Student Assistant for Antibiotics Supply Chain Mapping

The Chair of Systems Design at ETH Zurich is seeking a student research assistant to work on the data project "Mapping the Global Antibiotics Supply Chain," a collaboration with SECO, BAG, and OECD.

The objective of this project is to identify factories and organizations involved in the manufacturing of antibiotics, as well as their production capacities, with a particular focus on Amoxicillin and Doxycycline. This work is part of a larger research effort to develop monitoring systems to mitigate drug shortages. It offers an excellent opportunity to work on a significant issue with real-world impact and to interact with federal and international organizations.

The student will assist in searching data sources and assembling a database of global antibiotics manufacturing. They will work closely with the research team on the following activities:

• Identifying public and commercial databases relevant to antibiotics production.
• Contacting producers via email to verify the accuracy of the data.
• Writing scripts for the automated collection and cleaning of data, and organizing it into a database (a Neo4J Knowledge Graph).]
• Computing statistics on international trade related to antibiotics.
• Documenting difficulties and barriers encountered during the data assembly process.

• Enrollment as a student at ETH Zurich or the University of Zurich in a relevant field, such as computer science, engineering, economics and social sciences, mathematics, or natural sciences.
• Intermediate coding skills in Python
• Basic knowledge of databases (i.e., SQL); prior exposure to Neo4J is a plus.

Starting in October 2024 and continuing until January 2025.

The anticipated workload per week may vary between 8 and 15 hours, hourly wage.

You’ll have a workplace in our offices in the WEV building (D-MTEC, Weinbergstrasse 56/58).