FDA Fellowship on Data Fusion in Medical Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
*Applications will be reviewed on a rolling-basis.
A research opportunity is currently available with the Office of the Commissioner (OC) Office of Women's Health (OWH), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The project will be located at the Division of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Software Reliability (DIDSR) within the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) located in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Research Participation Programs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are educational training programs designed to provide students and recent graduates, opportunities to participate in project-specific research and developmental at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). The mission of CDRH is to protect and promote public health. CDRH assures that patients and providers have timely and continued access to safe, effective, and high-quality medical devices and safe radiation-emitting products. CDRH provides consumers, patients, caregivers, and providers with understandable and accessible science-based information about products. CDRH facilitates medical device innovation by advancing regulatory science, providing industry with predictable, consistent, transparent, and efficient regulatory pathways, and assuring consumer confidence in devices marketed in the U.S.
Division of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Software Reliability (DIDSR) develops methods for evaluating emerging medical imaging systems. Our research programs directly impact FDA’s regulatory assessments in areas including * AI/ML * WSI and digital pathology * Extended-reality (AR/VR) devices * Clinical trial design * In silico trials * Imaging physics. More information: https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/cdrh-offices/office-science-and-engineering-laboratories.
The selected candidate will join a multi-disciplinary multi-center team of AI experts, engineers, physicists, geneticists, oncologists and other clinicians and train in a highly collaborative environment by conducting cutting edge research on AI/ML algorithms. Under the guidance of a mentor, training activities could include:
- Joint analysis of datasets that include serial radiological images and genomics information for the prediction of response to therapy for personalized medicine approaches.
- Development AI/ML pipelines to enable timely decisions about whether to continue a current treatment or seek an alternative, including
- Data harmonization
- Feature extraction from imaging, genomics and clinical data
- Feature selection and feature space reduction
- Modality fusion
- Performance evaluation
- Design of clean reproducible code that runs on our multi-GPU clusters
- Contribution to submissions to major conferences / journals and progress reports
Anticipated Appointment Start Date: July 5, 2023; start date is flexible
This program, administered by ORAU through its contract with the U.S. Department of Energy to manage the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, was established through an interagency agreement between DOE and FDA. The initial appointment is for one year but may be renewed upon recommendation of FDA contingent on the availability of funds. The participant will receive a monthly stipend commensurate with educational level and experience. Proof of health insurance is required for participation in this program. The appointment is full-time on-site for laboratory research at FDA in the Silver Spring, Maryland, area. Participants do not become employees of FDA, DOE or the program administrator, and there are no employment-related benefits.
Completion of a successful background investigation by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is required for an applicant to be on-boarded at FDA. OPM can complete a background investigation only for individuals, including non-US Citizens, who have resided in the US for a total of three of the past five years.
FDA Ethics Requirements
If an ORISE Fellow, to include their spouse and minor children, reports what is identified as a Significantly Regulated Organization (SRO) or prohibited investment fund financial interest in any amount, or a relationship with an SRO, except for spousal employment with an SRO, and the individual will not voluntarily divest the financial interest or terminate the relationship, then the individual is not placed at FDA. For additional requirements, see FDA Ethics for Nonemployee Scientists.
FDA requires ORISE participants to read and sign their FDA Education and Training Agreement within 30 days of his/her start date, setting forth the conditions and expectations for his/her educational appointment at the agency. This agreement covers such topics as the following:
- Non-employee nature of the ORISE appointment
- Prohibition on ORISE Fellows performing inherently governmental functions
- Obligation of ORISE Fellows to convey all necessary rights to the FDA regarding intellectual property conceived or first reduced to practice during their fellowship
- The fact that research materials and laboratory notebooks are the property of the FDA
- ORISE fellow’s obligation to protect and not to further disclose or use non-public information.
The qualified candidate should have received a doctoral degree in one of the relevant fields (e.g. Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics), or be currently pursuing the degree with completion by August 31, 2023. Degree must have been received within the past five years.
Preferred skills include:
- Previous experience, coursework, and solid foundation in one or more areas of machine learning, deep learning including CNNs, RNNs, LSTMs, or computer vision.
- Excellent coding skills in Python and prior experience with machine learning code libraries
- Good oral and writing communication skills
- Previous experience with applying AI/ML, image and/or genomics analysis methods to medical data.
- Proven track record of research and peer-reviewed publications in engineering, computer science, or another relevant field of study
Must meet security requirements including a minimum of 3 out of the past 5 years with residency status in the US.
Must have lived in the United States for at least 36 out of the past 60 months (36 months do not have to be consecutive)