Research Associate / PhD Student at the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 940 – Volition and Cogni

At TU Dresden, Faculty of Psychology, the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 940 – Volition and Cognitive Control – invites applications for a position as

Research Associate / PhD Student

(Subject to personal qualification employees are remunerated according to salary group E 13 TV-L)

with 65 % of the fulltime weekly hours. The position starts as soon as possible and is initially limited until 30.06.2023. A contract extension is possible (max. until 30.06.2024). The period of employment is governed by the Fixed Term Research Contracts Act (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz - WissZeitVG). The position aims at obtaining further academic qualification (e.g. PhD).

The position is part of the Collaborative Research Centre 940 Volition and Cognitive Control (https://tinyurl.com/y7yh46r2). The CRC was established in 2012 by the German Research Foundation and will be funded for the next four years with approx. 10 million Euros. The CRC aims at identifying the cognitive and neuronal mechanisms, which underlie the volitional control of goal-directed actions as well as its dysfunctions in psychiatric disorders such as addiction or attention deficit disorders.

Topic: The position is part of the project A11 led by Prof. Katharina von Kriegstein and Prof. Hannes Ruge at the Chair of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience and the Chair of General Psychology. The goal is to experimentally test predictions of neuroscientific models of goal-directed actions. For examples of our work on these topics see (Ruge H et al., 2019 Elife; Zwosta K et al., 2018 Neuroimage). Experiments will involve fMRI, behavioural experiments, and formal meta-analyses. fMRI will include the use of spatially optimized sequences (see Mihai G et al., 2019 Elife) to assess subcortical structures, in particular high-level thalamic nuclei. Participants will be mostly healthy participants, but there will be strong collaborations with groups doing clinical work on addiction (CRC 940-A1) and anorexia nervosa (CRC 940-C3). There will also be strong collaborations on integrating the experimental work with computation modelling (CRC 940-A9).

Tasks: Planning and performing behavioural and neuroimaging experiments; data analysis; collaboration with computational neuroscientists and clinicians; publication of papers.

Requirements: University degree (master or diploma) in Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, Computational Neuroscience, or similar. A background in conducting and/or analysing neuroimaging data, e.g. fMRI or EEG is of advantage. Ideally, the candidate has programming skills e.g. in Matlab or Python.

The CRC 940 and TU Dresden provide an outstanding scientific infrastructure and ideal environment for interdisciplinary cooperation. Experiments will be performed at the Neuroimaging Centre (http://www.nic-tud.de). The Neuroimaging Centre is equipped with a research-only 3 Tesla MRI scanner, several EEG and eye tracking systems, and a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) unit. All experimental facilities are supported by experienced physicists and IT staff. For computational work, there is access to the TU Dresden high-performance computing clusters.

For questions about this position, please contact Prof. Hannes Ruge (hannes.ruge@tu-dresden.de) or Prof. Katharina von Kriegstein (katharina.von_kriegstein@tu-dresden.de).

Applications from women are particularly welcome. The same applies to people with disabilities.

Please submit your comprehensive application including all documents in one PDF-file in the following order: CV, a brief statement describing your personal qualifications and future research interests, contact information for two references, with the subject heading A11-PHD until 21.08.2020 (stamped arrival date of the university central mail service applies) preferably via the TU Dresden SecureMail Portal https://securemail.tu-dresden.de by sending it as a single pdf document to julia.herdin@tu-dresden.de or by mail to TU Dresden, Fakultät Psychologie, Institut für Allgemeine Psychologie, Biopsychologie und Methoden der Psychologie, Professur für Kognitive und Klinische Neurowissenschaft, Frau Prof. Katharina von Kriegstein, Helmholtzstr. 10, 01069 Dresden. Please submit copies only, as your application will not be returned to you. Expenses incurred in attending interviews cannot be reimbursed.

Reference to data protection: Your data protection rights, the purpose for which your data will be processed, as well as further information about data protection is available to you on the website: https://tu-dresden.de/karriere/datenschutzhinweis