Impact Global Health is currently hiring for casual
Research Assistants
to support our ongoing R&D pipeline updates by identifying and curating neglected disease, emerging infectious disease and women's health candidates and products across drugs, vaccines, biologics, diagnostics, dietary supplements, devices, microbicides and vector control products.
Periods of project work will occur during the period starting early March to mid December 2026. Training will be held at the beginning of March with interviews and training conducted online. Successful candidates must be available to start on 2 March 2026.
About Impact Global Health
Having the right tools to manage and prevent disease and unnecessary suffering is fundamental to our human right to health. Yet there are still great inequities in the way biomedical innovations are financed, researched, developed and distributed around the world, leaving many health conditions without safe, effective treatments for vast, neglected populations. This is a situation that holds all of us back, including our global economies, families, security, and quality of life.
Impact Global Health is a powerful counsel to help the global health community make informed decisions, take actions and have impact. We are a not-for-profit research and policy organisation, most well-known for building the gold-standard database of global health R&D funding, G-FINDER, and the R&D pipeline. The R&D pipeline project collects data on candidates and products developed for neglected infectious diseases, emerging infectious diseases and women's health conditions. This data is made freely available and is a critical tool for informed decision-making in global health R&D.
The R&D pipeline project
Impact Global Health maintains a comprehensive database of approved products and investigational candidates across three global health areas: neglected diseases (ND), emerging infectious diseases (EID) and women's health (WH). The data is made publicly available through our website's data portal.
In 2026 we will be updating each of the global health area pipelines.
Research assistant role
Duties include
:
The Research Assistant will support pipeline updates by identifying and curating ND, EID and WH candidates and products across drugs, vaccines, biologics, diagnostics, dietary supplements, devices, microbicides and vector control products. Using the organisation's established methodology and scope, Research Assistants will extract, verify, and catalogue relevant pipeline information into the central database, maintaining accuracy, consistency, and completeness.
Tasks include:
* Extracting data from a range of online resources (pharmaceutical databases, clinical trial registries, scientific literature)
* Comparing the data against our defined scope and existing database, identifying new candidates, newly registered products and changes to existing candidates and products.
* Creating or updating existing profiles in the database with specific data points using data extraction and additional desktop research for each candidate or product.
Key responsibilities
* Data mining – Systematically review scientific literature, clinical trial registries, commercial pipelines, and public data sources to identify relevant candidates and products.
* Review file preparation – Consolidate data from various sources into a unified review file, ensuring all relevant information is accurately captured.
* Scope assessment – Apply inclusion/exclusion criteria to assess the relevance and eligibility of identified candidates or products.
* Database update – Populate and maintain detailed candidate profiles within the database, including product type, target indication, developer, development phase, regulatory milestones, and key features.
* Documentation – Maintain thorough documentation of all sources and curation decisions to support transparency and reproducibility.
Skills, knowledge and experience requirements
* Education: microbiology, medicine, science, or pharmacy. Only applicants with a background in these areas will be considered. Experience with ND, EID and/or WH is preferred.
* An understanding of product development (e.g. drugs, vaccines, diagnostics) and R&D phases and processes is essential (e.g. basic research, discovery and preclinical research, clinical trials and their phases, regulatory approval).
* Outstanding attention to detail and record-keeping skills, particularly when working remotely.
* Excellent asynchronous communication skills, particularly when remotely and across time zones.
* Intermediate-to-advanced Microsoft Excel skills, and good knowledge of other Microsoft Office programs.
* Good writing skills, ability to communicate in a professional and concise manner.
Hours of work
* Shift times will be flexible, with
an expectation of a minimum of 15 hours
during the working week. Candidates can work up to around 30 hours, spread across 2-4 shifts per week where possible/necessary.
* The number of shifts per week may vary throughout the contract period depending on project timeline and workload.
* Preferably, there should be some overlap with Australian business hours.
* Workload will vary throughout the employment period. There will be breaks between pipeline portfolios with minimal hours or pauses in work mid-May to late-June and early to late-September. During these pauses, Research Assistants may be tasked to other projects at Impact Global Health.
Location
Interviews and training will be conducted online. Research Assistants can work from our Surry Hills office in Sydney, Australia, or remotely.
Impact Global Health will consider candidates based in or outside Australia, but there should be some overlap with Australian business hours. Non-Australian candidates are preferably based in Asia, Africa, or Europe – Impact Global Health also has staff in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Our office is at Paramount House, 55 Brisbane St, Surry Hills NSW. When working remotely, we expect candidates to have access to a well-functioning computer with the latest operating system installed (preferably Windows 10 or 11) and unrestricted internet access during working hours. We are particularly looking for self-motivated and independent people. Candidates with experience working remotely and an appropriate IT set-up are desirable.
Pay rate
AU $40/hour. Successful applicants outside of Australia are responsible for reporting this income to their respective national taxation agency.
Closing date for applications: CET 23:59PM Wednesday 4 February 2026
Applications via email or any other format will not be considered.
If you do not hear back from us by 10 February, your application has unfortunately been unsuccessful. Due to the volume of applications, we are not able to respond individually.
If invited, you must be available to complete recruitment tasks between 10-12 February.
If invited, you must be available for interviews 17-19 February.