Apologies for cross-posting:

The laboratory of Dr. Martin Vinck at the Ernst Struengmann Institute for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society is seeking multiple candidates for computational neuroscience Ph.D. positions to be filled in Spring/Early Summer 2019. Positions are fully funded. These positions encompass following projects:

1) Theoretical and data-analytical approaches to population coding in the nervous system. These include:

• Mathematical approaches to understand the relationship between rate and temporal coding.
• Development of unsupervised machine learning techniques to study neuronal patterns in high-dimensional state-spaces, with an emphasis on temporal sequencies in neural activity. This work builds further on our recent Plos Computational Biology paper.
• Study of state-space trajectories on short time-scales.

2) Study of travelling wave patterns from electrode arrays. The goal here is to detect different kinds of spatio-temporal travelling wave patterns and understand how they relate to behavior and sensory stimulation.

3) The study of predictive coding using deep learning network models. These projects include:

• Use of deep learning models for predictive coding models, and optimization of learning strategies in unsupervised learning models.
• Predicting features of neural activity from these models.

4) Development of algorithms and open-source platform for efficient analysis of high-dimensional neural datasets on high-performance computing clusters and GPUs in Julia or Python. The focus is on the extraction of network correlation measures in high-dimensional spiking datasets, and the development of new tools to quantify Granger-causality and spike-field coherence.

PhD students will work together with experimental neuroscientists in our laboratory and apply methods and models on experimental datasets from primate and rodent animal models. Experiments in the laboratory include multi-areal electrophysiology with sillicon probes together with optogenetics. It is also possible for PhD students to participate actively in these experiments.

We are primarily looking for students with training in a quantitative discipline (physics, electrical or biomedical engineering, computer science, mathematics, etc.), or neuroscientists with additional quantitative training. Some experience with neuroscience, or a proven interest in neuroscience, is a pre, but not a must.

Frankfurt is an internationally oriented city with many prestigious neuroscience institutes in the neighbourhood, e.g. the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research , the FIAS and the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience.

Major collaborator on this project is Dr. Francesco Battaglia from the Donders Centre, Nijmegen.

Interested candidates are invited to send their application materials in electronic form (PDF format) to martin.vinck@esi-frankfurt.de

Applications should contain a letter of intent, a detailed curriculum vitae, lists of university courses completed with marks obtained, and the names of at least two scientists who can give references (or at least two reference letters). Please indicate which projects are of your core interest. First deadline is 15th of April. The advertisement will be valid until positions are filled.