Research Fellow

Fixed term for a period of 36 months

Grade 7 – Starting salary £28,982 a year, in a range up to £37,768 a year, with potential progression to £40,082 a year.

Applications are invited for a 3-year postdoctoral position with Dr. Joe Galea (josephgalea.weebly.com) at University of Birmingham, UK (www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/psychology/index.aspx).

The successful candidate will work on an ERC starting grant (lab of Dr. Joseph Galea) which will build upon recent work from the lab that has shown reward and punishment-based feedback to have dissociable effects on motor learning. Using a combination of behavioural analysis, genetics, pharmacology and modelling techniques this project will provide the first in-depth behavioural and neural account of the role of motivation (reward/punishment) in motor learning. Based on this work, novel motor learning-based interventions will be developed for stroke patients suffering long-term motor impairments.

For 1^st of October 2016, we are looking to appoint a highly motivated candidate for a postdoctoral position. This role is aimed at developing a set of motor learning based tasks (model-based/ reinforcement/ use-dependent) that will be used to examine motivation in a range of motor learning settings. The post holder will be responsible for the programming of these tasks, testing them in a large set of healthy volunteers (who we will also collect genetic data from) and for the analysis of the behavioural data (kinematic/computational models).

The successful candidate will have a PhD in Psychology, Physiology, Neuroscience, Engineering, Physics or Maths and have extensive experience with programming and running motor control/learning studies. Ideally they will be familiar with the KINARM end-point robot (B.KIN technologies) and/or be an expert with Simulink/Matlab (graphical-based programming). An ability to analyse behavioural data with matlab and perform computational analysis would be ideal. Finally they should have evidence of good academic writing and presentation skills through conference presentations and a strong (recent) publication record.

The successful candidate would join a large motor control/learning group at the University of Birmingham. My lab has access to 6 robotic/motion capturing systems, genetic testing, TMS, tDCS, 3-T MRI scanner, EEG, a large database of healthy young/older adults and stroke patients. The department was recently ranked 5^th in the UK for research in psychology/neuroscience (REF 2014) with over half of its research activity judged as world-leading.

Informal enquiries should be directed to: Dr. Joseph Galea for the University of Birmingham post (j.galea@bham.ac.uk).

To download the details and submit an electronic application online please click on the Apply Online button below; please quote Job Reference in all enquiries. Alternatively information can be obtained from 0121 415 9000 or visit www.hr.bham.ac.uk/jobs

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