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Program Associate

The Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) is looking for an energetic Program Associate for the brand-new Core Infrastructure Initiative. Together with partners such as The Linux Foundation, the lab will establish a network of collaborators that will conduct research on the composition and practices of the open source software (OSS) community. The priority of this initiative is to develop data partnerships with key stakeholders, in order to conduct a census of OSS, that builds upon Linux Foundation’s previous work in this area.

LISH is a Harvard-wide research program that includes the Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The lab conducts interdisciplinary research that focuses on developing a science of innovation through the application of quantitative and field experimental methods on innovation problems faced by our partners. LISH, since its founding in 2010 as the NASA Tournament Lab, has led the way in the application of crowdsourcing approaches to solve important technological problems. Over the past 8 years, LISH, in collaboration with its partners including NASA, Harvard Medical School, Scripps Research Institute, the Broad Institute, and others have completed over 700 discrete innovation contests for a range of scientific and technical tasks including computational biology, image analysis, space science, data analytics, and ideation. The lab team features Harvard faculty, researchers, program managers, and affiliates. The Program Associate will work under the supervision of HBS Faculty, LISH Director, and Assistant Directors. The candidate will have the opportunity to collaborate with LISH staff, postdocs, and doctoral students.

LISH is looking for candidates with diverse backgrounds and/or new perspectives. This is a term position through 12/31/19, with the possibility of renewal based on funding and performance.

Duties will include:

  • Extracting, cleaning, systematizing, and merging messy data sets from various sources, including organizational data and aggregated intelligence
  • Exploring and analyzing data collected – including generating descriptive statistics of those data sets
  • Collaborate with the LISH Research Team to design and execute projects with partner research organizations
  • Creation and maintenance of documentation of data files, modeling choices, rationale, and results
  • Cultivating background knowledge of open source software and how it works researching the open source community and users
  • Understanding OSS adoption of software package data exchange and code architecture coordinating the development of the network, including the supporting infrastructure and the identification and invitations to potential principle investigators and researchers at other academic institutions
  • Writing literature reviews and briefs
  • Writing briefs and summaries from meetings tracking deliverables and milestones on projects crafting presentations based on research findings communicating with partners and funders
  • Participating in experiment design or open innovation experiments
  • Other duties as needed

Basic Qualifications

  • B.A. or B.S. in a relevant field
  • One to two years of relevant work experience
  • Understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods (including text analysis), software applications (R, STATA, Python, or equivalent) files
  • Experience merging, cleaning, providing statistical analysis of large datasets in various formats (CSV, XML, etc.)

Additional Qualifications

  • Strong project management skills
  • Demonstrated knowledge in Microsoft Office Suites (including proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint)
  • Background knowledge of open source software and how it works
  • Previous work experience in an open source community

Additional Information

If interested in applying, please email the following to lish@harvard.edu with “Program Associate - CII” as the subject line:

  • Curriculum vitae
  • Copy of academic records (unofficial records are acceptable)
  • 1-page cover letter highlighting relevant experience
  • At least two letters of recommendation