Research Scientist​/Engineer, Deep Brain Two Photon Imaging and Optogenetics

Company Overview

Astera Neuro, part of the Astera Institute, is building the tools to decipher and ultimately write the neural codes behind perception, thought, behavior, and internal state. Since these tools don't yet exist, we're assembling a founding team of neuroscientists, computational scientists, and engineers to build them (hardware, software, and methods) and use them to study neural activity at unprecedented scale, with direct relevance to neurological and psychiatric disease.

We do high-risk, high-reward science in a well-resourced, collaborative environment with competitive pay, and share our work openly under Astera's Open Science Policy.

Astera Neuro, part of the Astera Institute, is building the tools to decipher and ultimately write the neural codes behind perception, thought, behavior, and internal state. Since these tools don't yet exist, we're assembling a founding team of neuroscientists, computational scientists, and engineers to build them (hardware, software, and methods) and use them to study neural activity at unprecedented scale, with direct relevance to neurological and psychiatric disease.

We do high-risk, high-reward science in a well-resourced, collaborative environment with competitive pay, and share our work openly under Astera's Open Science Policy.

We'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 r initial assignment is to develop and optimize an optical implant for high resolution two photon imaging and optogenetics deep in the brain.

While parallel Astera efforts target surface structures with conventional cranial windows, many key structures for cognition sit in brain sulci, millimeters below the surface. You'll oversee the full toolkit development: optimizing the optics (GRIN lenses, micro prisms, micro-objectives), the surgical implantation procedure, and integration with the two photon holographic microscope. The work spans optical engineering to systems and cognitive neuroscience. The ideal candidate is an experimentalist who can carry the work end-to-end: designing a GRIN lens system in the morning, running a closed-loop holographic write-in on the rig in the afternoon, and writing the population-analysis pipeline that evening.

You want institutional support and the freedom to move fast on a problem that matters.

• Design and iterate GRIN lens and/or micro prism 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.
• Run holographic targeting, power calibration, and closed-loop stimulation on the all-optical rig, working with our optics engineering team.
• Lead computational analysis of large-scale neural population data, including dimensionality reduction, population decoding, GLMs, and circuit-level inference.
• Set the viral and transgenic expression strategy, including soma-targeted opsin and GCaMP.
• Perform rodent survival surgery for the initial validation: stereotaxic viral injection, chronic cranial-window implantation, and headbar installation.
• Mentor research associates and technicians – and, at the senior or principal level, more junior scientists; contribute to hiring, onboarding, and lab culture.
• Contribute to publications, talks, open data and tooling releases, and engagement with the broader scientific community.

• PhD with 0-4 years of experience in neuroscience, bioengineering, physics, or a related field, or equivalent research…