Environmental Health Administrative Support
The EPA Environmental Research and Business Support Program has an immediate opening for a full-time Environmental Health Administrative Support at the EPA facility in Washington, DC.
What the EPA project is about
The National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) within the Office of Research and Development (ORD) at EPA is a leader in the science of human health and ecological risk characterization, a process used to determine how pollutants or other stressors may impact human health and the environment. NCEA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) plays an important role in EPA’s mission to protect human health through the development of human health assessments that evaluate health effects that may result from exposure to specific chemicals in the environment.
What you will be doing
As part of the EPA team, you will support the research team in this non-laboratory position, ideal for an individual interested in the application of toxicological, epidemiological and environmental data to support the development of human health assessments. The position will be heavily engaged in EPA’s IRIS Program. As a team member, you assist the IRIS Division with providing the highest quality science-based human health assessments to support the Agency’s regulatory activities. This includes technical, administrative and communication duties.
Required skills
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications (i.e., Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook), and the Internet;
- Experience in administrative support functions (i.e., recordkeeping, filing) and managing records (electronic and hardcopy) or databases;
- Strong communication skills (i.e., written, oral, telephone etiquette, presentation abilities), including effective multi-media technical communications; and
- Excellent proof reading and editing skills.
How you will apply your technical skills
- Supporting the IRIS Program by following established Quality Assurance procedures and protocols to ensure that all health effects data generated or used by NCEA is scientifically sound and of known and acceptable quality for their intended uses;
- Assisting the IRIS Associate Director for Science in activities related to the IRIS Interagency Review process including summarizing scientific issues raised by interagency reviewers, categorizing issues and comments in an Access database, and maintaining an email database of scientific issues, responses and meeting participants;
- Reviewing scientific literature on the health effects of chemicals present in the environment and prepare data summaries in support of IRIS human health assessments. This may include identifying characteristics of individual toxicology or epidemiology studies that can influence determination of study quality, assisting with documentation of literature searches and search strategies, conducting library research, performing data entry, developing summary tables that present key information on study design and results from individual epidemiology and toxicology studies, developing tables of comments on draft IRIS assessments and summaries of comments, organizing and formatting scientific information consistent with standard IRIS templates, and generating various graphical presentations for health effects data (including figures generated from Excel spreadsheets or GraphPad); and
- Assisting the IRIS Associate Director for Science in activities related to the peer review of IRIS assessments by the Science Advisory Board (SAB) Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee (CAAC) standing review panel. This includes participation in the preparation of scientific charge statements that address key issues in IRIS health assessments, assistance in preparation of issue statements for meetings with SAB support staff, and summarizing the resolution of scientific issues discussed in such meetings.
Communications-related responsibilities shall include:
- Assisting in the logistics and coordination activities for briefings, public meetings, workshops, and other collaborative efforts; and
- Working with the IRIS Associate Director for Science and other IRIS Program management in developing and reviewing programmatic and scientific web language related to the IRIS Program activities that will be posted on the IRIS website.
Administrative-related responsibilities shall include:
- Assisting IRIS Division scientists in special projects such as organizing scientific workshops and public meetings;
- Assisting the IRIS Program in coordinating all aspects of the IRIS process, including scheduling meetings, submitting, collecting, and distributing documents, maintaining a database repository for all documentation, summarizing scientific issues raised by meeting participants, and documenting responses to issues raised at various steps in the review process (including by agency reviewers, interagency reviewers, external peer reviewers, and the public);
- Maintaining records of meetings, correspondence, and action documents, and maintaining a system to track projects in progress;
- Assisting the IRIS Deputy Director with tracking the development of IRIS assessments for the purpose of maintaining schedules and meeting milestones. Student Contractors may be asked to develop tracking tools; and
- Assisting the IRIS Associate Director for Science in activities related to the IRIS Interagency Review process and the peer review of IRIS assessments by the Science Advisory Board (SAB) Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee (CAAC) standing review panel. This includes development of meeting agendas, scheduling meetings, submitting, collecting, and distributing documents.
Location: This job will be located at EPA’s Research facility in Washington, DC.
Salary: Selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU and will receive an hourly wage of $22.80 for hours worked.
Hours: Full time
Travel: Occasional overnight travel may be required.
Expected start date: This position is full-time and expected to begin in October 2019. The selected applicant will be a temporary employee of ORAU working as a contractor to EPA. The initial contract period is through May 14, 2020.
Working conditions:
You will be supervised by a mentor who will provide day-to-day direction, as well as coach, advise and counsel the student, and review your work. The mentor for this position will be a federal EPA employee.
Qualifications
- Be at least 18 years of age and
- Have earned a Bachelor’s degree in biology, public health, biostatistics, epidemiology, toxicology, or other closely related disciplines pertinent to the broad scope of human health risk assessment, from an accredited university within the last 24 months and
- Be a citizen of the United States of America or a Legal Permanent Resident.