PhD position in theoretical neuroscience, at the Vision Institute in Paris, France: Description: Applications are invited for a fully funded 3-year PhD studentship with Matthew Chalk, at the Vision Institute (www.institut-vision.org/en/ <http://www.institut-vision.org/en/>), within the University of Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC), in Paris, France,. The project will involve investigating neural coding in the retina. Specifically, it will ask how neurons achieve diverse goals, such as optimising efficiency or making predictions about the future. The PhD will include both a theoretical and an experimental component. The theoretical part will extend work by Chalk et al. to develop a general theory of neural coding (Chalk et al. NIPS 2016, Chalk et al. bioArxiv 2016). The experimental part, where we will test this theory in the retina, will be in close collaboration with the lab of Olivier Marre, who have developed techniques for recording from hundreds of retinal ganglion cells simultaneously (e.g. Marre et al. PLoS Comp. 2015). The Vision Institute is a stimulating environment for brain research. It brings together in a single building researchers, clinicians and industrial partners in order to discover, test and develop treatments and technological innovations for the benefit of visually impaired patients. The ideal candidate should have a strong quantitative background, with a masters degree in fields such as physics, computer science or computational neuroscience. Applications should include a CV, a short letter of motivation (max 1 page), and letter of recommendation. The earliest starting date is January 2018. Electronic submissions should be sent to Matthew Chalk (matthewjchalk@gmail.com <mailto:matthewjchalk@gmail.com>). Feel free to ask any informal questions if you are interested.