Research Scientist

North Carolina State University at Raleigh

Raleigh, NC

ID: 7134633
Posted: March 17, 2023
Application Deadline: Open Until Filled

Job Description

About the Department
The Department of Computer Science is an academic teaching and research department in the College of Engineering. It is a large and complex unit that encompasses research intensive, teaching intensive and professional activities. It is one of the largest such departments in the nation by the number of faculty and students, and its total budget and size are comparable to, or larger than, a number of NC State University colleges and divisions.

The Digital Transformation of Education (DTE) research cluster brings together efforts across multiple colleges that address the potential of digital technologies to enhance learning in formal and informal education settings. As part of the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program, the DTE cluster currently has core and associated faculty in both the College of Education and the Department of Computer Science within the College of Engineering. These faculty engage in collaborative work where educational research, theory, technologies, and methods leverage data analytic and computational methods to examine learning in a range of pedagogical and learning contexts. Of particular interest is how these technologies, methods, and insights can be used to serve learners from populations that have been historically underserved and underrepresented in knowledge economy careers.
Essential Job Duties
Support faculty collaboration and projects for the Digital Transformation of Education. This person will oversee project development and will be required to interweave interpersonal relationships with teachers, students, other institutions, State and Federal Agencies, and NC State faculty. This person will direct projects, collect, analyze, and present data, develop materials and software, and supervise graduate and undergraduate students.

Job responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Coordinate partner and faculty collaboration on proposals and projects
Coordinate and oversee day-to-day operations of projects
Prepare and monitor IRB protocols and assure compliance
Design and create new materials and tools for K12 and undergraduate STEM and computing education and educators
Design, develop, deploy, and maintain software tools to support curricula, educators, students, and research
Use modern software engineering processes including version control, issue tracking, and project management techniques to ensure high quality software development
Collect and analyze data (using data analytics/ statistical/ machine learning methods) to derive insights contributing to educational or learning theory and drive improvements of learning tools .
Ensure that data collection, data organization and storage, and data analysis tasks are completed on time and are done well.
Assist with literature reviews, manuscript, and project reports preparation and submission
Conduct research and evaluation for projects
Present research at professional meetings
Maintain project websites
Manage research assistants
Write research manuscripts and reports

Will develop new learning, inference, and/or planning algorithms, analytics, and representations for processing educational data; provide guidance on the research direction of graduate student and staff efforts across a large projects, design and manage experimental studies and select venues for reporting the results, assist faculty in the management of the schedule for project and software deliverables; manage the quarterly reporting requirements including preparing a summary of the work for intermediate and summative reports; prepare and present research findings at annual meetings; handle other research activities as requested.
Other Responsibilities
Perform other related duties as assigned or requested. This position is contingent upon funding.
Qualifications
Minimum Education and Experience
Doctoral degree or equivalent education and experience in (science, tech, engineering, math, computer science) or STEM+C-education-related field.
5+ years’ Experience in research design, implementation, data collection, analysis, and publication
Other Required Qualifications
Effective written and oral communication skills
Highly organized and able to work independently and as part of a team
Experience in writing scientific papers and project reports
Experience in conducting research in the domain of educational data mining, educational technologies, and/or intelligent tutors and relevant publication venues.
Experience developing software tools to support STEM & computing education.
Experience in complex data analysis to derive insights from sequential log data. Data analysis methods include, but are not limited to – statistical methods, graph mining, machine learning, and learning analytics.
Experience with Google Drive and Google Forms
Preferred Qualifications
Preferred 3 years experience with educational software development on teams
Preferred proficiency in Java, Python, and/or PHP.
Preferred skills with managing a team to achieve common goals
Preferred training in both engineering/computing and education
Experience developing K-16 computing curricula and assessments
Experience supporting K-16 computer science teachers and/or professional development