Visiting Research Assistant Professor

University of Illinois Chicago•Chicago, IL

3d•Onsite

About The Position

We seek a Visiting Research Assistant Professor to serve as a senior technical lead on this project which partners with the State of Illinois. The role combines project management, applied data science, reproducible data engineering, and report writing. The successful candidate will own the pipeline that turns claims submissions into analysis-ready data, lead substantive analyses of that data, and translate results into statutory reports for the State and into peer-reviewed work. This is a full-time, benefits-eligible academic appointment. It is well-suited to a recent doctoral graduate or early-career researcher who wants to work on a policy problem with immediate real-world consequences while building a publication record from a novel data asset.

Requirements

PhD in health economics, health services research, health policy, pharmacoeconomics, biostatistics, epidemiology, informatics, data science, or a closely related field. Candidates who have completed all doctoral requirements by the appointment start date will be considered.
Demonstrated experience working with large administrative claims or other large-scale administrative datasets.
Proficiency in at least one statistical programming language used for analysis at scale (R, Python, SAS, or Stata).
Experience with version control (Git) and reproducible analytic workflows.
Demonstrated scientific and technical writing ability.
Ability to manage concurrent workstreams against firm external deadlines.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with pharmacy claims data structures, including NDC coding, prescription drug event records, and pharmacy identifiers such as NCPDP.
Knowledge of pharmaceutical supply chain economics, PBM business models, rebate and spread pricing arrangements, or drug pricing benchmarks.
Experience building production or near-production data pipelines, including workflow orchestration, containerization, and automated testing.
Prior work with government agencies, regulators, or in a policy-facing research setting.
Experience supervising junior analytic staff
A publication record in health policy, health economics, or health services research.

Responsibilities

Manage project workstreams against fixed statutory deadlines, including the dispensing cost report due December 31, 2026.
Coordinate day-to-day work with Illinois Department of Insurance staff, project counsel, and college leadership, translating between technical and non-technical audiences.
Track PBM submission cycles: intake, completeness review, follow-up on deficient filings, and resubmission handling.
Supervise and mentor graduate research assistants and junior analytic staff.
Maintain project documentation, decision logs, and internal status reporting.
Lead analyses of transaction-level pharmacy claims, including spread pricing, rebate flows and pass-through, dispensing cost, and utilization patterns.
Develop comparative measures that support valid cross-PBM comparison, including benchmark construction against licensed drug compendium reference data.
Design and execute descriptive and inferential analyses appropriate to regulatory questions, with explicit attention to the limits of what the collected data can support.
Conduct sensitivity and robustness checks sufficient to defend findings against methodological challenge.
Identify and document data quality problems in PBM submissions and their analytic consequences.
Draft statutory and technical reports delivered to the Illinois Department of Insurance.
Write methods documentation that makes analytic choices explicit and defensible to regulators, regulated entities, and the public.
Prepare briefing materials, summary memoranda, and presentation materials for state agency and legislative audiences.
Contribute to peer-reviewed manuscripts and conference presentations arising from the project