Role OverviewWe're hiring a PhD-level scientist/engineer to join Astera Neuro's neuroscience team, working to read, write, and perturb the contents of cognition in the primate brain at single-cell resolution. Astera Neuro is Astera's initiative to decode how patterns of neural activity become the thoughts, perceptions, and memories of conscious experience. We work from the hypothesis that the brain uses a compositional architecture, and we aim to move neuroscience from observation to engineering by reading from and writing to neural circuits at scale.
What You Will Do
Design and iterate GRIN lens and/or microprism assembly for deep brain imaging in the primate brain, with early optimization in rodents. Develop and help execute the surgical implantation procedure. Run two-photon imaging and holographic photostimulation experiments: read population activity during the task, then write in and perturb the held representation at single-cell resolution.
Why It Might Be a Fit
You will design the implants, help perform the survival surgeries it depends on, and run the two-photon holographic optogenetics that causally manipulates cognition. This work sits within Astera Neuro’s larger effort to answer the hardest and least understood questions in neuroscience: how the brain generates thoughts, intelligence, and consciousness.
Requirements
- PhD with 0-4 years of experience in neuroscience, bioengineering, physics, or a related field, or equivalent research experience
- Hands-on rodent and/or primate survival surgery experience; stereotaxic injections
- Hands-on experience with in vivo two-photon calcium imaging and/or holographic (SLM-based) optogenetics in rodents or primates
- Practical experience with two-photon systems: optical alignment, system characterization, and in vivo use
- Proficiency in scientific computing for neural-data analysis; Python and/or MATLAB, with Suite2p, CaImAn, or comparable pipelines
Benefits
- comprehensive benefits package
- total compensation that is competitive and commensurate with the level of experience and qualifications
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