I was awarded an NSF grant on “Cognitive and Neural Processes in Realistic, Complex Environments” to study how the brain processes social information and I am looking for postdocs. Our work centers around a large outdoor “smart” aviary capable of tracking moment-to-moment behavioral interactions in a network of cowbirds over the entire breeding season. These birds are much larger than zebra finches (42 grams) and therefore quite amenable for neural recording. They also have a rich repertoire of social behaviors (both vocal as well as postural). Using computational approaches, we aim to estimate social network state to probe how brain dynamics to social signals (e.g. song and other courtship displays) are modulated by context.
The ideal candidate would have a strong computational background and be familiar with computer vision approaches to studying behavior. They would also have some experience in neurophysiological recording but this is not a requirement. This project is based primarily at the University of Pennsylvania and is a collaboration between my lab (neurobiology; behavior), two engineering labs (Kostas Daniilidis in Computer vision and Firooz Aflatouni in Electrical Engineering) and two Computational Biology labs (Vijay Balasubramanian, Penn Physics and Clelia De Mulatier, U. Amsterdam, Theoretical Physics).
Please email me directly if you are interested: marcschm@sas.upenn.edu. You can also find more details about the project at: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/marcschmidtlab/postdoc-position-for-nsf-funded-smart-aviary-project/
Marc Schmidt
Department of Biology
University of Pennsylvania