Research Scientist Multiregional Electrophysiology of Rodent Cognition
Astera Institute is an active nonprofit research institute and foundation that operates in-house neuroscience-informed AI research and funds, operates, and supports open-science programs and public goods.
About Astera Institute
Astera operates three divisions: Neuro-AI, Radial life-sciences research, and its Foundation. Its AI work pursues neuroscience-informed approaches to artificial general intelligence, while its foundation and Radial activities support open scientific infrastructure, datasets, research programs, and residencies.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will design mouse behavioral paradigms, perform multiregional Neuropixels recordings and survival surgeries, combine recording with optical perturbation, analyze neural population data, define expression strategies, and mentor research staff.
Requirements
- PhD or equivalent research experience in neuroscience, bioengineering, physics, or a related field
- Hands-on mouse survival surgery experience with stereotaxic injections, headbars, chronic cranial windows, and craniotomies
- Experience with in vivo extracellular electrophysiology in awake, behaving rodents using high-density silicon probes
- Scientific computing proficiency for neural-data analysis using Python and/or MATLAB
- Experience with Kilosort, SpikeGLX, or comparable pipelines
- Experience training head-fixed rodents on behavioral tasks
Responsibilities
- Define cognitive processes and experimental questions for mouse studies
- Design and iterate head-fixed behavioral paradigms
- Perform high-density, multiregional Neuropixels recordings during behavior
- Combine electrophysiology with two-photon imaging and holographic photostimulation
- Lead computational analysis of large-scale neural population data
- Set viral and transgenic expression strategies
- Perform mouse survival surgeries, including stereotaxic injections, headbar installation, cranial-window implantation, craniotomies, and chronic implants
- Mentor research associates and technicians
- Contribute to publications, talks, open data, tooling releases, and scientific-community engagement