Research Scientist (Epidemiology, Surveillance, Data & AI)

Contemporaries is a government contracting firm supporting the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in its efforts to hire two Research Scientists supporting epidemiology, disease surveillance, data analytics, and research innovation on a long-term contract. Both positions work with complex public-health surveillance data and scientific research; one role emphasizes surveillance analytics, data quality, and research-tool/repository support, while the second places greater emphasis on AI/ML development and application.

Key Responsibilities

• Plan and conduct epidemiologic research involving disease-surveillance and other public-health data.
• Analyze, structure, clean, and evaluate large, complex, multi-source, and/or real-time surveillance datasets.
• Assess data quality, completeness, representativeness, assumptions, and limitations that may affect research findings or model validity.
• Develop, apply, evaluate, or improve analytical methods and AI/ML approaches for epidemiologic and surveillance research.
• Evaluate scientific and AI/ML tools for analytic soundness, reproducibility, appropriate use, and limitations.
• Provide technical guidance to NIH/FIC scientists and investigators on epidemiologic methods, surveillance analytics, data quality, and/or AI/ML.
• Support investigators seeking to use, adapt, replicate, or contribute research tools and code to scientific repositories.
• Prepare research papers, reports, presentations, and peer reviews; present findings to scientific and professional audiences.
• Collaborate with government, academic, industry, and scientific stakeholders.

Candidate Profile

• Advanced experience in epidemiology, public health, biostatistics, data science, computational epidemiology, or a closely related research field.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing epidemiologic, disease-surveillance, population-health, or comparable health datasets.
• Strong quantitative research skills and experience selecting or developing appropriate analytical methodologies.
• Experience with statistical/programming tools such as R, Python, SAS, or comparable platforms.
• For the Data & AI-focused opening: hands-on experience developing, adapting, validating, or applying AI/ML models to epidemiologic or health data is strongly preferred.
• For the Implementation & Services-focused opening: experience with surveillance methods, data-quality assessment, reproducible research, research repositories, or scientific tool evaluation is strongly preferred.
• Experience preparing scientific reports, manuscripts, publications, peer reviews, or conference presentations.
• Ability to communicate complex technical findings clearly to scientific and interdisciplinary stakeholders.

Contemporaries is a government contracting firm who has been providing HR and Staff support to both federal and private organizations for over 35 years. Specializing in Administrative and related opportunities, while also working with Scientific, IT, Legal, Research, and related opportunities.