Connectionists: Open positions in the Vogels Lab

[Tim Vogels]

Dear Colleagues, 

the Vogels lab has two open postdoctoral positions. 

TL;DR, if you liked our last NeurIPS paper https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.24.353409v1 <https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.24.353409v1>  and you think you can contribute and imagine, oh, the places we’ll go from here,…from one of the most liveable cities in the world, …

DO apply. 

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We are looking for at least two scientists to join the vogelslab.org as postdocs at the @ISTAustria near Vienna. 

The successful candidate will join an ongoing ERC funded project to discover families of spike-induced synaptic plasticity rules by way of numerical derivation. 

Together, we will define and explore search spaces of biologically plausible plasticity rules  expressed e.g., as polynomial expansions or multi layer perceptrons. We aim to compare the results to various experimental and theoretical data sets, including functional spiking network models, human stem-cell derived neural network cultures, in vitro and in vivo experimental data. 

We are looking for someone who can expand and develop our multipurpose modular library dedicated to optimization of non-differentiable systems. Due to the modularity of the library, the candidate will have extensive freedom regarding which optimization techniques to use and what to learn in which systems, but being a team player will be a crucial skill. 

A conceivably successful candidate will have a strong expertise in numerical simulations, and specifically spiking neuron models, and some knowledge in the field of synaptic plasticity. A strong background in applied maths, especially in numerical optimization would be desirable. Some of the questions we ponder: How to express high dimensional rules in 

However, we can hire more than one person, and we would also be interested in someone who can contribute to design, implementation and maintenance of a library dedicated to performing numerical optimization in non-differentiable systems on large scales. We are thinking about how to simulate spiking neural networks with complex, unsupervised and supervised plasticity rules efficiently, in parallel, on a cluster. 

Depending on your (flexible, possibly immediate) starting date we can offer up to 4-year contracts with competitive salaries, benefits, vacation time and ample budget for materials and travel in a tranquil and inspiring environment.  The Vogelslab, and the IST Austria is located in Klosterneuburg, a historic city northwest of Vienna. The campus is located in the middle of the beautiful landscape of the Vienna Woods, 30 minutes from downtown Vienna, the capital of Austria that consistently scores in the top cities of the world for its high standard of living.

If you are interested, send an email with your application to Jessica . deAntoni [at] ist.ac.at. 

Your application should include 

your CV,
your most relevant publication,
contact information for 2 or more references, and 
a cover letter with a short description of you & your career, and a brief discussion of what you think is the greatest weakness of the above mentioned NeurIPS paper (and maybe how you would go about fixing it). 
We are looking to build a diverse and interesting environment, so if you bring any qualities that make our lab (and computational neuroscience at large) more diverse than it is right now, please consider applying. 

We will begin to evaluate applications at the end of April and aim to get back to you with a decision within 5 weeks of your application. 

We are also looking for people with a strong background in maths and machine learning, and an intense interest in neuroscience. Specifically, we will focus on (GABAergic, <http://www.neurotheory.ox.ac.uk/~timv/pub/VogelsScience2011.pdf> codependent <http://www.neurotheory.ox.ac.uk/~timv/pub/Hennequin2017.pdf>, and machine-learning inspired <https://fzenke.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ZenkeGanguli2018_SuperSpike.pdf>) synaptic plasticity, and modulated <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0276-0> neural network dynamics. <http://www.neurotheory.ox.ac.uk/~timv/pub/HennequinNeuron2014.pdf>  Finally, we are keen to hear from women and members of underrepresented groups in neuroscience.

Please email me with any questions or thoughts.

Best wishes, 

Tim Vogels


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Tim Vogels
Professor
Neurotheory
IST Austria
vogelslab.org
+43 2243 9000 2170




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