The Translational NeuroEngineering Laboratory (TNEL) in the University of Minnesota Department of Psychiatry has a multi-year funded opening for a postdoctoral scholar at the intersection of neuroscience, brain stimulation, and behavior. Our laboratory develops technologies to reverse the circuit impairments that cause mental illness, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, PTSD, and addictions. More information about our work is at http://www.tnelab.org/ .

The job duties (100%) in this project involve measuring and manipulating the activity of cortico-striatal circuits involved in complex decision-making, and specifically in governing the balance between flexible and rigid decision styles. Tools to be employed (and on which we can train you) include:

• Novel silicon probes (Neuropixels) for recording hundreds of simultaneous channels across the striatal circuitry
• Optogenetic and electrical real-time perturbations, including interventions directly related to clinical deep brain stimulation.
• Innovative behavioral assays and parametric computational modeling of behavior to identify the underlying circuit computations.

The work has direct relevance to new treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and depression, among other illnesses.

The majority of this position’s work will be with animals (rats), but we are a translational lab that also does human/clinical work, and you may be involved in preliminary human translation if that is of interest. Depending on your interests, there may also be opportunities/exposure to:

• Medical device development and commercialization
• Neural simulation and modeling paradigms
• The clinical neurobiology of mental illness

Our goal is to prepare you to be successful in the future as an independent researcher. UMN has multiple training and seed grant programs to support that transition to independence. Our laboratory includes both animal and human research components, and you will interact almost daily with other neuroscientists and engineers. There are also opportunities for collaboration and networking with clinicians, basic neuroscientists, and engineers. We are very focused on mentoring and developing junior personnel, and the PI will work with you to ensure that you are submitting competitive applications for fellowships and other grants on the pathway to independence. We also have strong industry relations for researchers interested in careers outside academia.

We do have a staff scientist track for researchers interested in more long-term non-faculty positions; please indicate in your cover letter if that is where your interest lies.

This position is open to researchers of any nationality. We will happily sponsor a visa, but please tell us up front about your needs and current status.

We are similarly very interested in hearing from researchers from non-traditional or underrepresented backgrounds, and who may not have had all of the exposures/training mentioned above, but who are eager to learn and willing to work hard to master new skills. The UMN neuroscience community is committed to reversing historical inequities, and you will find a welcoming and supportive community here.