Postdoctoral position in ‘closed-loop non-invasive brain stimulation, human electrophysiological signal processing, and human cognition’ in Zürich

100%, Zurich, temporary

The Department of Health Sciences and Technologies (D-HEST) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), and the Swiss Epilepsy Center (SEC) in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH) strongly focus on the transfer of basic research knowledge to health-related and clinical applications. The ETH and USZ human neuroscience laboratories are equipped with a cutting-edge computational infrastructure, neuroimaging, behavioral and neuromodulation laboratories. Applications are invited for Postdoctoral position in ‘closed-loop non-invasive brain stimulation, human electrophysiological signal processing, and human cognition’.

The successful candidate will work with Prof. Rafael Polania and PD Dr. med. Lukas Imbach on cutting-edge methods and procedures of neuromodulation and electrophysiological analyses. We will develop and apply novel closed-loop non-invasive brain stimulation methodologies for the direct application of these techniques in both healthy individuals and epilepsy patients. If successful, this project will allow us to establish new technologies that regulate neural dynamics and its resulting behavior in humans.

Employment will begin in May 2021 and initially last two years.

Duties and responsibilities

1. Take a leading role in the planning and conduct of assigned research individually or jointly with the PIs.
2. Undertake development and deployment of computational models on existing and to be collected data to enable new mechanistic insights underlying human behavior.
3. Contribute to the organization, supervision, mentoring and training of doctoral students, master students and less experienced members of the project team to ensure their effective development.
4. Take a leading role in developing and maintaining collaborations with colleagues across ETH and SEC, and wider community.

You should have and PhD in human/clinical neuroscience, computer science or physics with demonstrated expertise in the following topics

Essential expertise

1. Extensive experience in the analysis of human electrophysiological signals (e.g., EEG, LFPs, single units)
2. Extensive experience in the development of novel connectivity and signal processing metrics from electrophysiological recordings that go beyond the use of standard toolboxes and analyses pipelines
3. Development of closed-loop neuromodulation methodologies
4. Excellent programming skills in Matlab, Python and/or R
5. Experience with the use non-invasive neuromodulation techniques
6. Experience in the development of novel behavioral paradigm for the study of human cognition
7. Candidates should speak and write English proficiently, and above all, candidates should be enthusiastic about learning new techniques and contributing to new experiments
8. Demonstrated dissemination of the candidate’s work in the form of publications and/or conference presentations

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. We are renowned for our excellent education, cutting-edge fundamental research and direct transfer of new knowledge into society. Over 30,000 people from more than 120 countries find our university to be a place that promotes independent thinking and an environment that inspires excellence. Located in the heart of Europe, yet forging connections all over the world, we work together to develop solutions for the global challenges of today and tomorrow.