Research Assistant (Discipline of Public Health Medicine)
Listing reference: ukzn_000576
Listing status: Online
Apply by: 30 June 2025
Position summary
Industry: Education & Training
Job category: Environmental Science
Location: Durban
Contract: Fixed Term Contract
Remuneration: Market Related
EE position: Yes
Introduction
The Discipline of Public Health Medicine has recently been awarded a grant by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), known as WEATHER (Warning system for Extreme weather events, Awareness Technology for Healthcare, Equitable delivery, and Resilience). The goal of this project is to develop, implement and evaluate an Early Warning System intervention (EWS) as a local alert system for communities and government to detect, identify and prevent disease outbreaks, strengthening the health systems response. The Discipline invites suitably qualified candidates to apply for the WEATHER Research Assistant position.
Job description
- The successful candidate will conceptualise and implement a sub-study aligned with the WEATHER project's objectives, which will form the basis of their Master's research
- Within the first six months, the candidate must enrol in a Master's degree program
- Key responsibilities include tracking and reporting project activities, ensuring timely collection and quality assurance of data, performing data cleaning and biostatistical analyses, and interpreting results for dissemination
- The candidate will actively participate in sharing findings through conferences, workshops, seminars, and publications, fostering meaningful collaborations with the WEATHER team and fellow postgraduate students
Minimum requirements
- Holders of an Honours degree in Statistics, Biostatistics, Data Science, or Health Informatics
- Have the academic achievement of >65% in Honours degree
- Interested in public health, biostatistics, health data science
- Have skills in data management, programming, data analysis and visualization
- Willingness to work in a multidisciplinary team
- Have excellent organisational skills and attention to detail
- Valid motor vehicle driver’s licence in South Africa
- South African citizen
Essential Requirements:
- A strong foundation in mathematics, statistics or computing
- Good skills in computer programming, with experience of at least one high-level programming language (e.g. Python/R)
- Experience of Data Quality Management and use of Data Quality Management Tools
- Ability to work both independently and collaboratively
- Experience in working within a multidisciplinary team
- Experience in working within multinational collaborations
The successful candidate will be expected to register for Masters within the first six months of date of assumption of duty.
The closing date of receipt of applications is 30 June 2025. The University, however, reserves the right to accept late applications or to extend the above date in order to facilitate further searches.
It is compulsory for all applicants to complete and to submit the academic application form which is available on the Vacancies website at www.ukzn.ac.za
