Connectionists: 3-year PostDoc position: Network analysis and Neuroinformatics

[Marcus Kaiser]

Please forward the following position to potential candidates. Thanks!


This appointment is part of the CARMEN initiative in Neuroinformatics which brings together a consortium of 19 investigators from 11 UK Universities with expertise in experimental Neuroscience, computing science and statistical data analysis. The initiative also involves neuroscientists in Germany, Japan and the USA, and a number of commercial companies who are interested in both the computing challenges and the way the project can help their studies of the brain.

The research project involves the development of algorithms for the analysis and visualization of activity patterns in neural systems. These patterns could range from the firing rates of neurons from multi-electrode recordings to functional networks as yielded by functional imaging, or optical or electrophysiological recordings in EEG. In addition to implementing algorithms used in network analysis, new algorithms for detecting characteristic activity patterns will be developed. 

A key part of the role will be working with experimental neuroscientists to understand the nature of the data that will be analyzed. You will therefore need good communication skills, including the ability to give presentations on their work, and to interact with others from different disciplines. You will need to be able to write design documents and academic papers.

You should ideally have, or be about to submit, a PhD in a theoretical subject such as computer science, physics, or mathematics. You will have knowledge and experience in one or more of: graph theory, network analysis, information theory, statistics, distributed computing or, the application of computing to a scientific domain. 

The project is jointly supervised by Dr Marcus Kaiser from Newcastle University and Dr Stephen Eglen from the University of Cambridge. Dr Kaiser is based at the Institute of Neuroscience in Newcastle which is one of the largest neuroscience groups in the UK with more than 100 independent investigators (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ion/ ). Dr Eglen is based in the Cambridge Computational Biology Institute (CCBI), which is physically hosted in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. One role of the CCBI is to increase interactions between experimentalists and theorists in the area of computational biology, of which computational neuroscience is one focus. 

Other ongoing research in my group includes the development, robustness, dynamics, and spatial organisation of cortical and neuronal networks (see Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2004 and PLoS Computational Biology, 2006 articles available from my homepage). In particular we are interested in how activity spreads in cortical networks and how the brain recovers after lesions.

Closing date for applications is: 15 January 2007
Informal enquiries about this position may be made to Dr Marcus Kaiser, m.kaiser at ncl.ac.uk
Full details are available at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/vacancies  (Job Ref: D1633R)
More information about our groups can be found at
http://www.biological-networks.org             (Dr Marcus Kaiser)
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/sje30/      (Dr Stephen Eglen)

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Marcus Kaiser, Ph.D.
RCUK Academic Fellow
School of Computing Science
University of Newcastle
Claremont Tower
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, U.K.
Phone: +44 191 222 8161
Fax:   +44 191 222 8232
http://www.biological-networks.org/