Purpose:

UPMC Hillman Cancer Center is currently hiring a regular full-time Research Coordinator to help support the Clinical Research Services team located at the Hillman Cancer Center in Shadyside/Pittsburgh, PA & at the UPMC Magee Women’s Oncology Research program in Oakland/Pittsburgh, PA.   This role will support various Oncology Disease Center program studies working Monday through Friday daylight hours. 

The Clinical Research Services (CRS) team is made up of nearly 200 staff members who facilitate the development, implementation, coordination, internal data monitoring, and completion of oncology-focused trials at Hillman. These trials include institutional (investigator-initiated), multi-center cooperative group/National Clinical Trial Network (NCTN), consortium, and industry-sponsored trials. Using a disease-specific centers model for conducting clinical trials, CRS provides study development and implementation assistance, submissions to the FDA, IRB processing, patient recruitment, study coordination, study-specific training, data collection, and specimen collection and processing.

The employee would take overall responsibility for ensuring the effective use of CRS services by multiple Oncology program investigators involved in clinical research. Among the responsibilities would be working with various PIs (with input from leadership) to effectively address all the challenges in all phases of the research including helping the PI to develop the recruitment plan to capitalize on CRS resources; achieving of necessary institutional approvals to initiate research; planning for implementation in each clinic that will be involved; coordination with front line clinical providers and CRCs for effective recruitment, assessment, and interventions required for the trial; tracking accruals and preparing required reports about accruals, adverse events, and outcomes; and monitoring progress with timely troubleshooting to address any impediments to the research or to further enhance the research effort through the application of CRS expertise and resources.

This Research Coordinator position will involve developing tools to help build relationships with the community to facilitate enrollment of participants into clinical studies, developing metrics and tools for evaluation of clinical research sites, prepare evaluation reports that summarize the effectiveness of sites and of other network processes such as protocol development, laboratory initiatives, etc, administering research questionnaires, collecting, entering and verifying data, assisting in quality control procedures, providing regulatory reviews and updates for the network, writing clinical study protocols and sample informed consent documents, and providing general clinical research assistance. Candidates should possess strong organizational skills and effective communication skills to interact with clinical site personnel, participants, funders, and research and medical staff. 

This position is part of a UPMC Research Career ladder.  The incumbent will be hired into the appropriate level of research professional job title based on their current education and experience level.

Responsibilities:

• Revise, renew and maintain IRE approval, protocols, and consent forms for studies.

• Recruit subjects for ongoing and new research studies.

• Assist in hypothesis generation, data collection, data analysis, and data presentation and publication.

• Performs duties for approved research projects according to defined protocols and procedures including appropriate collection, recording, and storage of data.

• Assists in data collection and data entry and quality control of data.

• Follows appropriate research policies and procedures including all applicable laws and regulations and maintains scientific integrity including accurate data storage.

• Perform literature reviews and generate material needed for future studies.

• Must complete online IRB certification modules 1 and 2 (Research Practice Fundamentals) in accordance with Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.

• Designs and implements evaluation of processes, including evaluation of clinical site performance, evaluation of laboratory processes, protocol development, study implementation, etc.

• Manage development and review process for all manuscripts, abstracts, and presentations generated through the activities of the research group.