16 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Calgary, Canada

The Mental Health Initiative for Stress and Trauma (MIST) Research Program is currently recruiting a 2-year Postdoctoral Fellow to begin in March 2025. The primary focus of this position will be to support Qualitative Research activities related to understanding the mental health services available to patients who are diagnosed with a concussion and/or mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI).

Qualitative interviews and focus groups will be conducted primarily in-person at the Cal Wenzel Precision Health Building located on the University of Calgary¿s Foothills Medical Centre Campus in Calgary, Alberta. The Postdoctoral Fellow will be based at the University of Calgary under the supervision of Dr. Araba Chintoh at the Mathison Centre for Medical Research and Education (https://hbi.ucalgary.ca/mathison).

The successful candidate will lead qualitative research activities including Qualitative Focus Groups and Qualitative Key Informant Interviews to explore: (1) mental health services available to patients when being assessed for concussion/mTBI and (2) mental health services accessed by patients after being diagnosed with a concussion/mTBI. Additionally, the successful candidate will study: (1) the impact of accessing mental health services and (2) the unmet mental health service needs of patients and clinicians after the diagnosis of a concussion/mTBI.

A full-time Postdoctoral Scholar (PDS) opportunity is available at the University of Calgary, Canada, to begin on or about July 1, 2025 under the supervision of Dr. David Hodgins. This PDS will contribute to a variety of projects aimed at gaining deeper insights into gambling and gambling disorder, with a particular emphasis on prevention, harm minimization and treatment. The PDS will have the opportunity to collaborate on projects with researchers from various faculties across campus (e.g., psychology, medicine, community health, computer science), community organizations, and institutions across the country and internationally. In addition, the PDS will expand research in these areas through the development of complementary research proposals.

The Brain Image Team (BIT) laboratory in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Schulich School of Engineering is inviting applications for a postdoctoral position in the area of Neuroimaging and Machine Learning. The successful applicant will work on projects for image acquisition and reconstruction, as well as data analytics and machine learning with a particular focus on image synthesis methods. 

The successful applicant must have excellent technical communication skills and a strong background and track record of achievements in medical imaging and machine learning. This project has a strong component in collaborative research, working with graduate students and research scientists in adjacent projects. 

To be eligible for this postdoctoral appointment, the applicant must normally have received a postgraduate doctoral degree or its equivalent awarded within the three years immediately preceding the effective date of a postdoctoral appointment, with allowance made for leaves of absence. This position is initially for one year, with the strong possibility of renewal for two more years for a total of three years, subject to performance and continued funding.

At the University of Calgary, the Applied Geochemistry Group has an opening for a postdoctoral scholar. This is a full-time position with the option to work in-person, or hybrid (or a combination of both) for up to 1 year (with potential for extension) with a preferred start date in early 2025. The ideal candidate combines experience in groundwater quality assessments with expertise in geospatial analyses and statistics. 

The project investigates the causes of decadal-scale changes in groundwater quality in Alberta. The successful candidate will use approaches including statistical and geospatial analyses of provincial-scale groundwater quality and land use datasets from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) to identify land use impacts on the quality of shallow groundwater. The Investigations will focus on areas where increasing trends in nitrate and chloride have been found in shallow groundwater (<150 m). In combination with isotopic and geochemical data, the research team led by the post-doc will assess where anthropogenic impacts on shallow groundwater have occurred and which land use changes have facilitated change. 

The science is enabled by a provincial-scale historical groundwater quality dataset with over >6M results and the ABMI Human Footprint Inventory with >5M polygons delineated for >100 feature types from SPOT6 satellite imagery. Human footprint occupies 31% of Alberta, with agriculture covering 21%. Most of the human footprint in central and southern Alberta is a result of the province’s farming legacy since the late 1800s. Previous studies in Alberta have shown the effects of agricultural land use on shallow groundwater contaminants including local changes in nitrate and chloride concentrations where confined animal feeding operations impacted groundwater quality from manure application at the land surface. While a province-wide picture of groundwater quality variations is emerging very recently, there has not yet an analysis of how temporal trends relate to land use changes throughout the last decades.

