Junior Research Scientist Center Brain and Health; CBH; Dr. David Melcher

NYU Abu Dhabi is pioneering a new model of higher education for a global world, dedicated to excellence in teaching and research and to advancing cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. Drawing on the strengths of the NYU global network, it offers an outstanding liberal arts and sciences education to students from the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and around the world, with a distinctive focus on intercultural understanding and leadership.

It supports innovative research and graduate education programs that push forward the frontiers of knowledge and respond in powerful and interdisciplinary ways to vital global and local challenges.

The Perception and Active Cognition Laboratory in the Center for Brain & Health, New York University Abu Dhabi, seeks to recruit a junior research scientist to work on the mechanisms underlying cognitive and perceptual Speed of Processing.

The successful applicant will drive a fascinating project on the interactions between sleep, circadian rhythms, stress and Speed of Processing, in both healthy participants and in patients with Multiple Sclerosis (and potentially other health and mental health conditions). The Research Scientist will ensure the successful acquisition and analysis of experimental data, including behavioral and neuroimaging (EEG/MEG and/or MRI) data. These studies will be informed by computational modeling and will use cutting‑edge data analysis methods.

The project will build on recent work from the Melcher lab on the neural mechanisms underlying individual and clinical differences in visual temporal resolution and in classic measures of Speed of Processing such as the SDMT, as well as recent studies from our lab showing an influence of mood and stress on these measures.

Applicants must have at least a Bachelor’s degree in a field related to this project, or a Masters degree with less than 5 years of experience. Previous experience in similar research paradigms (behavioral and/or neuroimaging experiments with human participants) is required. Applicants with a strong background in coding (such as in Python or Matlab) are particularly encouraged to apply.

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. Times Higher Education ranks NYU among the top 30 universities in the world, making NYU Abu Dhabi the highest‑ranked university in the UAE and MENA region. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly selective undergraduate curriculum across the disciplines with a world center for advanced research and scholarship.

The university enables its students in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and arts to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s high‑achieving students have come from over 120 countries and speak over 100 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study‑abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents.

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