Connectionists: POSTDOC POSITIONS IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE IN PARIS AND BASEL

[Rava A. da Silveira]

*Several postdoctoral openings in the lab of Rava Azeredo da Silveira **(Paris
& Basel)*

The lab of Rava Azeredo da Silveira invites applications for *Postdoctoral
Researcher* positions at ENS, Paris, and IOB, an associated institute of
the University of Basel.

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). One of the postdoc positions to
be filled in Basel will be part of a collaborative framework with Michael
Woodford (Columbia University) and will involve projects relating the study
of decision making to models of perception and memory.

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.

The positions will come with highly competitive work conditions and
salaries.

*Application deadline:*

For full consideration, please apply by 30 October 2020.

*How to apply:*

Please send the following information *in one single PDF, to *
*silveira at iob.ch* <silveira at iob.ch>*:*

1.     letter of motivation;

2.     statement of research interests, limited to two pages;

3.     curriculum vitæ including a list of publications;

4.     any relevant publications that you wish to showcase.

In addition, please arrange for three letters of recommendations to be sent
to the same email address. In all email correspondence, please include the
mention “APPLICATION-POSTDOC” in the subject header, otherwise the
application will *not* be considered.

***

*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.

*IOB* is a research institute combining basic and clinical research. Its
mission is to drive innovations in understanding vision and its diseases
and develop new therapies for vision loss. IOB is an equal-opportunity
employer with family-friendly work policies.

*The Silveira** Lab* focuses on a range of topics, which, however, are tied
together through a central question: How does the brain represent and
manipulate information?

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.

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.
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