The Postdoctoral Scholar will be supervised by Dr. Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia and take direction from the team of an awarded grant from Alberta Health¿s Cancer Research for Screening and Prevention (CRSP) funding program. The successful candidate will bring to fruition a project seeking to understand cancer risk factors for adolescent and young adult cancers (i.e., diagnosed between 15 to 39 years age), as well as cancer knowledge and beliefs among Albertan youths. To do this, the Postdoctoral Scholar will (1) co-design and conduct a comprehensive lifetime assessment of potential risk factors, (2) survey Albertan youths about their knowledge and beliefs of established cancer risk factors, as well as signs and symptoms of cancer and existing primary and secondary cancer prevention strategies, and (3) analyze all collected survey data. Additional projects using the Alberta AYA Cancer Survivor Study (ayacancerAB.com), a population-based cohort of survivors of adolescent and young adult cancer, will be developed based upon the successful candidate¿s interests, where primarily administrative health databases and registry data will be utilized.

The Postdoctoral Scholar will carry out research under the direction and supervision of a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics in the Faculty of Science. The minimum initial annual salary for this Postdoctoral Scholar appointment is $49,000. The annual salary will increase to $51,000 on July 1, 2026 and $53,000 on July 1, 2027. For further information about the terms and conditions of employment that apply to this Postdoctoral Scholar appointment, please review the Collective Agreement between the University of Calgary and the Postdoctoral Fellows Association of the University of Calgary. Postdoctoral Scholars in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics have the opportunity to earn additional income by contributing to teaching within the Department. The successful applicant for this Postdoctoral appointment will be expected to concurrently submit an application for the Sessional Teaching positions posted on Job ID 33467. Sessional teaching appointments are compensated separately, in accordance Schedule “B” of the Collective Agreement between the University of Calgary and the Faculty Association of the University of Calgary. The current base salary rate for Sessional appointments is $6,513 per half course equivalent. There are normally two Sessional teaching appointments available to each Postdoctoral Scholar each year.

The PDS will lead research to develop monitoring reports using a core set of indicators of child and youth health and well-being relevant to children who are vulnerable in Alberta. The PDS will also engage in an environmental scan and policy mapping of policies relevant to child health and wellbeing. 

The position requires independent analysis and research, within a team approach in a fast-moving and changing environment, often involving multiple stakeholders. The PDS will contribute to refining the research questions and methods and will have the opportunity to lead a consensus-process to develop a monitoring report for child health and well-being, relevant to vulnerable children and families in Alberta and recommend approaches for developing cross-ministerial policy in Alberta that fosters resilience and growth for vulnerable children. Research outcomes will inform policy development for child health and social services and evaluation and the PDS will work closely with partners and with community and government stakeholders.

Within the newly established Research Impact Design Lab, the goal is to advance the science and practice of impact and assessment. The focus is to build a transdisciplinary network of experts and practitioners across three strategic pillars: Research Scholarship; Training; Experimental Action Lab. A partnership approach will be taken to leverage expertise internally to the University of Calgary as well as externally at a national and international level. If you see yourself as having an entrepreneurial mindset, are creative and want a career as an impact professional this is for you. The benefits of this unique post-doctorate is that you will receive hands on specialized training, given access to international experts and provided with practical experience and tools to realize and assess real world impact. This opportunity a good fit for those who wish to have a career in impact and provides unique skills either to continue in academia or transition to a job outside academia. There is opportunity to be involved in these three areas with a primary focus on the training and research scholarship:

The Postdoctoral scholar will be a part of research team using administrative healthcare databases and primary sources of health data to studies related to health services and quality of care for people living with dementia in Alberta funded through the Alzheimer’s Association. The Postdoctoral scholar will primarily report to Drs. Seitz and Kirkham (Department of Psychiatry, Cumming School of Medicine) in collaboration with other members of the research team.

The program of research involves studies related to identifying quality indicators for measuring the quality of care for individuals with dementia in community settings and operationalizing these measures for use with provincial administrative data. The research project involves a scoping review of dementia quality indicators, prioritization of quality indicators using Delphi methods, and analysis of provincial health services data for people with dementia.  

The Postdoctoral scholar will be involved in the design of studies, study management (research ethics and compliance procedures), analysis of studies using observational and biostatistical methods, and knowledge translation activities related to research outputs including presentations and preparation of manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications. The postdoctoral scholar will also take a lead role in communicating and coordinating with other trainees, researchers and members of the research staff and stakeholder organizations. There will be opportunities for continuing education as part of the Postdoctoral scholar position.

