Assistant Professor of Research

Kansas Health Science Center•Des Moines, IA

About The Position

Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine is seeking a highly collaborative, productive, and mission-driven Assistant Professor of Research to help expand a strong culture of scholarship across the institution. This is a hands-on, output-driven position for someone who thrives on mentoring others, building research pipelines, and helping students and faculty turn good ideas into meaningful scholarly work. The person in this role will partner closely with medical students, clinical faculty, and community collaborators to develop feasible, rigorous, and publishable projects that move efficiently from concept to completion. This is not a purely theoretical research role. It is a high-engagement faculty position centered on daily mentorship, project momentum, and tangible academic outcomes. The ideal candidate will be someone who can manage multiple concurrent projects, provide strong methodological guidance, and consistently help others produce abstracts, posters, manuscripts, and grant-ready ideas. Why This Role Matters This position is designed to strengthen the institution’s research infrastructure by expanding mentorship capacity, increasing scholarly productivity, and supporting student and faculty success. The individual in this role will play a central part in building and sustaining an active pipeline of scholarships across the medical school. Projects may include case reports, systematic and scoping reviews, retrospective chart reviews, pilot studies, survey-based studies, quality improvement initiatives, and community-based or population health research. The ideal candidate is a faculty member who is: deeply collaborative and student-centered highly organized and able to manage multiple active projects comfortable working in an applied, fast-moving academic environment skilled at translating ideas into feasible studies committed to helping students and faculty publish their work motivated by impact, mentorship, and institutional growth This role is especially well suited for someone who enjoys the day-to-day work of mentoring others and helping them produce meaningful scholarships, rather than focusing solely on an independent research agenda.

Requirements

PhD in Public Health, Epidemiology, Population Health, Health Services Research, Biostatistics, Statistics, Clinical Research, Community or Global Health, Implementation Science, Biomedical or Health Informatics, Medical Sociology, Behavioral Health, Health Policy, Health Professions Education, Clinical and Translational Science, or another closely related discipline relevant to applied health research and scholarship
Demonstrated scholarly productivity, including peer-reviewed publications and presentations
Experience mentoring students, trainees, or junior faculty in research or scholarly activity
Demonstrated ability to independently manage multiple small-scale research projects annually
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Ability to work collaboratively across disciplines

Nice To Haves

Experience working with medical students or in academic medicine
Experience mentoring clinical faculty in research or scholarly activity
Experience with IRB submissions, study design, data analysis, manuscript development, and journal submission
Experience in rural health, underserved populations, community-based research, or health outcomes research
Experience contributing to grant development and external funding efforts
Prior teaching experience relevant to the medical school curriculum

Responsibilities

Mentor students and faculty through the full research process
Provide hands-on support across all phases of scholarship, including: refining research questions selecting study designs preparing IRB applications coordinating data collection supporting analysis and interpretation developing abstracts and posters drafting and revising manuscripts guiding journal submission and dissemination
Keep projects moving
Manage multiple small-scale research and scholarly projects at once, helping ensure that promising ideas do not stall and that teams continue making measurable progress toward presentation and publication.
Build scholarly output
Contribute to an institutional culture that values productivity, rigor, and follow-through by helping generate: peer-reviewed publications conference presentations posters faculty and student scholarly products grant-ready project concepts
Support grant development
Assist with internal and external grant development and help students and faculty shape scholarly ideas into fundable projects when appropriate.
Contribute to teaching
Carry a modest teaching role based on expertise and interest. Teaching may include lectures, workshops, small-group sessions, or other educational activities related to research and scholarship within the medical school curriculum.