Director of Research and Computational Data Management (RCDM)

re you looking for a new leadership role and the opportunity to lead a new department within the University of Georgia Libraries? The University of Georgia Libraries seeks an innovative, service and outreach-focused director for a newly developed unit within the libraries, Research and Computational Data Management (RCDM). As the leader of this team, you will focus on building out research data management support and services as part of a campus-wide effort. You will also focus on strengthening and enhancing current and emerging areas of service, including Digital Humanities, Scholarly Communications, GIS, social science data and statistical services. We believe the creation of this unit helps us align with current and emerging research practices.

This new unit is the first step on our organizational change journey. The UGA Libraries are looking to reorganize and realign in order to best meet the needs of the changing research landscape along with the needs of our 40,000+ students. One of these key areas is research and computational data management. In 2021, the expenditures of the UGA research community totaled nearly $500 million, and we expect continual growth in externally funded research. The University of Georgia recently embarked on a Presidential Interdisciplinary Faculty Hiring Initiative in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence based in the College of Engineering and developed a new School of Computing that brings together Computer Science and Engineering. In addition, UGA sponsors numerous Centers and Institutes across the disciplines, including the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Wilson Center for the Arts and Humanities. It’s an exciting time to be a member of the University of Georgia community, and we are looking for a forward-thinking, creative leader to help us meet the needs of data management across the disciplines.

The Director of Research and Computational Data Management will report to the Associate University Librarian, and focus on building campus partnerships, strengthening current services in digital humanities, social science data services and GIS, while building out an effort to assist in the support of research data management across the many disciplines at UGA. They will manage a newly created department of at least 5 faculty members, with anticipated growth of additional faculty, staff and graduate assistants. The Director of RCDM will understand the research lifecycle, trends and tools in computational, data-driven research, data management best practices in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and lead development of a program that assists researchers in data creation, maintenance, access and preservation.

The Academic Professional Associate rank is an entry-level faculty rank. Candidates for appointment to this rank should show evidence of a high level of competence in the disciplinary area of the position and demonstrated promise of moving towards excellence in professional leadership, practice, service, instruction, and/or scholarly activities as appropriate for the position.