jeudi 14 juin 2012

Vacancy for Two Post-Docs

I would be interested to have one or two postdoctoral fellow that want to work integrated with our group. As many of you probably know, the Uruguayan Agency of Reseach and Innovation has started a postdoctoral program. It is exclusive for persons (no matter nationality) who have recently obtained their their PhD and who have lived for three last years out of our country.

I am attaching the official call (also see http://www.anii.org.uy/web/convocatorias/becas-de-posdoctorado-fondo-profesor-dr-roberto-caldeyro-barcia). It is paid the round ticket and a fellowship equivalent to U$S 2000 per month (a very good salary in our country). If you know somebody interested please forward him/her this email. Deadline for this program is July 23rd, however I would like to met the applicant at least one month before, so we can agree about the outline of the project. The start of the fellowship is negotiable but will not be before next march (according to my last extra official information on evaluation timing) and not latter our southern spring in 2013.

The general subject of the work should be "Neural integration between central expectations and sensory signals". We have, at present, two main ongoing research lines on this topic, one in the ELL of electric fish (focused on pulse Gymnotids) and the other in humans.

In electric fish we are able to do classical anatomy, electrophysiology (either in brain slices or in vivo), behaviour and modelling. The applicant would be ideally somebody with experience either in slice work or in vivo electrophysiology and work in close collaboration with two advanced PhD students.

In humans we combine psycho physics and EEG to analyse this problem. For this research line I would like that the candidate has some experience on signal analysis and computer programming (for example, an engineer or mathematician) and to be potentially interested in cooperating with a partner group for exploring the possibility to build a brain-machine interface.

In addition to these research lines we have a long term tradition in comparative study of electric organs either in adults or during development (this last aspect in cooperation with María Castelló). Ideally somebody with background in "evo-devo" would be the best candidatein this case. Nevertheless, we do not have at present the necessary funds for a project involving field work in other countries beside Uruguay. Although this could be another option, it requires that the applicant could apply (and get) funds for such kind of project either in his/her own country or internationally (I would be able to help writ ting such grant application although most sources of funds for this kind of projects are virtually void for Latino American citizens excluding Brazilians).

We had had (and plan to continue if possible) very fruitful cooperation with groups from the US and Europe as for example those leaded by Curtis Bell, Kirsty Grant, Fred Boyer, Pascal Fua, Auke Ijspeert, Gerhard vonder Emde, Serge Kernbach, Will Crampton, James Albert. Many other people on the field of electric fish know well our work to give an independent referece on our lab. Some of these projects has been financed in the past by agencies as NIH, NSF and the 7th framework program of the EU.

Please contact me at caputiangel@gmail.com if you are interested or have questions.