PhD Position Sleep, Stress and Arousal in Humans

PhD Position on Sleep, Stress and Arousal in Humans

The Neural Control of Movement Lab at ETH Zurich, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, invites exceptional candidates to apply for a PhD position focused on the physiological links between sleep, stress, arousal and health in humans. The project combines mechanistic laboratory experiments with real‑world, home‑based and decentralized phenotyping, using multimodal physiological recordings, mobile health technologies and computational analysis pipelines.

As part of a translational research program, the PhD student will design, conduct and analyse human studies that link sleep, stress, arousal and autonomic physiology in both laboratory and real‑world settings. A central part of the position will be the implementation of robust research pipelines for mobile and decentralized phenotyping, including data collection workflows, biosignal processing, quality control, synchronization, feature extraction and computational analysis.

Sleep, stress and arousal are deeply interconnected physiological processes. Persistent stress and heightened arousal can alter the transition into sleep, change nocturnal brain and autonomic activity, and influence recovery and long‑term health. The project addresses this gap by combining mechanistic in‑lab studies with real‑world phenotyping of sleep, stress and arousal in daily life, aiming to develop rigorous, scalable research workflows.

The project uses multimodal biosignal acquisition – pupillometry, sleep EEG, ECG, respiration, wearable and actigraphy data, smartphone‑supported assessments and validated questionnaires – together with advanced signal processing, statistical modelling and machine learning.

• Design and conduct mechanistic laboratory studies and real‑world sleep, stress and arousal studies in human participants.
• Acquire and manage multimodal physiological data during wake and sleep such as pupillometry, EEG, ECG, respiration, photoplethysmography, actigraphy, wearable sensor data, smartphone‑based assessments and questionnaires.
• Coordinate decentralized and home‑based study workflows, including participant instructions, device logistics, remote monitoring, troubleshooting, documentation and data quality control.
• Develop and maintain reproducible analysis pipelines for physiological and behavioural data, including preprocessing, synchronization, artifact handling, feature extraction, visualisation and reporting.
• Apply statistical modelling, signal processing and machine learning approaches to identify phenotypes of sleep, stress, arousal and recovery.
• Interpret complex physiological data in relation to mechanisms of arousal regulation, autonomic control, sleep physiology and health‑relevant outcomes.
• Work closely with researchers, engineers, clinicians, students and external collaborators to connect experimental design, data infrastructure and scientific analysis.
• Disseminate findings through scientific publications, conference presentations and contributions to larger translational research initiatives.

• Master's degree (or near completion) in biomedical engineering, medical engineering, medical informatics, computational neuroscience, data science, or a closely related field, with demonstrated quantitative and programming skills.
• Strong programming skills in Python, MATLAB, R or comparable languages, with experience writing clean, well‑documented and reproducible analysis code.
• Proficiency in data analysis, statistics, signal processing, computational modelling, machine learning or artificial intelligence for complex physiological or behavioural data.
• Experience with physiological data acquisition and analysis, ideally including sleep EEG, ECG, respiration, photoplethysmography, actigraphy, wearable sensors or other multimodal biosignal time series.
• Solid understanding of human physiology and strong motivation to work on sleep, stress, arousal, autonomic regulation, recovery and health‑relevant phenotyping.
• Experience designing or conducting human research studies, including experimental protocols, participant‑facing work, ethics‑aware procedures, documentation…