Dr. Sheri Madigan, Professor, Canada Research Chair, and Director of the Determinants of Child Development Lab at the University of Calgary, is seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Scholar (PDS) to join her team. The PDS will focus on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), toxic stress, and mental health using longitudinal data analysis and/or meta-analytic methods.

The PDS will work in a highly collaborative lab environment with other PDFs, research associates, graduate students, research assistants, undergraduates, and volunteers. Responsibilities include preparing and cleaning existing datasets for analysis, conducting advanced statistical analyses, writing manuscripts, participating in grant writing, and overseeing targeted lab studies. Additionally, the PDS will have opportunities to develop skills in undergraduate teaching, supervising honors students, engaging in knowledge mobilization (e.g., writing opinion editorials), and contributing to the labs professional development activities. The PDS is also encouraged to contribute to cutting-edge knowledge translation through our collaboration with ACEsHub.org.
The Determinants of Child Development Lab values diversity of identity and perspectives, and is committed to fostering a safe, transparent, and inclusive environment that encourages critical thinking and respectful dialogue.

The laboratory of Dr. Ana Nikolic is looking for an outstanding postdoctoral fellow for a two-year term with possible extension depending on funding availability. The goal of this project is to leverage emerging spatial biology approaches to improve our understanding of brain tumour state evolution, recurrence and treatment resistance. The candidate will have access to banked patient tissues, cryopreserved primary specimens, patient-derived cell cultures and xenograft mouse models from glioblastoma patients. We will apply novel techniques including spatial ATAC-seq and spatial multiomic assays to better understand these spatial niches and how they evolve over time.

Our team is recruiting a scholar to become part of an active and innovative research program that is elucidating the links between gut microbiota, mental health, neurodevelopment, and health behaviors (sleep, diet, exercise) in children. The scholar¿s work will help to identify novel and actionable intervention targets to optimize neurodevelopmental and mental health outcomes in children and adolescents.

The source data for the scholar¿s work is an ongoing cohort study that recruited pregnant individuals and is prospectively following them and their children. We have collected biological samples and questionnaire data to accurately document participants’ physiological and psychological experiences of stress and mental health. Our data set includes repeated gut microbiota (metagenomic shotgun sequencing) and metabolomics from children throughout the first 4 years of life (n=500+). The scholar will have immediate access to this data to address questions about the influence of the gut microbiota on child development outcomes. This training opportunity will position the scholar with unique interdisciplinary research expertise to launch the next phase of their academic career.

The Oncology Outcomes (O2) and Precision Oncology and Experimental Therapeutics (POET) programs are recruiting one full-time medical oncology clinical and research fellow, under the supervision of Dr. Winson Cheung and Dr. Steven Yip at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre/Arthur JE Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre. Construction of our new Calgary Cancer Centre is currently underway with a vision to become the largest Canadian cancer centre of excellence by 2024. The O2 and POET programs are world renowned for their work in real world outcomes cancer research and precision oncology research.

The funded fellowship position may be 1-2 years with a clinical focus in genitourinary cancers and research focus on undertaking real world evidence projects utilising the wealth of databases housed at the centre. There will also be the opportunity to be exposed to trial protocol development and possible involvement in late phase clinical trials.

The postdoctoral fellow will focus on research examining biologic mechanisms involved in breast cancer survival under the supervision of Drs. Lin Yang, Research Scientist with Alberta Health Services and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Calgary, and Darren Brenner, Associate Professor and Armstrong Investigator in Molecular Cancer Epidemiology at the University of Calgary. Dr. Yang is investigating several research questions in the Alberta Moving Beyond Breast Cancer (AMBER) Cohort Study led by Drs Christine Friedenreich and Kerry Courneya. The AMBER cohort study has been on-going since 2012 as a CIHR-funded team grant. A particular area of focus is investigating the biologic mechanisms that may be occurring between physical activity, sedentary behaviour, health-related fitness and breast cancer outcomes. Numerous opportunities exist for the successful candidate to contribute to multiple on-going and planned research studies, to develop their own area of research expertise, to publish and present scholarly work, and to obtain additional specialized training.