Fwd: postdoc position at MIT

POSITION OPENING: We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher for a 1-year position (possibly extendable by another year), to work in an interdisciplinary project investigating the representation of semantic information in the brain and how it is used during sentence comprehension. The project is a collaborative effort across the labs of Ev Fedorenko (MGH/MIT) and Nancy Kanwisher (MIT), within a team in the IARPA Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems program, led by Francisco Pereira (Siemens). The ultimate goal of the team is to build a computational model of the process of language comprehension at the sentence and/or text level, and validate it with behavioral and brain imaging data. Target start date is as soon as possible. RESPONSIBILITIES: Leading one or more components of the project, including designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data (plus overseeing data collection / analyses carried out by graduate students / lab tech working on this project), presenting the results at conferences, and writing up the results for publication. The interdisciplinary nature of the project means that we will be carrying out experiments to inform the building of models of semantic representation of words and sentences from text corpora and curated resources. These will, in turn, be used to help design more informative experiments or carry out other analyses. This presents a unique opportunity for a postdoc to acquire new skills; for example, if the postdoc has a cognitive neuroscience background s/he will be expected to interact closely with the model developers in the team and learn about and leverage the techniques that they use. REQUIREMENTS: We are looking for individuals with a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Computer Science, Psychology, Cognitive Science, or related fields. Strong quantitative skills are a must. Other desirable knowledge / skills include: i) machine learning, ii) natural language processing, and iii) collection, preprocessing and analysis of brain imaging data (using SPM, FSL or AFNI). SEND APPLICATIONS TO: Ev Fedorenko (evelina9(a)mit.edu). Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled.