

For us it is important that you:

• Have the ability to collaborate across different professional environments
• Thrive in working in a large and complex organization
• Thrive in the team-work setting
• Like to share experience and learn from others
  
• Are a good communicator
  
• Take initiative and deliver tasks as agreed
  
• Like to work independently when required
  
• Are curious, energetic and have attention to details

We can offer

• A workplace characterized by trust, openness and respect
• A safe workplace with good colleague support
  
• A journey towards a new and modern hospital
  
• As a new employee of OUH, you will be part of a welcome program
• You become part of an important social mission
• Salaries for researchers at OUH are competitive
  
• Salary will depend on qualifications and seniority
  
• A dynamic and engaging internal work environment with leading expertise in most aspects of running and analysing clinical trials
  
• Access to a large international network of clinical trials researchers/methodologists
  
• Membership in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund
  
• Full public health insurance
  
• Attractive welfare benefits