Post-doctoral researcher in Clinical validity and impact simulation of visual AI models for breast cancer radiology

Do you want to contribute to improving human health?

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) will change the daily work of doctors, make diagnoses more accurate and treatment choices more likely to succeed. Our group has curated a large dataset of hundreds of thousands of mammograms, thousands of ultrasound images and MRI exams, linked to clinical outcome data and radiologist image labels. We have collaborations with several medical AI companies and academic research groups whose AI models we evaluate.

Do you have a recent PhD degree or will obtain one in the next few months – in Epidemiology, Medicine, Biomedical Science, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics or similar field? Can you relate to clinical practices and patients' journey to cancer diagnoses? Do you have research experience from formally evaluating diagnostic tests for cancer or other diseases? Then, you should keep reading and apply for this exciting postdoctoral position.

Our group

Our goal, related to this position, is to facilitate a safe and optimized introduction of established AI models in breast imaging and breast cancer care. Our research group is part of the Department of Oncology and Pathology at Karolinska Institutet, and the research leader Fredrik Strand is a breast radiologist at Karolinska University Hospital.

We have internationally well-established research in developing and evaluating AI for radiological breast cancer diagnosis. Our group has expertise in radiology, biostatistics and machine learning. In addition, we have a strong collaboration with research groups at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, the University of California San Francisco and Berkeley.

We are now looking for our next post-doctoral researcher focused on assessing the clinical validity of AI models for radiological diagnostics and simulating the potential clinical impact. Clinical validity analysis includes estimating the common metrics of sensitivity, specificity, false positive rates, false negative rates. Clinical impact simulation includes taking alternative combinations between AI and radiologists into account, to assess how the diagnoses could have been made earlier or more accurately.

Your mission

Your major duty will be part of the Swedish cross-institutional VAIB (Validation of AI for Breast imaging) team, responsible for conducting and developing biostatistical evaluations and simulations of the clinical use of AI models for breast cancer detection and diagnosis. You will work with Swedish hospitals and international AI companies. In addition, you will be involved in the EUCAIM (European federation for Cancer IMaging) project where we aim to contribute data and validation and simulation methods.  You are expected to write original research papers, and to produce written test reports for the parties providing the AI models.

Your profile

To be eligible for employment as a postdoctor a phd or a foreign degree deemed to be equivalent to a Swedish phd is required. This eligibility requirement must be fulfilled at the latest at the time of the employment decision. It is considered as an advantage if you have completed your doctoral degree within the last three years, if there are special reasons, your degree may have been completed earlier.

Qualifications

In your personal letter, please specify what concretely in your history support that you meet, and excel in, each of the qualifications listed below.

You must have:

• a PhD degree from 2021 or later, or expecting to receive your PhD degree in the next two to three months
• a PhD subject area of Epidemiology, Medicine, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, Biomedical Science or similar field
• published at least two original research papers with clinical outcomes (i.e., detecting disease, predicting prognosis, assessing treatment effects) where you conducted the biostatistical analysis
• knowledge about evaluating medical diagnostic tests, and how to calculate common metrics
• excellent coding skills in R
• basic coding skills in Python (or willingness to learn)
• excellent communication skills in English

It is a merit if:

• you have experience from evaluating screening or clinical diagnostic tests
• you have experience from working with statistical analysis based on radiology or pathology reports and images
• understanding of the the clinical workflow for cancer patients and the preceding screening of cancer
• you have experience from interacting with non-sql databases, especially MongoDB
• you have experience from automating statistical reporting
• you have professional experience from international collaborations with countries in the European Union and the United States

What do we offer?

A creative and inspiring environment with wide-ranging expertise and interests. Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. At Karolinska Institutet, we conduct successful medical research and hold the largest range of medical education in Sweden. At KI, you get to meet researchers working with a wide range of specialisms and methods, giving you ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with the various scientific fields within medicine and health. It is the crossover collaborations, which have pushed KI to where it is today, at the forefront of global research. Several of the people you meet in healthcare are educated at KI. A close relationship with the health care providers is important for creating groundbreaking top quality education and research. Karolinska Institutet is also a state university, which entitles you to several benefits through our collective agreement.

Location: Solna

Choose to work at KI – Ten reasons why

Application

An employment application must contain the following documents in English or Swedish:

• A complete resumé, including date of the thesis defence, title of the thesis, previous academic positions, academic title, current position, academic distinctions, and committee work
• A complete list of publications
• A summary of current work (no more than one page)

Welcome to apply at the latest 12^th November.

The application is to be submitted through the Varbi recruitment system.

This post-doctoral research position is for 2 years with possibility of extension and is salaried. 

Starting time as per agreement.

Want to make a difference? Join us and contribute to better health for all

1. Fredrik Strand, fredrik.strand@ki.se

1. Helen Eriksson, OFR, helen.eriksson@ki.se
2. Henry Wölling, Seco, henry.wolling@ki.se
3. Per Hydbring och Nick Tobin, SACO , per.hydbring@ki.se/nick.tobin@ki.se