Description:
Two postdoctoral positions are available in the University of Pittsburgh Departments of Neurosurgery and Psychology. The research involves the use of invasive deep brain electrical recording and stimulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease to study subcortical contributions to speech production. One of the Postdoctoral Associates will work closely with a mentorship team led by Dr. Mark Richardson and the other will work closely with a mentorship team led by Julie Fiez. Support for this position comes from 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. Other co-Investigators include Tom Mitchell and Lori Holt (CMU), Diane Litman, Rob Turner, Sue Shaiman and Mike Dickey (Pitt), Stan Anderson and Nathan Crone (JHU).
Research Description:
An abstract of the U01 grant can be found here: https://goo.gl/IzfOFn
A major strength of this project is the complimentary nature of extensive, multi-disciplinary expertise from team members at the University of Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins University and Carnegie Mellon University. This combined expertise allows us to employ a novel combination of classical analytic methods and more recent machine learning methods for supervised and exploratory analyses to document the neural dynamics of basal ganglia and cortical activity during speech production.
Job Responsibilities:
Assume an integrated role in all aspects of 1) administration of behavioral protocols, 2) intraoperative speech data collection, with advisory role for pre- and post-surgical data collection, 3) data analysis performed independently, including application of speech processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze collected data, and 4) manuscript and grant writing.
Qualifications:
Ph.D. in computational neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, communication science, engineering, bioengineering, or equivalent; previous research experience in computational neuroscience, neurolinguistics, or speech-language processing desired, along with expertise in MATLAB, acoustic signal processing and behavioral studies of human speech.