PhD or Postdoctoral Researcher in behavioral and neural mechanisms of cognition
Location: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Earliest starting date: September 1st 2025.
The Mante lab (https://www.ini.uzh.ch/en/research/groups/mante.html) at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (https://www.ini.uzh.ch/en) invites applications for PhD or Postdoctoral positions to work at the intersection of experimental neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to uncover the behavioral and neural mechanisms of cognition.
Research Background
Our laboratory studies how complex cognitive abilities like reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making emerge from the coordinated activity of neural populations distributed across brain-wide neural networks. We employ an interdisciplinary approach that combines behavioral and neurophysiological experiments in humans and animals, machine learning methods to analyze large-scale behavioral and neural datasets, as well as approaches from artificial intelligence to model our data and generate hypotheses about the neural mechanisms underlying cognition. A current focus of our research is the question of how biological and artificial neural networks learn world-models and use them to plan and reason about future actions. We address this question in several settings ranging from humans engaged in carefully designed behavioral tasks, complex naturalistic behaviors of primates in social settings (see bottom of this page), and artificial agents.
Role description
As a PhD or Postdoctoral researcher, you will be responsible for developing and implementing specific projects within our current research scope, while closely collaborating with other members of the lab to bridge insights across approaches and domains.
Responsibilities
Your primary responsibilities will depend on your background and interests, but could include:
- Behavioral experiments in humans and primates
- Neurophysiology experiments in primates
- Analysis of large-scale behavioral or neural data sets
- Modeling of behavior and neural dynamics
- Training artificial agents (AI)
- Reverse-engineering of computations in artificial agents (AI, mechanistic interpretability)
- Writing publications and presenting at conferences
- Collaborating with other team members to achieve to overarching goals of the lab.
Required qualifications
- MSc or PhD in computational or theoretical neuroscience, artificial intelligence, or a closely related field (e.g. physics or computer science).
- Excellent written and oral communication skills in English
- The desire and collaborative spirit required to work closely in a multidisciplinary team
- A proven track record of research output (conference presentations, publications)
- Experience in some of the research domains pursued in the lab
Salary and conditions
The salary and benefits will follow the standards set by the University of Zurich for PhD students and postdocs. PhD students will receive their degree from both the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich.
Application process
Interested candidates should submit a detailed CV, a cover letter explaining their interest in the position (1 or 2 pages long), and the contact information of ideally 3 references to mantelab@ini.lists.uzh.ch.
We strive to build a diverse work environment and encourage applications from all qualified individuals irrespective of their gender, age, cultural background, and disability status. Only candidates shortlisted for this position will be contacted for an interview.