Data-Driven Brain Dynamics Scientist

Allen Institute; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 87,000 - 108,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Work visa sponsorship

Job summary

The Allen Institute's Neural Dynamics accelerator seeks a Scientist to develop data-driven theories of how circuit structure shapes neural computation. The Scientist will use the Institute's large-scale connectivity atlases and brain-wide recordings to understand how the brain's wiring organizes neural dynamics and drives flexible behavior.

The role involves distilling theories from connectivity data and spike trains across thousands of neurons and multiple brain regions.

Qualifications

• PhD in neuroscience, physics, applied mathematics, statistics or related field; or equivalent combination of degree and experience.
• Demonstrated ability to build theories of collective dynamics in systems of many interacting elements.
• Strong scientific-computing skills and familiarity with modern machine learning.

Responsibilities

• Develop mechanistic models of many interacting neurons that can be fit directly to connectivity and neural activity data.
• Derive coarse-grained descriptions of these models, reducing them to a small number of variables that reveal which features of connectivity govern neural dynamics.
• Characterize the space of models consistent with a given dataset, and determine how connectivity constrains that space.
• Develop theories for how different perturbations narrow that space, and use them to identify the most informative experiments to perform next.
• Collaborate with experimentalists to turn theory into testable hypotheses about neural computation.
• Present results to collaborators and the wider scientific community through talks, conferences, and publications.

Skills

Scientific computing

Modern ML

Experiment collaboration

Education

PhD in neuroscience/physics/math/statistics

Job description

The Allen Institute's Neural Dynamics accelerator seeks a Scientist to develop data-driven theories of how circuit structure shapes neural computation. The Scientist will use the Institute's large-scale connectivity atlases and brain-wide recordings to understand how the brain's wiring organizes neural dynamics and drives flexible behavior.

The role involves distilling theories from connectivity data and spike trains across thousands of neurons and multiple brain regions.