Psychology Postdoctoral Scholar - Department of Surgery

Description of the project:
Dr. Thomson, Director of Research at the Injury and Violence Prevention Program (IVPP) at VCU, is accepting applications for a 3-year grant funded, research-focused post-doctoral fellowships. The position is located at VCU’s School of Medicine in Richmond Virginia. The project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a hospital-based injury and violence prevention programs (e.g., youth violence, gun violence, teen dating violence, intimate partner violence, substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, suicide, motor vehicle injury, TBI, and falls).

The successful candidate will be involved in ongoing research activities on the topics of injury and violence prevention, childhood psychopathology, and personality disorders. This includes evaluation research of interventions for intimate partner violence, firearm-related violence, human trafficking, youth violence, and substance use. In addition to intervention evaluation and development, Dr. Thomson’s lab is involved in understanding the biopsychosocial mechanisms of violence, conduct disorder, callous-unemotional traits, and personality disorders (with particular emphasis on psychopathy and borderline personality disorder). The candidates should have a strong interest in pursuing independent research within these areas or closely related (e.g., suicide prevention). For more information about IVPP and our research, visit https://www.vcuhealth.org/services/injury-and-violence-prevention

Duties: The candidate will be responsible for conducting day to day research activities. This will include recruitment of patients as participants, conducting baseline and follow-up assessments in the hospital and the community, implement and develop innovative participant retention strategies, treatment fidelity data collection, data entry and cleaning, coding data, database development, analyzing data, literature reviews, manuscript preparation and submission to peer-reviewed academic journals, IRB protocol compliance and maintenance, disseminating research at local and national conferences, and developing grant proposals. These positions require working in rotation on the weekends and some evenings. The candidate should be comfortable working independently in the hospital setting, specifically in the emergency department and surgical trauma intensive care unit (STICU) with victims of violence. The candidate will work with research staff, programmatic staff, and healthcare staff and patients.

Required qualifications/experience
Requires a Ph.D. in psychology, social work, or related field.
Experience conducting experiments and/or clinical trials
Proficient quantitative data analysis skills including the ability to use statistical packages (SPSS) and proficiency in navigating and maintaining databases are required (e.g., RedCap).
Evidence of excellent interpersonal skills.
Evidence of excellent organizational skills.
Demonstrated experience working in and fostering a diverse faculty, staff, and student environment or commitment to do so as a team member at VCU

Preferred qualifications/experience
Proficient in R and Mplus; and experience with machine learning.
Publication history in the field of injury and violence prevention.
Demonstrated success of independent research.
Experience conducting or sound knowledge of trauma-informed interventions.
Experience conducting clinical interviews
Those with experience/interest in forensic/clinical psychology and intervention research are strongly encouraged to apply.