The research laboratory of Prof. Rada Savic (https://pharm.ucsf.edu/savic) in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF is engaged in groundbreaking drug development projects for Global Health including infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria, as well as pain management and autoimmune disease with a focus on identifying optimal treatment regimens. We develop and apply disease models, perform pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic evaluations, build physiology-based pharmacokinetic models, conduct exposure-response analyses, and utilize model-based simulations with the ultimate goal of optimizing treatment in adult, and pediatric and other special patient populations. To this aim, the Savic Lab collaborates with clinical and preclinical leaders within the field, as well as with federal and international global health partners, private foundations, and with pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The Savic Lab has a strong collegial character where passionate scientists, with different backgrounds, collaborate and share their knowledge within focused teams.

Dr. Phillips (https://profiles.ucsf.edu/patrick.phillips) has joint appointments in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. The objective of Dr. Phillips’ research is to design, implement, and optimize clinical trials for new treatments for tuberculosis in order to deliver safer and more efficacious regimens for patients. He is lead statistician for several international tuberculosis trials networks and has been primary senior statistician for a number of high impact phase II and phase III tuberculosis clinical trials. He leads a team of masters-level and PhD-level statisticians providing statistical support to many ongoing TB trials and working on applied clinical trials methodology.

The UCSF Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics - the largest department of epidemiology in the University of California system in terms of full-time primary faculty and the number of affiliated faculty - aims to carry out its educational, scientific, and clinical missions within the highly interdisciplinary culture of UCSF and to take a transdisciplinary approach to education and research. 

The position involves methodological and applied research in the design, conduct, and analysis of randomized clinical trials with a focus on clinical trials in tuberculosis. Areas of methodological development include non-inferiority trials, platform and other adaptive trial designs, specification of estimands accounting for intercurrent events and missing data, and trial designs to evaluate treatment duration. Expertise in pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) modelling and simulation, especially advanced statistical principles (nonlinear mixed effects modelling, Bayesian statistics, clinical trial simulations, estimands, missing data imputation), along with strong programming skills in R, Stata, Matlab or Python is essential for designing and analyzing early and late randomized clinical trials in support of the goal to optimize TB treatment in adult, as well as pediatric and other special patient populations. Experience in pharmacometrics software (e.g. NONMEM) and knowledge of drug development, high-performance computing, and dynamic modeling is preferred.

The successful candidate is expected to work closely with Dr. Phillips and Prof. Savic, and to conduct independent methodological research under his oversight, resulting in the writing of peer-reviewed publications for medical and statistical journals. The environment is multidisciplinary. The postdoctoral fellow will also have opportunities to collaborate with other scientists in the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.