Connectionists: job post: machine learning research scientist at NIMH

[Francisco Pereira]

*** HIRING: machine learning research scientist

The Machine Learning Team at the National Institute of Mental Health
(NIMH) in Bethesda, MD, has an open position for a machine learning
research scientist. The NIMH is the lead federal agency for research
on mental disorders and neuroscience, and part of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH).

*** About the NIMH Machine Learning Team

Our mission is to help NIMH scientists use machine learning methods to
address a diverse set of research problems in clinical and cognitive
psychology and neuroscience. These range from identifying biomarkers
for aiding diagnoses to creating and testing models of mental
processes in healthy subjects. We work with many different data types,
including very large brain imaging datasets from various imaging
modalities, behavioral data, and picture and text corpora. We have
excellent computational resources, both of our own (tens of GPUs for
deep learning) and shared within the NIH (a cluster with hundreds of
thousands of CPUs, and hundreds of GPUs).

As a machine learning research group, we develop new methods and
publish in the main machine learning conferences (e.g. NeurIPS and
ICLR), as well as in psychology and neuroscience journals. Many of our
problems require devising research approaches that combine imaging and
non-imaging data, and leveraging structured knowledge resources
(databases, scientific literature, etc) to generate explanations and
hypotheses. You can find more about our work and publications at

https://cmn.nimh.nih.gov/mlt

*** About the position

We are seeking candidates who are capable of combining machine
learning, statistical, and domain-specific computational tools to
solve practical data analysis challenges (e.g. designing experiments,
generating and testing statistical hypotheses, training and
interpreting predictive models, and developing novel models and
methods). Additionally, candidates should be capable of visualizing
and communicating findings to a broad scientific audience, as well as
explaining the details of relevant methods to researchers in a variety
of domains.

Desirable experience that is not required, but will be considered very
favorably:

- neuroimaging data processing and analysis (any MRI modality, as well
as MEG and EEG)
- other types of neural data (e.g. neural recording, calcium imaging)
- modelling of human and animal learning and decision-making
- Bayesian statistical modelling

Finally, you should have demonstrable experience coding in languages
currently used in data-intensive, scientific computing, such as
Python, MATLAB or R. Experience with handling large datasets in high
performance computing settings is also very valuable. Although this
position requires a Ph.D. in a STEM discipline, we will consider
applicants from a variety of backgrounds, as their research experience
is the most important factor.

This is an ideal position for someone who wants to establish a
research career in method development and applications driven by
scientific and clinical needs. Given our access to a variety of
collaborators and large or unique datasets, there is ample opportunity
to match research interests with novel research problems. We also
maintain collaborations outside of the NIH, driven by our own research
interests.

If you would like to be considered for this position, please send
francisco.pereira at nih.gov a CV, with your email serving as cover
letter. If you already have a research statement, please feel free to
send that as well. There is no need for reference letters at this
stage. Other inquiries are also welcome. Thank you for your attention
and interest!