Project Manager – Research Computing

The Organization

As an independent research organization, the Morgridge Institute for Research explores uncharted scientific territory to discover tomorrow’s cures. In affiliation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we support researchers who take a fearless approach to advancing human health in emerging fields such as regenerative biology, metabolism, virology and biomedical imaging. Through public programming, we work to inspire scientific curiosity in everyday life.

Description:

Manages, plans, and coordinates research and other team project(s) from initial conception through completion. Helps define projects, gather requirements, and support research proposal development. Ensures projects are completed within a prescribed timeframe and scope, coordinating with other staff members as appropriate. Ensuring completion of the project while adhering to budget, scope, and schedule requirements. Utilizes project management tools and tracks programmatic items (e.g., metrics, milestones, and risks). Ideal candidates for the project manager must feel comfortable with high levels of multitasking and balancing multiple deadlines.

The position is available as either part-time or full-time.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Define project scopes and objectives, involving all relevant stakeholders and ensuring resource availability and allocation.
• Assist in the documentation, financial management, and reporting requirements related to sponsored activities.
• Work with leadership to prepare non-technical materials for proposals.
• Coordinate activities and reporting of various project teams, both within the institution and external collaborators.
• Ensure that projects are delivered on-time, within scope and within budget. Develop and maintain project plans to track progress and utilize issue tracking software like JIRA.
• Organize and lead project meetings and compile/edit project status reports to stakeholders and project teams to drive deliverables on schedule and develop resolutions to mitigate risks/issues.
• Use appropriate verification techniques to manage changes in project scope, schedule, and costs
• Measure project performance using appropriate systems, tools, and techniques.
• Create and maintain comprehensive project documentation and prepare reports for leadership. Perform risk management to minimize project risks. Report and escalate to leadership and key stakeholders as needed.
• Help manage and potentially supervise project coordinator and other staff (including student interns), as appropriate.
• May be called upon for occasional overnight business travel – estimated to be no more than 5%.
• Other miscellaneous duties as required.

Requirements:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily.  The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.  Reasonable accommodations will be considered and may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the primary responsibilities.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelors’ Degree.
• 3+ years of experience in project management or equivalent
• 3+ years of experience activities related to managing sponsored grants or equivalent.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) or similar certification preferred.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Required:

• Basic knowledge of project management activities.
• Experience working with colleagues in person and using remote collaboration tools with offsite or offshore teams.
• Demonstrated ability to track effort and project process.
• Demonstrated ability to help track budget and expenditures.
• Ability to plan and analyze projects of limited scope.
• Solid interpersonal skills to work with both technical and non-technical personnel at various levels of the organization.
• Competency in common office software tools such as Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Preferred:

• Competency at common project management tools such as JIRA or Microsoft Project.
• Experience in working in an academic/research environment.
• Experience in working and submitting research proposals to federal funding agencies.
• Ability to manage and resolve conflicting inputs from independent team leads.
• Experience in externally communicating project activities.
• Basic knowledge of computing and communications, including hardware infrastructure, networking, software, operations, and disaster recovery

In order to insure the safety of our workplace, proof of COVID-19 vaccination is required unless an exemption is granted for medical, disability or religious reasons.