There is an opening for a 3-year postdoc position in computational neuroscience in the Senn lab at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

The position is part of a collaborative project with the Herzog and Gerstner labs at EPFL on “Learning from delayed and sparse feedback”, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNFS). We aim at understanding how perceptual learning and decision making may jointly improve based on a delayed feedback. Our group studies the combination of unsupervised and reinforcement learning in cortical networks of spiking neurons. We are interested in biologically realistic reinforcement learning algorithms that are both amenable to a theoretical understanding and consistent with data on human learning recorded in the Herzog lab. The work extends previous models of reinforcement learning and decision making in populations of spiking neurons in our lab (see http://www.physio.unibe.ch/~senn/neuroscience.aspx)

Ideal candidates for the PhD position have a Master in Theoretical Physics or a related area, and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience with a strong theoretical component. Please send CV with scientific record and a statement of research interests (maximally 1 page), and arrange for 2 letters of recommendations to be sent to senn@pyl.unibe.ch. We will evaluate from September 15th, 2013, but later applications will also be considered.

We offer a dynamic working environment at the Department of Physiology, close interactions with the in-house experimental labs and the partners at EPFL, an exciting surrounding close to the Alps and close to Bern’s old city as UNESCO World Heritage, and last not least, Swiss salaries according to the SNFS guidelines.