[Neuroinfo] Postdoctoral positions in the Human Brain Project

[Andrew Davison]

Two postdoctoral positions are available within the Brain Simulation Platform of the Human Brain Project, to work on systematic model validation and on standards for model representation and sharing.

The postdocs will work with Dr Andrew Davison and his group in the CNRS UNIC laboratory, located in Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Both projects will involve extensive collaboration with other groups both within and external to HBP.

The positions are available immediately, and are funded until 31st March 2018 with future extensions possible. Salary depends on experience, and will be on the standard French research scale.


Qualifications:

Applicants should have a PhD in computer science, physics, computational neuroscience, systems biology, electrical engineering, or a related discipline, or be nearing completion of PhD studies.  Excellent skills in programming (preferably Python) are essential.

Expertise in computational neuroscience would be helpful but is not essential, as many aspects of the projects are transversal across simulation-based science. Knowledge of French would be helpful but is not required, as English is the working language of the project.


How to apply:

Send your CV, a brief statement of research interests and contact information for two references to andrew.davison at unic.cnrs-gif.fr. Informal inquiries are also welcome.


Further details:

The Human Brain Project (HBP; https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/) is an EU Flagship initiative in which over 100 partner institutions are working together to build a completely new information computing technology infrastructure for neuroscience and for brain-related research in medicine and computing, catalysing a global collaborative effort to understand the human brain and its diseases and ultimately to emulate its computational capabilities.

The Brain Simulation Platform is a subproject of HBP which aims to provide community-accessible infrastructure for data-driven neuroscience modelling and simulation and to support community-driven models of specific brain regions. The successful candidates will contribute to two tasks:

	1. Validation framework. This task will (i) develop services and tools to facilitate validation of data-driven neuroscience models; (ii) collaborate with modelling communities both within and external to HBP to perform model validation. The brain regions currently being actively modelled within HBP include somatosensory cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus and basal ganglia.

	2. Model representation and standards. Performant and standardised model representations and APIs are essential both for efficient HPC simulation workflows and for effective collaboration and sharing in the context of open science. This task will 
work with community partners and with model developers internal to HBP to adopt and/or develop standards for representing brain models, and for sharing them. The Task will work with the High Performance Computing and Neuromorphic Computing platforms of HBP to ensure that the APIs and model representations are consistent with high performance on both traditional HPC and neuromorphic computing systems. As far as possible the task will use and/or extend existing community standards (e.g. NeuroML, NineML, PyNN). 

UNIC (Unité de Neurosciences, Information et Complexité; http://www.unic.cnrs-gif.fr/) is a research unit of the CNRS, located on a parkland campus in Gif-sur-Yvette, about 40 minutes from central Paris. UNIC consists of seven research groups, with a shared focus on complexity in the dynamics of neocortical networks during sensory processing and perception, and using a range of experimental, theoretical and informatics approaches.