Chemical Exposure Data Support

The EPA National Student Services Contract has an immediate opening for a full time Chemical Exposure Data Support position with the Office of Research and Development at the EPA facility in Research Triangle Park, NC.

The Office of Research and Development at the EPA supports high-quality research to improve the scientific basis for decisions on national environmental issues and help EPA achieve its environmental goals. Research is conducted in a broad range of environmental areas by scientists in EPA laboratories and at universities across the country.

What the EPA project is about

The Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE) supports ORD by providing solutions-driven research to rapidly evaluate the potential human health and environmental risks due to exposures to environmental stressors and ensure the integrity of the freshwater environment and its capacity to support human well-being.  CCTE researchers are developing and applying cutting edge innovations in methods to rapidly evaluate chemical toxicity, transport, and exposure to people and environments.  Within CCTE, the Scientific Computing & Data Curation Division (SCDCD) develops the knowledge and information architecture necessary for integrating, transforming, and managing large scale data streams related to assessing the risk of chemicals. SCDCD creates and manages online tools and ensures compatibility with existing chemistry, toxicology, and other experimental data sources.

As a team member, you will support research under the Chemical Safety for Sustainability (CSS) research program on modeling of human exposure to chemicals. The team member will assist with support of data needs, including acquisition and development of datasets to parametrize exposure models, assistance in the testing or evaluation of databases, and basic summaries and analyses of data. The work of the team member may include gathering additional datasets from online sources, formatting datasets into standard templates and uploading into databases, testing and evaluating ease-of-use of software, and application of data science and machine learning techniques.

The duties of the team member will include, but are not limited to:

• Collecting and processing data on factors related to chemical occurrence or exposure;
• Organizing or transforming data in databases to support scientific analyses;
• Analysis of data quality according to specified criteria; and
• Writing scripts in R, Python, or Java to support data migration and data curation software tools.

Communications-related responsibilities shall include:

• Contribute to an interdisciplinary team of developers and scientists;
• Create data visualizations to communicate results to stakeholders;
• Thoroughly document all work as directed by EPA mentor to comply with EPA quality assurance procedures for transparency and reproducibility of work;
• Present work in internal reports/memos to be used by EPA scientists; and
• May have the opportunity to present work at scientific conferences.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Work Experience, and Education 

• General understanding of statistics;
• Strong reading comprehension skills and experience logically interpreting pieces of information from a variety of data source types; and
• Experience programming in the R, Python, and/or Java language.

Desired Knowledge, Skills, Work Experience, and Education

• Experience with databases (e.g. MySQL);
• Experience applying knowledge of exposure assessment and/or computing and mathematical modeling to the assessment of chemical exposures; and
• Knowledge of organic and inorganic chemistry nomenclature.

Location:  This job will be located EPA’s facility in Research Triangle Park, NC.

Salary: Selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU and will receive an hourly wage of $23.84 for hours worked.

Hours: Full-time.

Travel: Travel related to the position is not anticipated.  Travel for training and presentations at national meetings may be possible.

Expected start date: The position is full time and expected to begin January 2025. The selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU working as a contractor to EPA. 

For more information, contact EPANSSC@orau.org. Do not contact EPA directly.

• Be at least 18 years of age and
• Have earned at least a Bachelors’ degree in biology, chemistry, toxicology, statistics, mathematics, or a related field, including training or coursework in statistics or computer programming or a closely related field of study from an accredited university or college within the last 24 months and
• Be a citizen of the United States of America or a Legal Permanent Resident.

EPA ORD employees, their spouses, and children are not eligible to participate in this program.