FFHI Grad Student Assistant

Student Assistant IV (Title Code 4919), Foods for Health Institute
20 hrs/wk (time is variable up to 40 hrs/week depending on student schedule and availability)

Student Commitment: Starting ASAP – through the academic year.  Extension is available beyond end of academic year.

UC Davis is recognized internationally as a leader in agriculture, food science, nutrition, life sciences and health.  The Food for Health Institute (FFHI) is a cutting edge effort to improve human health and wellness by integrating campuswide food, science, engineering, and health programs with government, philanthropic foundations, industry partners, and entrepreneurs.  It builds on UC Davis’ strengths and cuts across departments, schools and colleges to actively create multi-disciplinary research partnerships spanning from agricultural and food sciences to clinical assessment of food components. 

Currently the FFHI includes 95+ participating faculty from the School of Medicine, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Engineering, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the College of Biological Science, the College of Letters and Science, the USDA Western Human Nutrition Center, and interfaces actively with other related institutes on the Davis campus such as the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, the Nutritional Genomics Center, the Clinical and Translational Science Center, the Agriculture Sustainability Institute, the M.I.N.D. Institute, and the Humanities Institute. 

Purpose of Position – Academic Business Strategy Research
The Student Assistant with will support the efforts of the FFHI, reporting directly to the Executive Associate Director.  The student will assist at two major interfaces promoting: 1) inward – facing relationships between the numerous FFHI related academic units at UC Davis, enhancing cross-disciplinary awareness and 2) outward – looking projection and promotion of the FFHI overall vision and goals to the scientific community, potential partners and external funding agencies.

Responsibilities
The Student Assistant will be expected to work often with minimal direction.  The student will support the development of systematic strategies for the identification of potential industry, foundation and government partners for the developing FFHI Program; strategic, in – depth financial, intellectual property landscape and expertise analysis of these potential partners; market trend research in the food and health arena; data managing and gathering.  The student will be responsible for gathering and managing data content, to be used on the FFHI website.  The student will be responsible for the generation and maintenance of all FFHI marketing materials, including the development of an overall FFHI marketing and branding strategy.  The assistant will work as critical administrative support for upcoming FFHI conferences, workshops and events and will function as the administrative lead on all FFHI logistics.  This includes, contact information and biography generation for participants, informational writing regarding the goals/objectives/outcomes of event, prepping participants on overall goals of the event, etc.

Duties
Specific duties will include but are not limited to: 

• General administrative support  will be the duty and responsibility of the Graduate Student Assistant (scheduling meetings, agenda planning, travel planning, phone enquiries, organization, assist in all conference preparation)
• Work closely with skilled professionals to develop appropriate FFHI marketing materials
• Composition, preparation, and organizing of charts and grids, used for data collection, in assessing target partners.  These partners include companies, foundations and government agencies.  Research analysis and viability analysis of target partners
• Carrying out business research to further explore specific opportunities
• Identification, data analysis and further recommendation of which partners are most in alignment with current research conducted by the FFHI-associated faculty.
• Identification and data analysis of FFHI-associated faculty expertise and research interest.
• Other duties as assigned 

Requirements

• Currently enrolled at UC Davis
• A background in science/engineering is essential.  High level understanding of science/engineering is preferred.  Student should have completed relevant upper division courses in their field of interest.  
• Having computational and mathematical methods coursework is preferred.  Advanced computational skills are preferred.
• Academic Business experience is strongly preferred. Students who have not attended the UC Davis Entrepreneurship Academy will be expected to attend the Food and Health Entrepreneurship Academy in February 2009 as part of their onsite training.
• Must be highly organized and be able to think critically
• Strong research and analytical capability and ability to concisely summarize data
• Working knowledge of spreadsheet, word processing, power-point software
• Must know the Microsoft Office package, especially Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Must have knowledge about internet and internet search engines
• Must have general Adobe knowledge
• Must have basic clerical experience
• Must be willing to travel to the UC Davis Technology and Industry Alliances office in South Davis once a week
• Good communication and interpersonal skills
• Must be well articulated
• Must be highly motivated
• Must be able to work both independently and in a team Currently in 4-year College Degree Course
• Flexible, positive, can-do attitude

For further information please contact:
Melanie Funes, PhD
Executive Associate Director, Foods for Health
1283C Academic Surge
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA 95616
Office: 530-752-9211
mfunesduran@ucdavis.edu