Data Steward - Research Organization Directorate

at  Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

WHO WE ARE

At IIT we work enthusiastically to develop human-centered Science and Technology to tackle some of the most pressing societal challenges of our times and transfer these technologies to the production system and society. Our Genova headquarter is strictly inter-connected with our 11 centers around Italy and two outer-stations based in the US with a strongly interdisciplinary orientation.
In line with its Strategic Plan 2024-2029, IIT has been launching a new Research Data Management (RDM) program, to enable data-driven science based on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI). To guarantee that research data are professionally and responsibly managed at all stages of the research cycle, data stewardship competences will be developed and integrated in the workforce, to collaborate with scientists, IT engineers, and legal data experts to ensure the quality, integrity, and reusability of data and metadata in compliance with the applicable law.

YOUR TEAM

We are looking for a Data Steward to work in close collaboration with researchers in one of the domains investigated by IIT (LifeTech, Robotics, Nanomaterials, Computational Sciences). The Data Steward will be integrated in a newly established RDM & Data Stewardship team under the Research Organization Directorate. As a professional figure that bridges data management and research, you will enter a truly interdisciplinary team of people, where RDM specialists, IT engineers, legal experts, and researchers collaborate to improve the way research data are managed and shared for better reproducibility and efficiency.

ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS

We are looking for enthusiastic candidates who:

• Have a PhD degree in a domain relevant for IIT scientific interests, in particular computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, computational biology, and neuroscience,
• Understand scientific research processes,
• Understand data analysis / ML workflows and methods,
• Have basic programming skills,
• Have interest in learning RDM, FAIR data, and Open Science,
• Have excellent organizational skills,
• Enjoy working collaboratively, also with a variety of people from different fields,
• Have strong communication skills, and good to excellent command of English.

ADDITIONAL SKILLS AND REQUIREMENTS

• Have interest in learning more about data governance, data stewardship, and data infrastructures,
• Have demonstrated experience in coding and software development,
• Enjoy giving trainings and/or have training experience,
• Have experience of participation to challenging projects,
• Like to work independently, and have a pro-active attitude,
• Have excellent people skills, cultural and organizational sensitivity that are key to motivate and inspire others.

• collaborate to designing and implementing data infrastructures ensuring quality, integrity, and preservation of (meta)data,
• contribute to the development of institutional procedures and guidelines following international standards and practices,
• inform, train, and advise researchers on RDM topics and questions,
• support the development of Data Management Plan templates and guidelines, in compliance with institutional and funders’ policies, and the applicable law,
• support preservation and sharing (where possible and desired) of research datasets according to the FAIR principles,
• facilitate community building to achieve dissemination and adoption of recommended practices for FAIR data management (including networking and communication activities)