If you know students with science backgrounds and computer skills looking for additional funding in the Research Triangle Park area, then there are several twelve month contracts available for work at the National Center for Computational Toxicology. The contracts can potentially be extended up to a total of two and a half years and pay a bit over $21 an hour.
- ExpoCast
RFQ-RT-09-00199
Project Description:
The National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT) is responsible for developing computational tools and solutions for improving environmental risk assessments and regulatory decisions. Environmental chemicals are the subject of concern and the NCCT is developing methodologies to characterize chemicals based on both hazard and risk for exposure. NCCT is investigating the development of computer models of chemical exposure that can be extended to evaluate thousands of chemicals.
Description of Student Services:
The student shall work within a multi-disciplinary research team and shall provide technical support for research projects modeling exposure potential of environmental chemicals. Specific duties shall include assisting research staff in support for NCCT’s chemical prioritization research program, ToxCast, and in particular its extension to the exposure field, called ExpoCast. This project will involve investigating exposure models that currently exist and evaluating them for their use in a high-throughput exposure modeling effort. Some of these models are in the open literature and some have been developed at the EPA. The outcome of the initial phase of this work will be a written report summarizing the state of the field of exposure modeling, with a focus on models relevant to many chemicals. The second phase of the project will involve the design of a model that can be used for the ToxCast / ExpoCast project. The third phase will involve building tools (databases, spreadsheets, statistical models) that implement a model usable for thousands of chemicals. This final phase will be carried out in collaboration with other NCCT staff who will assist with technical details of database design and tool building.
- ToxRefDB
RFQ-RT-09-00200
Project Description:
The National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT) is responsible for developing computational tools and solutions for improving environmental risk assessments and regulatory decisions. Environmental chemicals are the subject of concern and the NCCT is developing methodologies to characterize chemicals based on known and predicted toxic effects. As a part of this effort, the NCCT is compiling a database capturing in vivo animal toxicity study data on hundreds of environmental chemicals.
Description of Student Services:
The student shall work within a multi-disciplinary research team and shall provide technical support for research projects characterizing the toxicity of environmental chemicals. Specific duties will include assisting research staff in (1) Continued development and expansion of NCCT’s reference database of in vivo animal toxicity studies called ToxRefDB. (2) Assistance in standardized vocabulary development relevant to toxicology. (3) Assist in analysis of multi-dimensional data from multiple databases, including ToxRefDB, requiring that the candidate have a working knowledge and understanding of MySQL, SQL, MSAccess, and MSExcel.
- v-Tissues
RFQ-RT-09-00201
Project Description:
The National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT) is responsible for developing computational tools and solutions for improving environmental risk assessments and regulatory decisions. Environmental chemicals are the subject of concern and the NCCT is developing methodologies to characterize chemicals based on known and predicted toxic effects. As a part of this effort, the NCCT is compiling a knowledgebase capturing all relevant in vivo and in vitro data on molecular and cellular physiology of the human and rodent liver.
Description of Student Services:
The student shall work within a multi-disciplinary research team and shall provide technical support for research projects on modeling the toxicity of environmental chemicals. Specific duties shall include assisting research staff in (1) Continued development and expansion of the Virtual Liver Knowledgebase (VLKB). (2) Assistance on information curation from literature and standardized vocabulary development using public domain information sources. (3) Assist in developing queries, query tools and to assist on other scientific programming tasks.
Lunchtime! 