Program Description

Postdoctoral fellowships at the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications (LHNCBC) provide research training opportunities to recent MDs and PhDs, with the goal of developing future leaders in biomedical informatics research. PhDs, or equivalent doctorates, may be in computer science, biomedical informatics, applied mathematics, statistics, engineering or allied disciplines. Applicants may be US or foreign citizens.

Appointments are for one year and are renewable for one or more additional years, upon recommendation of mentors and availability of funds. Fellows receive stipends, which can vary depending on qualifications and experience.

Fellows participate in research projects with LHNCBC mentors and other research staff on a variety of projects in: natural language processing (NLP) and other text analytics; image analytics applied to clinical and research images; machine learning and deep learning models; clinical data standards development; medical ontology research, and more. This webpage shows current projects.

Example projects are:

• Image analysis and deep learning applied to chest x-rays to detect lung diseases and cardiomegaly.
• Image analysis and deep learning applied to cell images in microscope views of blood slides to detect malaria and other parasitic diseases, and to classify different species of parasite.
• Image analysis and deep learning applied to colposcopic images to detect cervical cancer.
• Analysis of MEDICARE claims data to predict patient treatments and outcomes.
• Analysis of intensive care unit (ICU) patient records to discover relationships between treatments and survival outcomes.
• Automated indexing of medical literature.
• Consumer and clinical question answering systems.

State-of-the-art infrastructure is available for this computational work – including NVidea’s DGX-1 multi-GPU system, a GPU-enabled server cluster, GPU-enabled desktop machines, and NIH’s GPU-enabled Biowulf cluster.

Fellows may attend at least one meeting or conference a year outside the DC Metropolitan area relevant to their area of research. Additional attendance to conferences to present original papers may be possible, depending on availability of funding.

The NIH and NLM have many lecture series; Fellows are encouraged to attend these learning opportunities within the NIH campus.

Requirements and Selection

Applicants should have received an MD or PhD from an accredited academic institution in an appropriate discipline, or expect to complete all requirements for that degree by the time they begin this program.

Preference is given to applicants with experience and expertise in image analytics, NLP, deep learning, and exceptional skills in at least one programming language, such as Python, Java, C++ or MATLAB.

Applicants will be selected by an Admissions Committee based on their academic accomplishments, scientific background and experience, research accomplishments,and compatibility with current LHNCBC research projects.

Applications and Deadlines

The deadlines for submitting applications are January 15 and June 15. Applicants will be notified approximately four weeks after the submission deadline.

Application materials, which can be submitted electronically to the e-mail address given below, should include:

• A letter of interest that states that this is an application for the Biomedical Informatics Postdoctoral Research Fellowships program, outlines the applicant's research interests, and includes desired starting and ending dates, e-mail address, postal address, and day and evening phone numbers
• Curriculum vitae including a list of publications, awards, and honors
• Transcript for the most recently completed degree
• Three letters of recommendation