Project Description:
The Assistant Project Scientist will be expected to lead the design, implementation and analysis of computational methods used to track free-moving animals under experimental conditions with the goal of understanding how individual behavioral trajectories change over the animal's lifetime. The candidate will review the status of currently available tracking technologies and adapt these methods to best suit the laboratory's research goals and experimental animal system. The candidate will be responsible for designing and implementing cutting-edge analytical pipelines to extract behavioral information from the resulting tracking data. The candidate will be expected to publish these results in appropriate scientific journals. The candidate will lead quarterly meetings to train other lab members in the use of the tracking pipelines and assist with necessary adaptations of this system for each lab member's research goals. The candidate will be expected to present their research locally or at national/international scientific meetings and serve as a reviewer for scientific journals. Strong interpersonal skills, organizational skills, mentorship capabilities and leadership qualities are essential for this position as they will mentor several lab members (graduate and undergraduate researchers) as part of their position.

Major responsibilities:
Research (80%): Candidate is expected to lead the design, implementation and analysis of computational methods used to track free-moving animals under experimental conditions with the goal of understanding how individual behavioral trajectories change over the animal's lifetime. The candidate will review the status of currently available tracking technologies and adapt these methods to best suit the laboratory's research goals and experimental animal system. The candidate will be responsible for designing and implementing cutting-edge analytical pipelines to extract behavioral information from the resulting tracking data. The candidate will be expected to publish the results of the work described above and may also submit research grants to support the development of new projects.
Professional competency and activity (10%): Candidate will present research locally or at national/international scientific meetings and serve as a reviewer for scientific journals.
University and Public service (10%): Candidate will participate in University service by mentoring graduate and undergraduate researchers with the aim of assisting them in developing and implementing their own research goals.

Qualified candidate must hold a Doctorate in Science (PhD) and have at least 2 years' research experience post-PhD in either computational or behavioral biology. Successful candidates will have a deep knowledge of the current state of the literature on individual behavioral development and the currently available tracking technologists including both hardware set-ups (e.g. use of mini electronic boards like Raspberry Pis) and analytical pipelines (e.g. tracking algorithms like T-rex, SLEAP, DeepLabCut). The candidate will have experience designing behaviorally based experiments on laboratory animals, analyzing such datasets with statistical methods, maintaining coding pipelines through version control programs such as Git, interpreting results and writing scientific manuscripts.

Published track record of experience in behavioral biology and/or computational tracking method development. Experience in working on long-term projects with minimal day-today supervision. The successful candidate will also have experience working in collaborative teams and mentoring graduate and/or undergraduate students.

Experience with designing custom or adapting currently available tracking systems for free-moving animals. This includes experience with programming mini electronic boards (e.g. Raspberry Pis, Arduinos), proficiency in at least 1 scripting language (e.g. R, python), experience with unix-based operating systems, experience managing and analyzing large datasets (>1TB) and training classic and/or AI-based tracking algorithms (e.g. T-rex, SLEAP, DeepLabCut). Experience working with vertebrate laboratory-animal colonies including familiarity with managing animal care protocols is strongly preferred.

• 3 required (contact information only)

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