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Summary:

This part-time research assistant position will hold the functional title, Research Data Scientist and Engineer. The Research Data Scientist and Engineer position supports the design, development, and analytical infrastructure of the CRPD Disability Rights Dashboard (https://idpp-crpd-dashboard.share.connect.posit.cloud) which is a first-of-its-kind NLP- and AI-powered platform that makes the full UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) reporting cycle searchable, visual, and actionable. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the American University Translating Research into Action Center (TRAC), the dashboard will scale to include data and analyses for all nine-core human rights treaties and implementation/monitoring communities. This position integrates data science, software engineering, and applied research, contributing to the analytical methods that generate insight from UN treaty body documents and the technical systems that deliver those insights to users. Responsibilities include developing and refining NLP and text analysis pipelines, designing and computing indicators and metrics from structured and unstructured data, building and maintaining the Streamlit-based dashboard and its supporting codebase, collaborating on AI-assisted research features, managing deployment and infrastructure on Posit Connect Cloud, contributing to the platform's evolution toward a comprehensive Advocacy Toolkit, and supporting user testing, documentation, and research dissemination activities. The position reports to the Principal Investigator, Dr. Derrick Cogburn, and works at the intersection of disability rights research, data science, and software development. The position will be based in the American University Institute on Disability and Public Policy (https://www.idppglobal.org). IDPP is a multidisciplinary, cross-campus research center that creates and disseminates knowledge that enables all persons to participate effectively in society, locally, nationally, and globally. IDPP uses supervised and unsupervised machine learning, deep learning, text analysis, natural language processing (NLP), and large language models (LLMs) to evaluate progress on disability rights globally and specifically on implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). IDPP also explores the role of accessible information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digital technologies, including telepresence robots and mobile apps, to accelerate full participation in society for persons with disabilities. IDPP was the lead organization for the AU 2030 Strategic Initiative on Global Disability and Development and worked in conjunction with several other campus organizations to lead the Strategic Research Initiative on Inclusive Technology and Policy (ITP). IDPP was founded in 2009 through the generous support of The Nippon Foundation and was initially focused on Southeast Asia. IDPP works in partnership with the World Bank’s Disability Data Hub (https://disabilitydata.worldbank.org/en/home) and the Disability Data Initiative (https://www.disabilitydatainitiative.org/) led by Fordham University. Both initiatives providing quantitative disability data for the Disability Rights Dashboard.

Essential Functions:

1.) Computational Research and Data Science/Analytics

• Design, develop, and refine NLP and text analysis pipelines for processing UN treaty body documents, State Party reports, Committee concluding observations, and related human rights records.

• Compute quantitative and qualitative indicators from structured and unstructured data sources, including keyword-based text analysis, sentiment analysis, and thematic classification across CRPD articles.

• Build and maintain data ingestion, cleaning, and transformation workflows to ensure the dashboard reflects current and accurate treaty body data.

• Conduct exploratory data analysis to identify trends, patterns, and anomalies in CRPD implementation and reporting across 190+ States Parties.

• Support the expansion of analytical methods to additional UN core human rights treaties beyond the CRPD.

2.) Dashboard and Software Development

• Build, maintain, and enhance the Streamlit-based CRPD Disability Rights Dashboard, including front-end UI components, interactive visualizations, and data filtering systems.

• Manage the codebase architecture, ensuring clean separation between data-loading logic (src/ modules) and presentation layers in alignment with the project's code organization conventions.

• Manage deployment, infrastructure, and configuration on Posit Connect Cloud, including monitoring performance, troubleshooting deployment issues, and coordinating version upgrades.

• Implement version control best practices using Git and GitHub, including branch management, pull request workflows, and code review processes.     

• Support user testing and iterative design improvements based on feedback from stakeholders, including UN delegates, advocates, and researchers.

3.) AI/ML Research and Development

• Collaborate on the development and refinement of AI-assisted research features, including the AI Research Assistant powered by large language models (LLMs).

• Design and implement semantic search capabilities using sentence-transformers, FAISS indexing, and embedding-based retrieval over treaty body document corpora.

• Evaluate and integrate emerging AI/ML tools and techniques relevant to the dashboard's analytical mission, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and model evaluation.

• Support the development of model performance evaluation frameworks to assess the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated research outputs.

4.) Research, Writing, and Dissemination Support

• Contribute to the preparation of research reports, policy briefs, and academic publications that draw on dashboard data and analyses.

• Develop and render Quarto-based reports for project documentation, grant reporting, and research dissemination.

• Support presentations and demonstrations of the dashboard at academic conferences, UN convenings (including the Conference of States Parties (COSP) to the CRPD), and partner institution briefings.

• Contribute to grant progress reports and documentation required by the National Science Foundation and American University TRAC.

5.) Instructional Research Integrity Support

• Contribute to maintaining the research protocols and data protection responsibilities included in the approved proposal to the American University Institutional Review Board (IRB).

• Maintaining the CITI training records for all IRB research associates and assistants. 

6.) Lead/Mentorship Responsibilities

• Provide day-to-day technical guidance and mentorship to graduate and undergraduate research associates and assistants working within IDPP on dashboard-related tasks.

• Review code contributions, provide constructive feedback on pull requests, and support onboarding of new team members to the project's codebase and workflows.

• Help assign and coordinate tasks among junior team members in alignment with project priorities set by the Principal Investigator.

7.) Administrative and Operational Support

• Maintain project documentation, including the CONTRIBUTING.md guide, requirements.txt, README, deployment checklists, and technical configuration records.

• Coordinate with the Principal Investigator on project timelines, sprint planning, and milestone tracking.

• Support infrastructure management including environment configuration, dependency management, and CI/CD workflows.

Competencies:

• Acquiring and Analyzing Information.

• Prioritizing and Organizing.

• Acting Ethically and With Integrity.

• Displaying Creativity.

• Serving Customers.

• Supporting a Diverse and Inclusive Community.

• Supporting Coworkers.

Position Type/Expected Hours of Work:

• Part-time.

• 20 hours per week.

• This is a temporary position ending on or before Dec. 31, 2026.

Salary Range:

• $20.00 per hour.

Required Education and Experience:

• Master's degree in Data Science, Data Analytics, Computer Science, Information Science, Computational Social Science, or a closely related field.

• Less than 1 year of relevant experience.

• Demonstrated proficiency in R and Python programming for data science applications, including data manipulation, statistical analysis, and visualization.

• Experience with natural language processing (NLP) techniques and text analysis methodologies.

• Experience with version control systems (Git/GitHub), including branching, pull requests (PRs), and collaborative workflows.

• Familiarity with machine learning concepts, including model training, evaluation, and deployment.

• Experience working with structured and unstructured data from real-world sources.

• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in an academic or applied research environment.

• Coursework in machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, NLP and text analytics, and advanced data analytics.

• Coursework or training in international affairs, public policy, human rights, or disability studies.

• Familiarity with Quarto, R, Python, Positron, GitHub, or other tools used in academic research and data communication.

Additional Eligibility Qualifications:

• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.​

• Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Benefits

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Other Details

• Hiring offers for this position are contingent on successful completion of a background check.

• Employees in staff positions at American University must deliver their services to the university from either the District of Columbia, Maryland, or Virginia, or perform work on-site at the university.

• Please note this job announcement is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

• American University is an E-Verify employer.

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