Junior Specialist - Lapate Laboratory, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences

Junior Specialist - Lapate Laboratory, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

The Lapate Laboratory within the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites applications for an open, full-time Junior Specialist position, with an anticipated start date of February 1, 2026 or later. The laboratory is looking for an exceptional individual with particular emphasis in the areas of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Under the direction of Dr.

Regina Lapate, the Lapate Laboratory seeks to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behaviors related to emotional processing and regulation using techniques including neuroimaging, EEG, and psycho-physiological recordings (EMG, EDA). Ongoing projects include studies of the prefrontal organization of cognitive control in emotion, emotion-motor interactions, and temporal coding and memory during emotional processing.

Responsibilities of the Junior Specialist will include engaging in specialized research associated with ongoing projects, including behavioral and neuroimaging studies interrogating neural mechanisms of cognitive regulation of emotion and the influence of emotion on memory and cognitive control. The Junior Specialist will assist with recruiting, organizing, and scheduling participants, conducting literature reviews, developing/programming experiments, acquiring and analyzing data (behavioral, EEG, fMRI), and preparing results for presentation.

The Junior Specialist will also assist with training of research volunteers, and managing research protocols.

Basic qualifications (required at time of application):
Applicants must have a bachelor's degree or equivalent degree in psychology or a related field (neuroscience, computer science, applied mathematics, biology, etc.) at the time of application.

Additional qualifications (required at time of start):
Demonstrated potential for excellence in research as evidenced by previous laboratory experience or research assistant positions (12+ months duration). Will have a demonstrated record of academic excellence as evidenced by outstanding grades in relevant courses (major GPA of 3.5 or higher).

Preferred candidates will have experience with programming tools (UNIX, bash, MATLAB/Python programming), a strong college math background (linear algebra) and/or statistics, and previous research experience with human subjects (1 or more years), and previous experience with fMRI.