Research Assistant

**Date**:13 Sep 2024

**Location**: YONG LOO LIN SCH OF MEDICINE, Kent Ridge Campus, SG

**Company**:National University of Singapore

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

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

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
- 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

**Responsibilities**:

- 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.

**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.

**Essential Criteria**:

- A bachelor’s degree with evidence of distinction in experimental psychology from an internationally reputable university
- 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**:

- 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