A key goal of CBSSM is training the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers. CBSSM has an active mentoring and training program through our Postdoctoral Research Fellow Program, led by Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD.
CBSSM offers support to junior investigators and our affiliated faculty have actively mentored Postdoctoral Fellows from the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the Veteran’s Administration.
In addition, CBSSM affiliated faculty mentor undergraduate students and Research Assistants who go on to pursue advanced degrees, as well as medical students. CBSSM actively participates in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at the University of Michigan.
CBSSM postdoctoral fellows collaborate on established projects and are encouraged to conduct independent research with an emphasis on study inception, manuscript writing, and applying for grants. CBSSM’s resources and collaborative support provide fellows with mentorship, expose them to multiple methodological approaches to research in decision making and bioethics, and enable fellows to build their own research programs. Postdoctoral fellows contribute to the scholarly mission and intellectual life at the Center by regularly attending Center research seminars and working groups and by participating in a rotation on our ethics consultation service. Dr. Zikmund-Fisher leads the CBSSM Postdoctoral Research Fellowship program.
The CBSSM postdoctoral research fellowships in either Bioethics or Decision Sciences are annual appointments and may be renewed for one additional year contingent upon satisfactory performance and the availability of funding. Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience and education.
Bioethics Postdoctoral Research Fellow
This fellowship focuses on research and clinical ethics as well as empirical research methods. Candidates' area of focus must be in bioethics, although their backgrounds may be in social or natural sciences, humanities, medicine, or law. Active projects in bioethics at CBSSM currently include the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomic medicine, human subjects research ethics, empirical research with relevance to clinical ethics, global bioethics, gender equity, reproductive justice, deliberative democratic methods in bioethics, resource allocation, ethical issues associated with learning health systems, and the sociology of medical ethics/bioethics, among others.
Decision Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow
This fellowship focuses on understanding and improving the health care communication and decisions made by both patients and providers. Past postdoctoral fellows have included scholars whose research in health care communication and decision making has been grounded in theories and methodologies drawn from social cognition, motivation and emotion, decision psychology, risk communication, human factors, ethics, and economics.