Special Project Associate-II-Lab Medicine & Pathology

A Special Project Associate II position is available in the Neurodegeneration and Sleep Pathology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic under the leadership of Dr. Lea T. Grinberg. The lab focuses on the study of early-stage Alzheimers disease and related neurodegenerative disorders leveraging large-scale neuropathology data digital pathology and multi-omics approaches. Dr. Grinberg is also the Director of the Brain Bank Modernization initiative and is assisted by Dr. Felipe Pereira who co-leads it.

The individual will work within a highly collaborative multidisciplinary team that includes neuropathologists clinicians statisticians data scientists and informaticians. And closely connected with Brain Bank Modernization initiative activities. Visit this site for more information about Dr. Grinberg: Lea T. Grinberg M.D. Ph.D. - Mayo Clinic Faculty Profiles - Mayo Clinic Research

This position will contribute to four primary areas:

1. Specimen & Brain Bank Operations

• Support tissue processing workflows by assisting with handling cataloging documentation and storage of fresh and fixed tissue specimens following established procedures and safety requirements.
• Assist with maintaining accurate physical inventories (e.g. blocks slides hemi-brains) and ensuring traceability between physical specimens and associated records.
• Participate in standardized specimen tracking annotation and basic quality-control checks to support consistent brain bank operations.

2. REDCap/SQL Data Systems Support

• Assist with development maintenance and day-to-day support of REDCap databases and structured data workflows used for large-scale brain bank operations.
• Perform routine data entry validation cleaning and reconciliation to maintain accurate linkage between specimens and associated clinical/neuropathology metadata.
• Use SQL queries (with guidance) to support operational reporting audits and quality checks across specimen inventories and metadata tables.

3. Automation and Digital Workflow Support

• Assist (with training) in creating and maintaining simple scripts/tools (e.g. Python and/or R) that support operational tasks such as data validation file organization and routine reporting.
• Support integration of clinical neuropathological imaging and omics-associated metadata as it relates to tracked biospecimens under supervision.

4. Digital Pathology Support

• Assist with review and verification of digitized slide images to ensure correct linkage among specimens stains and digital outputs in collaboration with neuropathology and wet-lab staff.
• Apply foundational understanding of histology/staining workflows to support accurate mapping between physical samples and digital records.

Basic Qualifications (Must Have)

• Bachelors degree (BS/BA) in a relevant field (e.g. biomedical sciences laboratory sciences biomedical informatics computer science or related).
• Strong foundation in database systems.
• Familiarity with REDCap or similar data capture systems and experience using SQL
• Familiarity with Python and/or R for basic scripting tasks (training and supervision provided).
• Familiarity with natural language processing techniques and/or large language models.
• Interest in supporting wet-lab/biorepository workflows and working as part of a multidisciplinary team.
• Ability to follow written procedures maintain accurate documentation and work effectively under supervision.
• Ability to work effectively in a multidisciplinary collaborative research environment.

Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have)

• Masters degree (MSc) in a relevant field.
• Experience with version control systems (e.g. Git) and basic software development best practices.
• Experience with or interest in clinical biomedical or healthcare-related research applications.
• Familiarity with tissue types (e.g. fixed tissue frozen tissue blocks slides) staining workflows and histopathological terminology.
• Familiarity with digital pathology workflows or large imaging datasets.
• Understanding of biospecimen inventory systems or sampletracking environments.
• Experience working with structured and/or unstructured data including text or imaging data.