Senior Research Associate – University of Bristol, UK.

This five year ERC-funded project entitled “Generalisation in Mind and Machine” explores how well neural networks support human-like generalisation across a range of tasks. Over the course of the grant there will be four post-doctoral fellows involved in modelling, one research assistant involved in empirical work, and two PhD students. This is one of three modelling posts that runs for three years. I am looking to hire someone with a PhD in computer science or cognitive psychology (or related field) who has experience working with neural networks.

In contrast with the large community of researchers focused on improving the performance of deep networks for applied reasons, the goal of this project is to explore what neural networks tell us about how the brain works. More specifically, the team will be working on questions of generalisation in the domains of object identification, word identification, short-term memory, and games, amongst other areas. This research is related to my previous and ongoing research that explores why and when artificial neural networks learn localist "grandmother cell" representations with the goal to better understand why some neurons respond to high-level information in a highly selective manner.  You can find more information about my research and download papers at: https://jeffbowers.blogs.ilrt.org/research/

This post is available from 1st May 2018 (but somewhat flexible about start date) and the closing date for applications is Thursday 15th March 2018. For informal enquiries please contact Professor Jeffrey Bowers - J.Bowers at bristol.ac.uk<mailto:J.Bowers at bristol.ac.uk>.  For more information and to apply, please visit: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BHB793/erc-senior-research-associate