[Comp-neuro] Post-doctoral research position in neural coding at Italian Institute of Technology

Post-doctoral research position within the Si-Code EU-funded project available at Italian Institute of Technology -Centre for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems in Trento (Italy)

Applications are sought for a post-doctoral researcher to work in computational neuroscience within the European FP7 FET Open project with acronym "Si-Code" and full title "Towards new Brain-Machine Interfaces: state-dependent information coding". The position is available from the summer 2012 for a period of two years (renewable).
The Si-Code project, coordinate by Prof. Stefano Panzeri, stems from the observation that cortical responses to external correlates do not depend only on these correlates, but also on state variables characterizing the state of ongoing intrinsic activity. The project aims at understanding how cortical state variables influence cortical processing of sensory and motor information, and how understanding of state-dependent neural information may improve bidirectional Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs). The project as a whole gathers a large interdisciplinary team comprising computational and experimental neuroscientists and neuroengineers in Italy, Germany and Switzerland.

The postdoctoral candidate will be working in the Centre for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems in Trento (Italy), under the supervision of Prof. S. Panzeri. Building on previous work of the laboratory (see Panzeri et al, Trends Neurosci 2010 and QuianQuiroga and Panzeri, Nature Reviews Neurosci 2009 for reviews), the postdoctoral scientist will design, implement and apply information theoretic algorithms that quantify how neural response variables expressing both neural responses to stimuli and the state of ongoing activity at the time of stimulus presentation combine to transmit and process information. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in numerate sciences (physics, mathematics, engineering or informatics), and a keen interest in applying her/his numerate background to making breakthroughs in the understanding of the brain.

The postdoctoral researcher will be based for most of his/her time at the IIT, supervised by internationally recognized experts and will have access to state-of-the-art equipment and laboratories. Proficiency in English is required.

Salary depends on qualification and experience and the gross salary range tipically spans from 35k to 40k Euros per year.

Interested applicants should contact Stefano Panzeri (stefano.panzeri@iit.it) for any informal queries. For a formal application, the candidate will submit CV, list of publications, a statement of research interests, and two reference letters by e-mail both to stefano.panzeri@iit.it and  Sara Maistrelli (Cncs_selezioni@iit.it). The web page of the lab can be found at: http://cncs.iit.it/research-labs/neural-computation.html

The deadline for the application is May 1st, 2012

The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (http://www.iit.it) is a private law Foundation, created with special Government Law no. 269 of September 30th 2003, with the objective of promoting Italy's technological development and higher education in science and technology. Research at IIT is carried out in highly innovative scientific fields with state-of-the-art technology.