Post Doctoral Assoc

Position Details

Position Information

Recruitment/Posting

Title:

Post Doctoral Assoc

Job Category:
Staff & Executive
- Healthcare
- Other

Department:
Brain Health Institute

Overview:
New Jersey's academic health center, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) takes an integrated approach to educating students, providing clinical care, and conducting research, all with the goal of improving human health. Aligned with Rutgers University-New Brunswick and collaborating university wide, RBHS includes eight schools, a behavioral health network, and five centers and institutes that focus on cancer treatment and research, neuroscience, advanced biotechnology and medicine, environmental and occupational health, and health care policy and aging research.

Our faculty are teachers, clinicians, and scientists with unparalleled experience who advance medical innovation and provide patient care informed by the latest research findings. We offer an outstanding education in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, nursing, biomedical research, and the full spectrum of allied health careers.

Our clinical and academic facilities are located throughout the state-at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, including Piscataway; and at locations in Newark, Scotch Plains, Somerset, Stratford, and other locations. Clinical partners include Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, Newark's University Hospital in Newark, and other affiliates.

Through this community of healers, scientists, and scholars, Rutgers is equipped as never before to transform lives.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey is seeking a Post Doc Associate for the Brain Health Institute within Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS).

The primary purpose for the Post Doc Associate is to perform experiments to examine how the orexin system interacts with stress and reward circuitries to understand how these circuits are involved in neuropsychiatric disorders, including memory and decision disorders, depression and substance abuse. This knowledge will facilitate the development of orexin-based therapies that can effectively treat the multifaceted symptoms associated with this neural system.

This Post Doc Associate will perform research using advanced behavioral, chemo genetic and neuroscience approaches in rodent memory, stress and reward self-administration models. Research will use orexin-cre rats and local microinjections of DIO viral vectors into brain, immunohistochemical analyses, as well as assays for behavioral phenotypes to identify brain circuits responsible for neuropsychiatric disorders associated with decision, memory and motivational dysfunctions.

Among the key duties of this position are the following:

• Analyze, organize, and present data at laboratory meetings and major scientific meetings.
• As directed, perform various research and clinical technical operations relative to ongoing investigatory activities of a laboratory; may assist in conducting specialized research for a particular phase of a project.
• Conduct behavioral and pharmacological experiments in rodents to develop novel therapeutic approaches to treat disorders of stress, decision-making, memory, motivation and reward.
• Conduct behavioral and pharmacological experiments in rodents to develop novel therapeutic approaches to mitigate symptoms associated with stress, depression and/or Alzheimer's disease.
• Conduct behavioral, anatomic, chemo genetic, pharmacological and chemo genetic experiments in rodents to delineate mechanisms underlying drug abuse.
• Conduct conditioned place preference, and learning and memory tasks, intracerebral infusions, and pharmacological manipulations in rodents to develop novel therapeutic approaches to prevent…