Job Description

We are looking to appoint a Research Assistant at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics (CBm E), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS).

The Centre for Biomedical Ethics was established in September 2006 in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine through a generous gift by the Chen Su Lan Trust. CBm E, directed by Prof Julian Savulescu, is a thriving centre for learning, teaching and research relating to ethical and legal aspects of healthcare and biomedical sciences. We are responsible for the development and delivery of the Health Ethics, Law and Professionalism programme through all five years of the undergraduate medical curriculum in addition to the postgraduate and continuing professional education courses in bioethics. You can find out more about CBm E here: https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/cbme/. The goal of the new Director is to make CBm E a world leading Centre of medical ethics with a vibrant culture and strong international, particularly Asian, presence.

We are looking to appoint an enthusiastic Research Assistant to join our team. The successful candidate will carry out research assistance for Associate Professor Brian Earp, in addition to some general project management and administrative support for his work at CBm E, notably for the Centre’s moral psychology and experimental bioethics lab.

A/Prof Earp’s work brings philosophers together with psychologists to conduct experimental studies in moral psychology and bioethics, contributing to substantive normative and philosophical debates in ethics. Specifically, the lab investigates the contributing factors and psychological processes that shape:

• Moral intuitions, judgements and reasoning
• Moral agency, moral action and moral motivation
• The structure and application of (bio)ethical concepts

Job Description

Specific research topics and themes include:

• Human-AI relationships
• Artificial intelligence, privacy, and consciousness
• Credit and blame for AI-generated content
• Personalised large language models and the ethics of “digital doppelgangers”
• Impartial beneficence and effective altruism
• The moral psychology of relationships and special obligations
• Personal identity, dementia, and consent

Job Description

• Sex, gender, identity and bodily integrity
• Medicalization; treatment vs. enhancement
• Moral enhancement; relationship enhancement
• Love and transformative experience
• Ethics of psychedelic-assisted therapies
• Children’s rights

Job Responsibilities

The primary responsibilities of the candidate are:

• Provide research assistance and general project management support as required by A/Prof Brian Earp, at his direction.
• Undertake structured literature searches and reviews (including scoping reviews and preparation of necessary protocols); prepare high-quality manuscript drafts to be submitted for publication
• Contribute to collaborative research publications, book chapters and reviews, as requested.
• Assist with research study designs, including drafting study materials and programming it into Qualtrics (or other relevant survey platforms); draft pre-registrations as directed; clean and analyse data using ‘R’ or similar programming language according to pre-registrations; stay abreast of, and conform to, best practices in data analysis and open science.

Job Responsibilities

• Conduct formal qualitative analyses of participant written responses, interview transcripts, and so on.
• Help to develop and implement standardised lab processes and procedures (e.g., pre-submission checklists; onboarding and training materials for new lab members)
• Contribute to wider project planning and other occasional duties as requested by A/Prof Earp, such as event organisation and involvement in the developing of new research grant proposals.
• General administrative support may include managing the lab website and other online systems, and general running of the lab such as scheduling and organising lab meetings and regular seminars, with an ability to efficiently coordinate across multiple time zones.

Criteria

The above list of duties is indicative and not intended to be exhaustive.

The position is a 2-year full-time appointment, with a possible annual renewal up to 5 years. An option to renew the appointment annually will depend on performance and continued funding. Start date is flexible but the successful candidate should ideally commence no later than 01 November 2024. Applicants will be evaluated based on the following selection criteria:

Essential Criteria

• A bachelor’s degree with evidence of distinction in experimental psychology from an internationally reputable university
• Hands-on research experience in cognitive and moral psychology, ideally with specific applications to practical or theoretical debates in (bio)ethics, philosophy, or law (eg., experimental jurisprudence)
• Experience in designing and drafting rigorous experiments in Qualtrics or other similar platforms; strong data analysis skills (e.g., in R, Python); evidence of commitment to open science practices
• Exemplary written English and oral communication skills
• Excellent organisation and management skills
• Demonstrated aptitude for collaborative team work
• Experience working in an international research team, coordinating across multiple time-zones and levels of seniority

Desirable Criteria

• Fluency in Malay or Mandarin as the researchers are involved in interpreting the survey results, which may be in languages other than English.
• Experience with Natural Language Processing (e.g., sentiment analysis), Large Language Model (LLM) analysis
• Experience with protocol preparation for qualitative analysis
• Experience of contributing to research publications
• Experience screening papers and extracting data for systematic reviews using software (e.g., Covidence)

Application

NUS offers highly competitive remuneration packages. The successful applicant will be offered an annual salary plus benefits commensurate with his or her experience and expertise and will have access to travel support to disseminate research outcomes at international academic conferences. Please submit your application containing the following:

• A cover letter with statements that address each of the selection criteria above
• Curriculum vitae with contact details of three referees
• A writing sample
• Current and expected salary

More Information

Location: Kent Ridge Campus
Organization: Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Department : Dean-Med-Centre for Biomedical Ethics
Employee Referral Eligible: No
Job requisition ID : 26348