Job Specifications
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – AI Cancer Care
Vancouver, BC (Though most work will be done remotely)
University of British Columbia | Faculty of Medicine
⏳ Full-time (1.0 FTE) | 12 months, with possibility of renewal
Salary: $100,000 CAD per year
About the Role
The Nunez Laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine (UBC), in partnership with BC Cancer, is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join a highly collaborative research program focused on developing and evaluating a patient-centered AI Cancer Care Navigation Assistant.
This role sits at the intersection of applied NLP, AI, and cancer care, and offers close collaboration with clinicians, data scientists, software engineers, and patient partners. The successful candidate will also be integrated and co-supervised with collaborators in the UBC Department of Computer Science and the Data Science Institute.
Research Environment
Dr. John-Jose Nunez’s lab focuses on the application of artificial intelligence to mental health and cancer care, with an emphasis on real-world clinical deployment, interpretability, and patient impact. The Fellow will collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams at BC Cancer, including Supportive Care, Radiation Oncology, and Rehabilitation.
Key Responsibilities
Reporting to Dr. John-Jose Nunez, the Postdoctoral Fellow will:
Lead development of a patient-facing AI Cancer Care Navigation Assistant, including predictive and generative NLP components
Design and refine recommendation and retrieval systems connecting patients and caregivers to appropriate supportive resources
Lead evaluation efforts using automated metrics, clinician review, and patient-partner pilot testing, and translate findings into iterative system improvements
Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams across UBC and BC Cancer, including clinical, technical, and patient-partner stakeholders
Supervise research assistants and trainees involved in data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation
Contribute to related AI and data science projects in cancer care and mental health
Co-develop knowledge translation outputs (e.g., social media, infographics, web-based events)
Lead and contribute to peer-reviewed publications
Support the development of future grant applications
Required Qualifications
PhD completed within the last 5 years in computer science, data science, biomedical engineering, computational linguistics, medical informatics, or a related field
Demonstrated expertise in clinical and biomedical NLP, including both predictive modeling and foundation-model-based generative methods
Hands-on experience building end-to-end ML systems, including data preparation, training, evaluation, and reproducible pipelines
Experience with retrieval and recommendation methods relevant to patient-facing assistants (e.g., bi-encoders, cross-encoders, RAG)
Strong programming skills in Python and modern deep learning frameworks
Familiarity with MLOps, data governance for sensitive health data, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS)
Excellent communication, teamwork, and project management skills, with the ability to collaborate across clinical and technical domains
Preferred Qualifications
Experience working with large clinical text corpora and linked structured data
Experience with oncology datasets or care navigation pathways
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
Track record of peer-reviewed publications and effective interdisciplinary collaboration
Apply here: https://ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/ubcfacultyjobs/job/UBC-Hospital-Site---Vancouver-BC-Canada/Postdoctoral-Research-Fellow---AI-Cancer-Care_JR23131-1