Academic

Job Category

Faculty Non Bargaining

Job Title

Postdoctoral Research Fellow - AI Cancer Care

Department

Nunez Laboratory | Department of Psychiatry | Faculty of Medicine (John-Jose Nunez)

Posting End Date

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the Posting End Date.

Job End Date

January 30, 2027

The expected salary for this position is $100,000 per annum. The Faculty of Medicine is committed to offering equitable and competitive salaries, commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate.

The Nunez Lab, in the Department of Psychiatry, in partnership with BC Cancer is seeking a full-time (1.0 FTE) Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join a collaborative program focused on developing and evaluating a patient-centered AI Cancer Care Navigation Assistant. The appointment is for 12 months, with the possibility of renewal subject to funding and performance. The successful candidate will work within Dr. John Jose Nunez’s research program and collaborate closely with BC Cancer.

The UBC Department of Psychiatry is committed to advancing research and innovation in mental health and related areas, including the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Dr. Nunez’s lab focuses on the use of AI in mental health and cancer care, and the Postdoctoral Fellow will join a multidisciplinary team composed of data scientists, software engineers, and medical trainees.

This position involves collaboration with multidisciplinary groups at BC Cancer, including Supportive Care, Radiation Oncology, and Rehabilitation, as well as with UBC partners such as the Department of Computer Science and the Data Science Institute.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Reporting to Dr. John Jose Nunez, the incumbent will be responsible for:

• Leading the development of the AI Navigation Assistant, including predictive and generative NLP components.
• Designing and refining recommendation features that connect patients and caregivers to appropriate supportive resources.
• Leading the evaluation program by combining automated metrics with pilot testing alongside clinicians and patient partners, and translating findings into iterative improvements.
• Collaborating within multidisciplinary teams across UBC and BC Cancer, including clinical, technical, and patient partner stakeholders.
• Supervising research assistants and trainees involved in data collection, analysis, writing, and related projects.
• Contributing to additional projects led by the Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigators that apply artificial intelligence and data science to cancer care and mental health.
• Co-creating knowledge translation outputs for public audiences, such as social media content, infographics, and web-based events.
• Developing and writing manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications.
• Contributing to the development of future grant applications.
• Performing other related duties as required.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required Qualifications

Successful candidates will have

• PhD completed within the last 5 years in computer science, data science, biomedical engineering, computational linguistics, medical informatics, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated expertise in clinical and biomedical NLP, including both predictive modeling and generative applications using foundation models
• Hands on experience building end to end ML systems, including data preparation, model training, evaluation, and reproducible pipelines.
• Proficiency with modern recommendation and retrieval methods relevant to patient facing assistants, including bi encoder and cross encoder architectures and retrieval augmented generation.
• Strong programming skills in Python and deep learning frameworks, familiarity with MLOps practices, data governance for sensitive health data, and cloud environments such as AWS.
• Excellent communication, teamwork, and project management skills, with the ability to collaborate closely with clinicians, patient partners, and technical teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience analyzing large clinical document corpora and linked structured data; experience with oncology datasets or navigation pathways is an asset.

• Experience evaluating patient-facing AI systems in healthcare, including ethics, safety, explainability, and user-centered methods.

• Experience with information retrieval or recommendation systems for health information, and with secure deployment in health authority or cloud environments.

• A record of peer-reviewed publications and effective collaboration across clinical and technical teams.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

An application package should include:

• A cover letter (1-2 pages) outlining the applicant’s specific examples of experience and research interests.
• A detailed curriculum vitae, including a list of recent peer-reviewed publications.
• Contact information for two referees.

Applications should be submitted online through Workday.

Review of applications will begin on January 19, 2026 and continue until the position is filled. The anticipated start date for this position is January 31, 2026 or upon a date to be mutually agreed.