Fwd: PhD in Computational Psychiatry

The Translational Neuromodeling Unit (TNU) headed by Prof. Klaas Enno Stephan is a newly founded division of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). Its mission is to translate advances in computational neuroscience into clinically useful diagnostic tools. To this end, the TNU brings together modellers, experimentalists and clinicians who jointly develop mathematical models of brain (dys)function and evaluate their diagnostic use for psychiatry and neurology in patient studies. We have access to a wide range of experimental facilities - including fMRI (3T & 7T), EEG, TMS, eye tracking - and are presently setting up a research clinic for patient studies. For more information, see http://www.translationalneuromodeling.org. The TNU invites applications for a doctoral student (PhD) position (duration 3 years). The topic concerns the development of decision-making experiments and mathematical models to answer specific clinical questions in psychiatric settings, such as the origin of the comorbidity between depression and anxiety, the length of an acute episode or predicting relapse in addiction. The project will first focus on developing decision-making models and experiments appropriate to the clinical question. The models will be psychologically and neurobiologically informed to maximize the chances of characterizing the relevant "hidden" neural processes from behavior, eye movements and imaging data. The successful applicant will primarily develop these models and conduct the experiments in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Essential qualifications and interests include both strong interests in psychopathology and mathematics or statistics. The applicant has - Either a mathematical background (e.g., a degree in engineering, physics, computer science, statistics, mathematical psychology, mathematical biology, machine learning or computational neuroscience) and a strong interest in psychopathology - Or a background in psychopathology (e.g. a degree in clinical psychology, experimental psychology, medicine, public health, neuroscience or epidemiology) and strong interest in mathematical methods Further essential qualifications are strong programming skills, an enjoyment of inter-disciplinary interactions with experimentalists and clinicians, a "team player" attitude, and an interest in biomedical questions and real-world applications of computational models. Additionally, the ideal applicant has experience with - Bayesian methods, and/or machine learning, - conducting or analyzing experimental data. The position is available immediately. Interested students should submit their applications (incl. CV, names of at least two referees, and a brief letter of motivation outlining their interests and explaining why they meet the above requirements) to Quentin Huys (tnu-jobs(a)biomed.ee.ethz.ch). Applications will be considered until the position has been filled.