Data Scientist II, Biomedical Engineering

DATA SCIENTIST II

WHY UT SOUTHWESTERN?
With over 75 years of excellence in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, UT Southwestern is committed to excellence, innovation, teamwork, and compassion. As a world-renowned medical and research center, we strive to provide the best possible care, resources, and benefits for our valued employees. Ranked as the number 1 hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth according to U.S. News & World Report, we invest in you with opportunities for career growth and development to align with your future goals. Our highly competitive benefits package offers healthcare, PTO and paid holidays, on-site childcare, wage, merit increases and so much more. We invite you to be a part of the UT Southwestern team where you'll discover a culture of teamwork, professionalism, and a rewarding career 

JOB SUMMARY
Works under general direction to provide analysis and develops algorithms and software for clinical and/or basic research problems. Impacts data acquisition, management, and analysis in basic, translational, and clinical research, including clinical trials. 
 
The Deep Learning for Precision Health Lab (www.montillolab.org ), a part of the Biodata Engineering Program of the Biomedical Engineering department at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas,TX seeks a talented and motivated Data Scientist to support large-scale multimodal biomedical imaging and AI research initiatives. The successful candidate will play a key role in curating and analyzing multimodal datasets, preparing resources for foundation-model development, and supporting NIH-funded projects at the intersection of machine learning, neuroscience, and oncology. This is a full-time, long-term staff scientist position focused on technical excellence, reproducible data management, and collaborative research in a dynamic academic environment.

Our lab’s focus is on developing the theory and application of deep learning (DL) and causal modeling to elucidate treatment mechanisms, and to guide prognosis and treatment decisions with applications in neurological disorders and cancer therapy. To maximize AI’s efficacy for biomedicine we develop new methods delivering: (1) trustworthy AI, (2) multimodal data fusion, (3) causal analysis, (4) and sample efficiency. We then apply these methods in (5) biomedical and neuroscience applications

The successful applicant will contribute by (a) learning to apply advanced ML-based causal analysis to quantify mechanistic relationships in experimental data, (b) constructing reinforcement learning approaches to guide dynamic therapies, and (c) helping in foundation model development and downstream tailoring in biomedical projects.

With cutting-edge computational infrastructure, access to leading neurology, neuroscience, and cancer experts, and an unparalleled trove of high dimensional imaging and multi-omic data, our machine learning lab is poised for success in these research endeavors.

Primary Responsibilities

• Curate and manage large neuroimaging & bioimaging datasets (dynamic PET, MRI, fluorescence).
• Develop and maintain automated pipelines for data quality control, and reproducibility.
• Write scripts to characterize dataset structure, imaging quality, and subject longitudinal counts.
• Identify synergies across major repositories to enable integrated AI model training.
• Search public resources for complementary datasets.
• Support preparation of tables, figures, and analyses for grant proposals and publications.

Secondary Responsibilities

• Clean and prepare datasets for downstream ML and deep-learning workflows.
• Configure and run existing foundation or large-scale deep learning models for benchmarking.
• Contribute to manuscript writing, figure preparation, and internal documentation.

Key Qualifications

• Exceptional programming ability: advanced proficiency in Python and Linux/Bash scripting.
• Experience running and managing batch jobs on SLURM or similar HPC systems.
• Demonstrated problem-solving capability and ability to learn new technical concepts quickly.
• Highly motivated, detail-oriented, and collaborative; thrives in a multidisciplinary team.
• Preferred: familiarity with neuroimaging data formats (DICOM, NIfTI, HDF5, MP4, EEG) and web-scraping or data-discovery scripting.

BENEFITS
UT Southwestern is proud to offer a competitive and comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees. Our benefits are designed to support your overall wellbeing, and include:

• PPO medical plan, available day one at no cost for full-time employee-only coverage
• 100% coverage for preventive healthcare-no copay
• Paid Time Off, available day one
• Retirement Programs through the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS)
• Paid Parental Leave Benefit
• Wellness programs
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Qualified Employer
• Learn more about these and other UTSW employee benefits

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

Required

• Education
  Master's Degree M.S. in Computer Science, Bioinformatics, (Bio)mathematics, (Bio)statistics, Physics, Electrical Engineering, or related field or 
  Bachelor's Degree B.S. with demonstrated experience in broadly defined areas of bioinformatics. 
   

• Experience
  2 years of post-graduation experience in data analysis and/or scientific software development for a Master's degree 
  4 years of post-graduation experience in data analysis and/or scientific software development for a Bachelor's degree 

  
   

  JOB DUTIES

• Analyzes and develops formalisms, algorithms and software for applications in biomedical research.
• Develops and maintains software tools and infrastructure for resolving specific problems.
• Performs the development, testing and revision of programs in a team with diverse bioinformatics expertise.
• Advises and assists users and other personnel in analyzing, defining and resolving computational problems.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

SECURITY AND EEO STATEMENT

Security
This position is security-sensitive and subject to Texas Education Code 51.215, which authorizes UT Southwestern to obtain criminal history record information.

EEO
UT Southwestern Medical Center is committed to an educational and working environment that provides equal opportunity to all members of the University community. As an equal opportunity employer, UT Southwestern prohibits unlawful discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, or veteran status.