Two Professorships (W3) for Digital Health: Non-communicable Disease & Health Information Technology

Founded in 1991, the University of Potsdam has firmly established itself in the scientific landscape and has become an outstanding economic factor and development engine for the region. It has a high level of third-party funding, has won several awards for teaching, and has a service-oriented administration and has received awards for being family-friendly. Around 22,000 students and 3,000 employees work at three locations – Am Neuen Palais, Griebnitzsee, and Golm – at one of the most beautifully situated academic institutions in Germany.

The Digital Engineering Faculty at the University of Potsdam invites applications for two joint professorships with the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH (HPI), financed by the Hasso Plattner Foundation, to be filled as soon as possible:

Two Professorships (W3) for Digital Health:

Digital Health – Non-communicable Diseases

Digital Health – Health Information Technology

As we are expanding the HPI Digital Health Cluster, our ambition is to merge healthcare with public health for a holistic approach to digital health. Through interdisciplinary research and collaboration, we aim to harness technology advancements, such as artificial intelligence, to enhance disease prevention, health promotion, and community well-being.

We seek Medical Data Scientists at the intersection of computer science and digital health sciences, particularly in Health Information Technology and Digital Health with special emphasis on Non-Communicable Diseases like mental disorders.

You will enhance our collaboration with HPI-Mount Sinai and other clinical partners, leveraging vast electronic health data and other digital health resources to drive preventive public health research.

What makes you an ideal candidate?

•    A distinguished track record in data science research, with a focus on digital health

•    Extensive experience in working with healthcare data sources, such as electronic health records and complementary data sources

•    Success in securing research funding and leading interdisciplinary projects

•    Outstanding publication record in reputable journals and top ranked conference proceedings

•    Collaboration skills to engage with medical professionals and industry partners for impactful research outcomes

•    Teaching and mentoring experience

We are looking for a candidate with a passion for advancing digital public health and healthcare technologies and a strong background in one or more of the following disciplines: medicine, bioinformatics, biostatistics, computational epidemiology, medical informatics, machine learning in medicine. We offer a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact on the digital health landscape, driving innovation and research in this dynamic field.

The attractive and stimulating positions in a vibrant, collaborative, and engaging HPI community with reliable funding offers abundant opportunities to cultivate your research, to exchange ideas with our carefully selected group of students, to contribute to our vision and growth, and to enjoy a great place to live – especially for families. HPI’s campus is spacious, green, modern, equipped with the latest technology – and right next door to Berlin. We also help you to accelerate your spin-off ideas with design thinking and our support program for entrepreneurs. Teaching can be done in German or English, German language skills are beneficial, but not mandatory.

The joint appointments will be implemented according to the “Jülich Modell” with a teaching obligation at the University of Potsdam in accordance with the Brandenburg Higher Education Act (BbgHG).

The hiring process is subject to the requirements set forth in Section 41 subsection 1 no. 1 – 3, 4a and 4c BbgHG. The appointment procedure is conducted in accordance with Section 40 BbgHG.

UP and HPI value their diversity and thus pursue the goals of equal opportunities and diversity in accordance with the general principle of equal treatment. One of the HPI’s and UP’s strategic goals is to significantly increase the proportion of women in research and teaching. Therefore, UP and HPI expressly invites applications from qualified female scientists. People with a severe disability will be given preference if they are equally qualified. Periods of time taken for parental leave or caregiving are taken into account when assessing applicants’ academic careers. The implementation of equality and diversity standards in the respective field of work is expected.

We also offer dual career support and coaching for newly-appointed professors.

If you wish to be part of our vision to revolutionize the health system through data-driven solutions, please submit your application, with the relevant documentation and three of your own favorite publications with a short justification (100 words) and your own audiovisual material (e.g., a video-recorded conference talk or a three-minute tutorial on a topic of your choice), as well as documents regarding your teaching evaluation (in case of availability) at https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/digital-engineering/aktuelles/ausschreibungen by May 10th, 2024.

Background

In 1998, SAP co-founder Prof. Hasso Plattner established the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) as Germany’s excellence center for Digital Engineering. In 2017, HPI and the University of Potsdam founded the Digital Engineering Faculty – the only privately financed faculty at a public university in Germany. We strive to offer an innovative and personalized learning experience to our 800 bachelor and master students as well as a collaborative and inclusive working environment for our faculty and staff.

The HPI Digital Health Cluster carries out research using patient-centered and data-driven methods in an interdisciplinary manner together with subject matters from various disciplines, amongst others, medicine, biology, pathology, social sciences, care, as well as patient representatives or care networks. The goal of the research at the Digital Health Cluster is to explore potentials for specific use cases from public health and healthcare by applying the latest technological advances, e.g. artificial intelligence, and work towards disease prevention, health promotion and protection while improving circumstances (e.g. access to digital health) and health behavior within and across communities.

In 2017, the international academic and research collaboration between HPI and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York was initiated, in an effort to bring digital engineering and healthcare together, resulting in the foundation of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai (HPI-MS), which is also funded by the Hasso-Plattner-Foundation. As the largest integrated health system in New York City, Mount Sinai Health System (MSHS) is a leader in advanced healthcare and health research, and provides an opportunity to researchers working with health data in the field of individual healthcare, data analytics, AI in health, and digital global public health.