Lead Rodent Cognition & Multiregional Electrophysiology

astera; Alameda (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Astera Neuro is seeking an experimental neuroscientist to join the rodent neuroscience team and use large-scale neural recordings to study how the brain builds and uses an internal model of the world. You will define cognitive processes and behavioral paradigms for mice, performing Neuropixels recordings with perturbations across brain regions.

You will lead data analysis, coordinate surgical procedures, and mentor juniors, contributing to publications and community engagement while upholding

Qualifications

• PhD with 0–4 years of experience in neuroscience, bioengineering, physics, or related field.
• Hands-on mouse survival surgery experience: stereotaxic injections, headbars, chronic cranial windows, and craniotomies.
• Hands-on experience with in vivo extracellular electrophysiology in awake, behaving rodents, including high-density silicon probes (Neuropixels).
• Proficiency in scientific computing for neural-data analysis, in Python and/or MATLAB, with Kilosort, SpikeGLX, or comparable pipelines.
• Experience training head-fixed rodents on behavioral tasks.

Responsibilities

• Define cognitive processes and experimental questions in mice and design head-fixed behavioral paradigms.
• Perform high-density, multiregional electrophysiology (Neuropixels) recording across brain areas during behavior.
• Combine electrophysiology with optical perturbation (two-photon imaging, holographic photostimulation) and assess consequences.
• Lead computational analysis of large-scale neural data, including spike sorting, dimensionality reduction, and modeling.
• Set viral/transgenic expression strategies and conduct survival surgery for chronic recording.
• Mentor researchers and contribute to hiring, onboarding, and lab culture.

Skills

Mouse survival surgery

In vivo electrophysiology

Neural-data analysis (Python/MATLAB)

Head-fixed behavioral training

Data pipelines (Kilosort/SpikeGLX)

Education

PhD in neuroscience, bioengineering, physics or related

Tools

Neuropixels probes

Two-photon imaging

SLM-based holographic photostimulation

Kilosort

SpikeGLX

Job description

Astera Neuro is seeking an experimental neuroscientist to join the rodent neuroscience team and use large-scale neural recordings to study how the brain builds and uses an internal model of the world. You will define cognitive processes and behavioral paradigms for mice, performing Neuropixels recordings with perturbations across brain regions.

You will lead data analysis, coordinate surgical procedures, and mentor juniors, contributing to publications and community engagement while upholding