Better behavioural tests for clinical research

Current batteries of cognitive assessments, tasks and questionnaires used routinely by researchers and clinicians to measure behavioural and cognitive dysfunctions have multiple limitations. Quantifying subtle effects within specific subfunctions is essential to enable key outcomes in fundamental research and applied settings, including early diagnosis, drug discovery and understanding which factors lead to behavioural and cognitive dysfunctions associated with poor mental health, and why.

We are searching for a PhD student to help us identify how tasks used in research and clinical practice can be augmented by levering modern data collection and analyses capabilities, such as eye and hand tracking, machine learning, computational and mathematical modelling.

The candidate would work in CUBRIC, a world-leading facility and the largest brain imaging centre in the United Kingdom. They will be expected to engage with the latest literature and make independent intellectual contributions to the project development. They will work under the direct supervision of Dr Aline Bompas and Pr Petroc Sumner. The team is proficient in many complementary approaches (behavioural testing, eye-tracking, computational modelling, personality and mental health disorders, metacognition, human electrophysiology and imaging), offering the candidate unique training opportunities.

The ideal candidate would show a strong interest for behaviour, cognition and neuroscience, ability to think independently and desire to train into technically demanding approaches such as computational modelling and brain imaging analyses.

Home students are UK Nationals and EU students who can satisfy UK residency requirements (students must have been in the UK for >3 years before start of course).

As only a limited number of studentships are available across the Open School competition and a very high standard of applications is typically received, the successful applicants are likely to have a very good first degree (a First or Upper Second class BSc Honours or equivalent) and/or be distinguished by having relevant research experience.