Scientist, Neural Circuits Theory & Data-Driven Modeling

Allen Institute; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 87,000 - 108,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

The Allen Institute is hiring a Scientist I in Neural Circuits Theory to develop data-driven theories of how circuit structure shapes neural computation. You will leverage large-scale connectivity atlases and brain-wide recordings to distill computation from connectivity data and thousands of neurons’ spike trains across regions.

The role emphasizes creating mechanistic models, deriving reduced descriptions, and collaborating with experimentalists to test hypotheses.

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 features of connectivity and wiring.
• Characterize the space of models consistent with a given dataset and determine how connectivity constrains that space.
• Develop theories for how perturbations narrow that space and identify 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

Machine learning

Statistics

Theoretical modeling

Scientific computing

Collaborative skills

Education

PhD in neuroscience

PhD in physics

PhD in applied mathematics

PhD in statistics

Tools

Python

ML frameworks

Job description

The Allen Institute is hiring a Scientist I in Neural Circuits Theory to develop data-driven theories of how circuit structure shapes neural computation. You will leverage large-scale connectivity atlases and brain-wide recordings to distill computation from connectivity data and thousands of neurons’ spike trains across regions.

The role emphasizes creating mechanistic models, deriving reduced descriptions, and collaborating with experimentalists to test hypotheses.