Postdoctoral Associate (Ma Lab)

The laboratory of Weiji Ma at New York University (http://www.cns.nyu.edu/malab) is looking for a postdoc to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms of multi-step planning across species. This position is based in New York and the selected candidate will be expected to work onsite as of their effective start date.

Research description: Previous work in the lab has developed game-based experimental paradigms for studying multi-step planning and has laid the foundation for the cognitive modeling of human decisions, response times, and eye movements during a variety of planning tasks. The postdoc will build on this work and a) design and run human behavioral experiments on adaptive multi-step planning; b) develop theoretical frameworks for understanding human choices, response times, and eye movements in lab experiments, and human choices and response times in large online data sets; b) perform data analysis and computational modeling for a collaboration with a non-human primate lab that studies the neural basis of planning using a task developed in our lab.

Job description: The postdoc will be involved in project development, experimental design and data collection (for human experiments only), data analysis, computational modeling, manuscript writing, and dissemination of results. There will likely be opportunities to mentor a Ph.D. student. The postdoc will be part of the lab community and will have access to the broader cognitive science, neuroscience, and data science communities at NYU.

Lab culture: The lab cares deeply about mentorship quality, a nurturing lab culture, a sense of belonging, and work-life balance. For more details, see http://www.cns.nyu.edu/malab/lablife.html and http://www.cns.nyu.edu/malab/community.html

In compliance with NYC’s Pay Transparency Act, the annual base salary range for this position is $65,000 - $70,000. New York University considers factors such as (but not limited to) the specific grant funding and the terms of the research grant when extending an offer.

Ph.D. is required for this position. We are looking for someone with a proven interest in the cognitive mechanisms of human decision-making and deep expertise in the computational modeling of behavioral and/or neural data. Experience in developing experimental paradigms based on games is a plus.