BIDS Is Hiring a Chief Research Officer

Working closely with BIDS leadership, the chief research officer (CRO) at BIDS will use their deep expertise and knowledge to empower the Berkeley faculty and research community to develop missing parts of the data science environment (tools, methods, systems, workflows, etc.), and secure the resources to fund them. This is a two-year position with the opportunity for extension.

The CRO will do this by:

• Helping the Berkeley community identify missing areas in successfully implementing data science workflows, predominantly across disciplines.
• Being creative themselves, identifying and coalescing missing areas.
• Using their existing knowledge and networks and working with campus resources to identify likely funding sources for these identified research opportunities in government agencies, foundations, and the private sector.
• Preparing materials and making presentations to help convince funding sources that they should invest in these needed areas.
• Writing proposals and collaborating on joint proposals to fund the activities that advance the identified missing areas.
• Helping organize the teams working on the specific activities identified, often involving time-intensive interactions with overcommitted faculty.

In order to accomplish these goals, the CRO will also need to:

• Work to change the predominant incentive models that deemphasize the importance of the software and tool development necessary for effective research.
• Help the university community learn new ways to incorporate, validate, and build on data science techniques.
• Position data science research in the bigger picture of academic research, building the necessary foundation to create a research identity for data science, and help define the enduring research roles of data science.