Research Assistant / Technology Specialist (50% 
FTE)
HIV/STI Intervention & Prevention Studies (HIPS) 
Program Division of Epidemiology & Community 
Health University of Minnesota School of Public 
Health

An Information Technology Specialist is sought 
for a 5-year NIH-funded study of Men who use the 
Internet to seek Sex with other Men (MISM), 
beginning on or before December 1, 2006.  An 
ideal candidate will be able to serve for the 
full five years of the study.  Principal 
Investigator is B. R. Simon Rosser, PhD, MPH, 
LP.  This newly funded study is designed to 
advance methods for online behavioral 
surveillance and investigates how virtual 
environments impact the gay community's health, 
alcohol use, and HIV risk behavior. The 
information technology specialist will be 
focused on Protocol II of this study, namely to 
design and implement a 16 city only survey of 
4,000 MISM’s alcohol and sexual risk behavior.  
This is a multidisciplinary complex study led by 
investigators in HIV prevention, alcohol, law, 
computer science, epidemiology, Internet 
research, homosexuality and public health. The 
study design is a prospective, case-comparison, 
natural experiment study in 16 cities with 
differing legislation on homosexuality and 
levels of gay e-infrastructure. 

Duties:
	Programming and software development

•	Developing the necessary code to 
implement project surveys on the web.

•	Developing software infrastructure for 
data security and monitoring.
•	Developing software infrastructure for 
reporting.
•	Debugging and software validation.
•	Usability testing and pilot testing of study software.

	Intervention research and development
•	Working with the team to conduct a large survey focused on the health and risk behavior of the target population.

	Carrying out studies
•	Develop experimental infrastructure to handle random assignment of subjects to different parts of the survey.
•	Oversee subjects undertaking usability testing.
•	Work with a large on-line MSM web site to ensure and monitor subject recruitment.
Research on subject recruitment and retention
•	To develop online methods for subject 
retention and payment.
•	To carry out a pilot study of subject 
retention, and to oversee the online aspects of 
the subject retention protocol.
	Other tasks
•	Develop and maintain study web site 
including summary findings.
•	Other duties as assigned

Requirements:
	Education:  BA or BS in Computer Science 
or equivalent experience
	Technical:  Competence and experience in 
developing interactive web sites, Internet 
programming, web site installation and 
maintenance; demonstrated expertise with Perl, 
PHP,  Javascript, or other web scripting 
languages.
	Subject Matter:  Comfort with and 
sensitivity to the subject population (Men who 
use the Internet to seek Sex with Men) and 
subject matter (HIV prevention and sexual risk 
behavior).

Other selection criteria:
Experience with usability engineering and user 
interface design.
Knowledge of the target population (Men who use 
the Internet to seek Sex with other Men) 
considered an advantage.
Experience in HIV prevention and sexual health 
promotion.
Experience in writing for on-line reading.
Knowledge and familiarity with statistical data 
analysis and statistics tools.
Experience in Human Subjects research.
Familiarity with NIH rules and experience in 
running NIH studies.
To apply, submit resume to Carol Raichert, phone 
612-6251836, or email: raichert@epi.umn.edu.

HIV/STI Intervention and Prevention Studies 
(HIPS) Program, Division of Epidemiology & 
Community Health, University of Minnesota School 
of Public Health, 1300 South 2nd Street, Suite 
300, MN 55454.  

This position is contingent upon enrollment and 
current registration as a graduate student at 
the University of Minnesota.