<div dir="ltr"><p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:11pt">Several DOCTORAL and POSTDOCTORAL openings in the lab of RAVA AZEREDO DA
SILVEIRA at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris</span></b></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:11pt">We invite applications for several Ph.D. and postdoctoral
positions at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, in Paris. Research questions will be
chosen from a broad range of topics in theoretical/computational neuroscience
and cognitive science (see the description of the lab’s activity, below).</span></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:11pt">Candidates with backgrounds in mathematics,
statistics, artificial intelligence, physics, computer science, engineering,
biology, and psychology are welcome. Experience with data analysis and
proficiency with numerical methods, in addition to familiarity with
neuroscience topics and mathematical and statistical methods, are desirable. Equally
desirable are a spirit of intellectual adventure, eagerness, and drive.</span></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:11pt">Doctoral and postdoctoral salaries will be
competitive, appreciably higher than standard French salaries.</span></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:11pt">The ENS, together with a number of neighboring
institutions (College de France, Institut Curie, ESPCI, Sorbonne Université,
and Institut Pasteur), offers a rich scientific and intellectual environment,
with a strong representation in computational neuroscience and related fields.</span></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:11pt">Deadline:</span></b></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:11pt">For full consideration, please apply by 30 January 2020.</span></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:11pt">How to apply:</span></b></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:11pt">Please send a letter of motivation, a statement of
research interests limited to two pages, a curriculum vitae including a list of
publications, and any relevant publications to </span><span lang="FR"><a href="mailto:rava@ens.fr" style="color:blue"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt">rava@ens.fr</span></a></span><span style="font-size:11pt">, and arrange for three letters of recommendations to be sent to the
same address. In all email correspondence, please include the mention
“APPLICATION-PARIS-PHD” or “APPLICATION-PARIS-POSTDOC” in the subject header,
otherwise the application will not be considered.</span></p>
<p class="gmail-Regular" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:11pt">Description of the lab’s activity:</span></b></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoNoSpacing" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Rava Azeredo da
Silveira’s lab focuses on a range of topics in theoretical and computational neuroscience
and cognitive science. These topics, however, are tied together through a
central question: How does the brain represent and manipulate information?</p>
<p class="gmail-MsoNoSpacing" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Among the more
concrete approaches to this question, the lab analyses and models neural activity
in circuits that can be identified, recorded from, and perturbed
experimentally, such as visual neural circuits in the retina and the cortex.
Establishing links between physiological specificity and the structure of
neural activity yields an understanding of circuits as building blocks of
cerebral information processing. On a more abstract level, the lab investigates
the representation of information in populations of neurons, from a statistical
and algorithmic -- rather than mechanistic -- point of view, through theories
of coding and data analyses. These studies aim at understanding the statistical
nature of high-dimensional neural activity in different conditions, and how
this serves to encode and process information from the sensory world.</p>
<p class="gmail-MsoNoSpacing" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;text-align:justify;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In the context
of cognitive studies, the lab investigates mental processes such as inference,
learning, and decision-making, through both theoretical developments and
behavioral experiments. A particular focus is the study of neural constraints
and limitations and, further, their impact on mental processes. Neural
limitations impinge on the structure and variability of mental representations,
which in turn inform the cognitive algorithms that produce behavior. The lab
explores the nature of neural limitations, mental representations, and
cognitive algorithms, and their interrelations.</p></div>