NIH-supported Postdoctoral Associate
University of Pittsburgh
A computational speech and language postdoctoral position is available in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurosurgery’s Brain Modulation Laboratory. The Postdoctoral Fellow will work closely with a mentorship team led by Julie Fiez, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, in collaboration with co-mentors Mark Richardson, Professor of Neurological Surgery, and Diane Litman, Professor of Computer Science. This position provides guaranteed funding for at least 3 years, through a recently awarded BRAIN Initiative grant (Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain, U01), for which Dr. Richardson is the PI. The U01 project will use invasive deep brain electrical recording and stimulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease to study subcortical contributions to speech production.
We have two additional positions open, both of which involve primary mentorship by Mark Richardson: 1) another position specific to the U01 project, but focused on the neurophysiology of speech and language, and 2) a position that will bridge the U01 project to ongoing studies using MEG, and potentially to future studies related to auditory processing in the basal ganglia.
Research Description:
An abstract of the U01 grant can be found here: https://goo.gl/IzfOFn
The job posting can be viewed here: http://postdocjobs.hs.pitt.edu/ViewPost.aspx?q=854
The Fellow will be part of a multidisciplinary project involving researchers affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Johns Hopkins. In Pittsburgh, the research group includes Michael Walsh Dickey (Communication Science and Disorders; speech comprehension and aphasia), Julie Fiez (Psychology; neural basis of speech, language and reading), Lori Holt (Psychology; auditory and speech processing and learning), Diane Litman (Computer Science; computational paralinguistics via machine learning and acoustic-prosodic analysis of speech), Tom Mitchell (Machine Learning; neural basis of word processing), Mark Richardson (Neurosurgery; human neurophysiology and clinical use of deep brain stimulation), Susan Shaiman (Communication Science and Disorders; normal and disordered motor speech control), and Rob Turner (Neurobiology; basal ganglia neurophysiology).