the Faculty Position Market of Biomedical Informatics in 2022, United States

Sometimes it's too scientific, but sometimes it's not enough.

Posted on 8/26/2022 by Ling Tong

Objective

To search and analyze biomedical informatics faculty positions in the United States. The objective is to make an informed decision when applying.

Method

First, search position on three web platforms:

  1. https://jobs.chronicle.com/
  2. Indeed.com
  3. 3) Google search.

Keywords are: -[Assistant Professor/Faculty] -[Biomedical Informatics, Health Informatics, Medical Informatics].

The location is not restricted. Only job ads posted 2022 are selected.

Save the following positions on the table: If a position has the following questions, then the position info will be dropped.

  1. In other non-united states country (e.g., Hong Kong University)
  2. Impossible to land (for example, Harvard University)
  3. requires specific skill sets I don’t have (e.g. immunology, genecology, oncology, kinesiology, internal medicine, etc.).
  4. an industry job (for example, “Continued University” at a large clinical center)
  5. requires a MD degree or other certification (for example, FHIR board certification)

Then, I collect variables for each position. Candidate variables are:

  1. Name of the School,
  2. QS World Ranking,
  3. National Forbes Ranking,
  4. Address, state, and city,
  5. Application Web URL,
  6. Status of Application; Applied/Not Applied (Y/N),
  7. If not applied, explain why stopped applying.

Then, process the data by hand-labeling each position with one of three job types based on its title.

  • Assistant professor (tenure track)
  • Postdoctoral fellow/research fellow,
  • Adjunct professor (teaching faculty).

Results:

Among 354 results, I selected (by discretion) 112 open positions. 17 are adjunct professor positions; 20 are research postdoc positions. 75 are tenure track assistant professor positions. The most openings are in Washington, California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. The QS rank range is very wide. However, most adjunct professor positions have a lower rank compared to postdoctoral position. The postdoc/research fellow position had the best quality of school. As for tenure track assistant professor positions, 48/75 (64%) have a higher rank than UWM. 27/75 (36%) had a lower rank than UWM. Also, I observed that adjunct professors typically don’t require a doctoral degree. Tenure-track positions that are on QS Rank 2000 and above usually don’t require a doctoral degree.

Conclusion

The ratio of three types of studies shows biomedical informatics has a promising job market. From the best schools to small community colleges, the schools are looking to expand both research and the teaching community. Smaller colleges usually seek an adjunct position to complete teaching tasks, while large public and research universities will have a tenure-track position to complete both teaching and research. As for postdocs, the demand is relatively small and mostly at prestigious universities.