Dear
Colleagues,
Please
find below an announcement for a postdoc position in
Marseille
(France) to develop reinforcement learning-based
models of
animal behavior.
The
Turing Centre for Living Systems in Marseille seeks
applicants for a
postdoc position in computational
neuroscience/robotics under the
joint supervision of David Robbe and Christophe
Eloy. The initial
appointment will be for 2 years.
The
goal of this project is to understand, at an
algorithmic level, how
animals learn to develop adaptive behavior by
trial-and-error
interaction with their environment. We propose an
interdisciplinary
approach combining behavioral experiments in rats
and the development
of an "artificial" agent facing challenges similar
to those
experienced by the rats. The experimental data
(already available)
show that rats challenged in a time estimation task
converged
progressively toward a conserved embodied strategy
(Rueda-Orozco and
Robbe, Nature Neuroscience, 2015). Key determinants
of that strategy
have been isolated experimentally, by altering task
rules and
environment and quantifying how these alterations
affect animal
performance. Learning theoretical models will be
based on reinforcement learning
and more recent developments coming from artificial
intelligence
(deep learning).
The
main task of the project will be to develop
computational model and therefore we expect the
candidates to have a solid
background in the gerenal field of machine learning.
The successful applicant will work in
close collaboration with experimentalists and
robotic engineers. We
are therefore looking for an enthusiastic applicant
with excellent
communication skills and a track record in
interdisciplinary
collaborative environments
Deadline
for application: 1st of December 2018 (late application will be considered until the end of
the year)
More
information and application.
http://centuri-livingsystems.org/pdp2018-11/