Position Description:

POSITION TITLE: Postdoctoral Fellow

Purpose: The part-time postdoctoral fellow will be an essential collaborator in American Heart Association (AHA) funded strategically focused research network (SFRN) center with a focus on Disparities in Cardio-Oncology, as well as on the Every Day Counts (EDC) lifestyle intervention study for women with metastatic breast cancer. This person will contribute meaningfully to the conduct of these two studies conducting essential duties that support the sucessful implementation of these studies, while at the same time gaining invaluable training. These duties include performing exercise and vascular function testing with AHA study participants, completing recruitment activities and fitness assessments with EDC study participants, and implementing the EDC lifestyle intervention.

The goals of the AHA project is to understand and ameliorate health outcomes disparities in cardio-oncology by:

Goal 1. Quantifying physiological and molecular differences in inflammation and endothelial function before and following standard of care chemotherapy (CTx) among African American (AA) vs. Non-Hispanic White (NHW) breast cancer (BC) patients receiving CTx.

Goal 2. Testing the feasibility and efficacy of an exercise intervention designed to mitigate the adverse effects of CTx.

Goal 3. Examining the influence of socio-ecological factors (individual, interpersonal, systemic, environmental) on inflammation, microvascular endothelial function, quality of life (QoL) and response to the exercise intervention.

This study will provide novel data on the impact of breast cancer treatments on vascular function, as well as the potential mitigating effects of exercise during treatment. By analyzing the socio-environmental context in which women live, we will also understand risk factors associated with cardio-toxicity.

The goals of the Every Day Counts study are to understand and impact lifestyle and quality of life among women with metastatic breast cancer by:

Aim 1. Examining the efficacy of the Every Day Counts intervention in producing significant post-intervention changes in multidimensional QOL in women with MBC.

Aim 2. Investigating the mechanistic effects of the Every Day Counts intervention on body composition, adipokines, serum biomarkers of inflammation, and insulin sensitivity.

Exploratory Aim 3: Exploring if microRNA (miRNA) signatures associated with inflammation and/or mitochondrial function are altered with the EDC intervention.

EDC is among the first studies to focus on lifestyle in the metastatic cancer setting and has the potential to impact clinical practice.

The successful applicant will cross-train on these projects, but also bring value through their own expertise in exercise science, population health, kinesiology, and/or behavioral interventions. The postdoctoral trainee will gain a strong foundation on which to build a career trajectory leading to independence in developing and implementing behavioral interventions in cancer and measuring relevant outcomes. The curriculum and research project engagement will ensure that the trainee is exposed to a variety of investigative approaches, including physiological assessments, population health, disparities, and community engagement. A highly focused research project will provide the opportunity for the fellow to develop deep expertise in one or two of these areas. A mentoring team will provide expertise, support and connections among projects and other trainees and faculty.

This position is NOT RESTRICTED to permanent U.S. residents or citizens.

Primary Functions

• Engage in all research project training activities: core curriculum, mentored research experience, professional development, and community engagement.
• Contribute to conception, design and execution of a focused research study grounded one of the funded projects.
• Collaborate with the projects' transdisciplinary teams and community advisory boards.
• Engage with human subjects; collect and analyze data from human subjects, including surveys, physiological assessments, and biological samples.
• Participate in both research projects' meetings with principal investigator(s) and research staff and implement study activities.
• Prepare high quality manuscripts for submission to refereed publications and develop and deliver research presentations at regional and national scientific conferences
• Teach and train students and technicians, as appropriate.

Characteristics of a postdoctoral appointment:

It is expected that postdocs at MCW, with the assistance of their supervisor, will:

• Transition to career independence through the development of professional skills that enable the postdoc to actively pursue a career of his/her own choosing.
• Be supervised by at least one senior scholar who actively promotes the postdoc's professional development.
• Establish an individual development plan (IDP) that incorporates equally the postdoc's career and training goals and the mentor's research goals.
• Pursue basic, clinical, or translational projects so long as effort is focused primarily on research.
• Publish results of the postdoc's research and scholarship during their appointment.
• The postdoctoral appointment is temporary by nature, the aggregate amount of time spent as a postdoc is recommended to not exceed five years (not including family medical leave or maternity/paternity leave).
• As postdocs are important members of the host institution's community, appropriate levels of compensation, health care, and other benefits commensurate with their essential status should be afforded, independent of the postdoc's source of funding.

Preferred Schedule:
Part-time role

Position Requirements:

Specifications

Minimum Required Education: PhD or equivalent

Minimum Required Experience: No experience required

Preferred Education: PhD or equivalent prior to starting the position in public health, social sciences, exercise or human physiology, cancer biology, genetics, or other related discipline.

MCW as an Equal Opportunity Employer and Commitment to Non-Discrimination
The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering a diverse community of outstanding faculty, staff, and students, as well as ensuring equal educational opportunity, employment, and access to services, programs, and activities, without regard to an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, sex, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, predisposing genetic characteristic, or military status. Employees, students, applicants or other members of the MCW community (including but not limited to vendors, visitors, and guests) may not be subjected to harassment that is prohibited by law or treated adversely or retaliated against based upon a protected characteristic.

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