Career Center

The Translational Neural Engineering Laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry has an open position for a dedicated, self-motivated Researcher 1 interested in working at the intersection of technology, neuroscience, and mental health. Our laboratory has multiple projects ongoing involving electrical recording, optical and electrical brain stimulation, and real-time signal processing in actively behaving animals (sometimes called "brain-computer interfaces"). The technologies we develop will ultimately be used to change activity in specific brain circuits involved in severe mental illnesses such as PTSD, major depression, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The open position is available on projects involving stimulation to reverse drug re-seeking in rat models of opioid addiction as well as projects that explore stimulation effects on tests of cognitive flexibility (a key component of cognition that is impacted by many mental health conditions).

Job Responsibilities/Duties:

• (70%) working with senior lab members to optimize and run rodent brain and behavior assays. This includes learning and practicing compassionate care of research animals, with opportunities to learn small animal surgery and other veterinary skills if desired.
• (10%) Recording of physiologic and behavioral data from behaving animals
• (10%) histology and microscopy
• (10%) analysis of the resulting data

If you are interested in making part of this into an independent project and/or contributing to published scientific papers, that is a very common long-term outcome from this position. The essential skills for this work are willingness to learn new skills, precise attention to detail, and scrupulous record-keeping; in both paper and digital formats.

All required qualifications must be documented on application materials

Required Qualifications:

• BA/BS or a combination of related education and work experience to equal four years; applies knowledge and skill to a recurring task or activity with emphasis typically on precision and timeliness of execution. 
• Willing to train motivated and competent individuals.

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