Postdoctoral fellowship: Computational modeling of reading

Right now you are reading. It does not cost you much effort because it is a highly automated process, but you are simultaneously decoding letters, moving visual attention, programming eye movements, recognizing words, stringing them together in a coherent syntactic and semantic representation, and adducing the intentions of the writer. We understand these individual processes in reading, but not how our brain can perform them simultaneously at the phenomenal speed of about 200 ms per word. Recently, a group of researchers in Marseille and Amsterdam has collaborated on the ambitious goal to create one computational model that describes all processes involved in reading, from the single letter up to understanding a sentence.

Within this collaboration, there is an opening for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to work on computational modelling. The candidate will work on extending the already published OB-1 model (Psychological Review, 2018). While the exact direction taken may depend on the interests of the candidate, this will include improving word recognition processes and accounting for EEG responses recorded during reading.

Practicalities

The postdoc will work in Amsterdam in the group of Martijn Meeter, but also be expected to regularly visit the Marseille group of Jonathan Grainger. The two-year position is potentially renewable for a third year. Official employer will be Université Aix-Marseille, including a one-year trial period. A postdoc salary in France is about €2606 a month; travel costs will be covered. Starting date is preferably 1 September 2019, but other dates can be discussed.

Required skills are:

• Experience with computational modelling
• Good to excellent programming skills, notably in Python
• An interest in language as field of research

The positions are part of an ERC grant to Jonathan Grainger. More information can be requested at i.jonathan.grainger@gmail.com or m@meeter.nl. To apply, please send an email before 1 June with as title “Postdoc computational model”to m@meeter.nl , with as attachments:

• a letter of application,
• your resume
• names of two references (will only be contacted with your permission),

Best,

Martijn Meeter