Junior Program manager – Biobanks & Collections

Health-RI

Health-RI is a Dutch non-profit foundation, supporting a growing network of organizations to realize a national health and life-sciences data infrastructure for research and innovation. Health-RI has recently acquired significant government funding to establish a coordinated national expertise and infrastructure network comprising regional nodes of healthcare and life-sciences research organizations. Health-RI’s mission is to build an integrated health and life-sciences data research infrastructure accessible for researchers, citizens, and care providers. The Health-RI team and network facilitate and foster the optimal use of knowledge, tools, facilities, health data and samples to enable data-driven health and life-sciences research and to accelerate sustainable and affordable personalized medicine and health.

Theme Biobanks & Collections

To achieve the overarching mission of Health-RI – to build an integrated health data research infrastructure to enable a learning healthcare system and accelerate sustainable and affordable personalized medicine and health – requires findability, accessibility, and comparability of health data. Health data and biomaterials are being underutilised in the current fragmented biobanks and collections landscape due to the fact that these are not findable or accessible. Therefore, the Health-RI theme Biobanks & Collections facilitates that health data, biomaterials, and images deriving from registries, bio- and databanks are being collected, stored, processed, found, requested, and exchanged in a harmonized manner for scientific purposes and innovation.

Realisation of this mission is achieved by the efforts of the central Biobanks & Collections-team in collaboration with the regional Biobanks & Collections coordinators at the University Medical Centres, the involved working groups, and the broader (inter)national Biobanks & Collections-community.

Your role

You are responsible for operating as a program manager within our Biobanks & Collections team, including the following activities:

Function as a member of the Biobanks & Collections-theme with the joint responsibility to facilitate that health data, biomaterials, and images deriving from registries, bio- and databanks are being collected, stored, processed, found, requested, and exchanged in a harmonized manner for scientific purposes and innovation.

• Manage the Biobanks & Collections day-to-day operations in collaboration with the other team members, including the scheduling of meetings, providing operational support, monitoring follow up on actions, reporting, and communication.
• Support the activities of Biobanks & Collections to develop (elements of) the national integrated health data infrastructure to support data requesters and providers to advance excellent research.
• Interact within the Health-RI organization with other themes (e.g., Services, ELSI, Architecture, and FAIR Data Implementation), working groups (e.g., Meta data portal-working group) and teams (e.g., Team International).
• Contribute, in collaboration with Services, to the development and execution of the Metadata Portal onboarding-process for data collections deriving from biobanks, cohorts, and additional collaborations (e.g., use cases).
• Collaborate with external parties to inventory their expertise, needs, wishes, and expectations regarding the national integrated health data infrastructure.
• You are the linking pin between the central Health-RI team and the regional experts, including the Biobanks & Collections coordinators and researchers.
• Support specific working groups within the Biobanks & Collections theme.
• Building and fostering of the relationship with the experts involved in the biobanking, cohort study and registry activities in the various university medical centres and beyond.
• Identifying opportunities for the Biobanks & Collections community to make use of the Health-RI services and tools.
• Manage communication activities of the Biobanks & Collections theme to inform the (inter)national community regarding developments and inventory existing needs and requirements.
• Contribute to the organisation of the annual Biobanks & Collections event to bring together the national Biobanks & Collections community in order to network and share knowledge and experiences.
• In this role you will develop into a senior program manager with soft skills, knowledge, and experience as a result of working in an (inter)national, multidisciplinary setting.  

You will be a member of the Health-RI Biobanks & Collections team with a joint responsibility to oversee (inter)national developments in the research infrastructure, relevant for biobanks, cohort studies, and registries in the Netherlands. You will align with regional and local experts that search, request and/or provide biomaterial, data, and/or image collections.

Your Profile

You have at least an BSc. and/or MSc. in medicine, biology, health sciences, molecular life sciences, or a similar life sciences domain. It would be desirable as well as to have domain expertise in a relevant area, such as population and/or clinical biobank activities, epidemiology, (pre)clinical research, imaging, data interoperability. (Technical) project management skills are present with the ability to meet tight deadlines and showing a can-do mentality. You have a strong work ethic and can work in distributed projects teams, preferably also internationally. Excellent oral and written communication skills in Dutch and English are required. In addition, you have an understanding of the underlying technical and ethical/legal challenges associated with (re)use of data and/or biomaterials for scientific purposes. Previous experience in (supporting) scientific writing, such as research grant writing, would be desirable. You are willing and able to travel the country to connect to Health-RI stakeholders. Preferably, you will have a broad network in health research institutes.

We offer

You will be appointed at Health-RI, offering a flexible working environment. We offer you a role in our team that leaves ample room for your personal growth, embedded in a national and international expert network. Our office in Utrecht serves as your basis, where we convene as a team on a regular basis. This is combined with working from home using online collaboration tools.

We offer an appointment for initially 1 year, with the intention to extend this as a permanent position. Health-RI has a 38-hour working week and participates in the ABP pension fund. Gross salary level is based on the Collective Labor Agreement NFU scale 9-10, depending on your education and work experience. In addition, you will receive 8% holiday allowance and 8.3 % end-year bonus, following the CLA NFU.

Please send your motivation letter and curriculum vitae to hr@health-ri.nl. For more information, please contact robin.verjans@lygature.org.