Each mental event or voluntary motor act involves the coordinated activity of neurons in areas of the brain far apart. Thin, branched and extremely long cellular processes called axons provide the physical substrate of these interactions. It has recently become possible to fully trace these long-range axons one at a time. The goal of the FlagERA research project 'NeuronsReunited' is to create tools for speeding up the conversion of experimental data into digital axons, and to precisely place neurons into a digital reference brain to reveal their context. They are applied to existing and new data in mouse, and the resulting insights are incorporated into new models for brain function.

The project is a collaboration between five international partners, two experimental partners (Prof. Francisco Clasca, Madrid; Prof. Egidio d'Angelo, Pavia) and three computational/theoretical partners (Prof. Paul Tiesinga, Dr Rembrandt Bakker, Nijmegen; Prof. Michele Giugliano, Trieste; Prof. Sacha Van Albada, Jülich). As a postdoctoral research associate you will design pipelines to process the raw anatomical data, create tools for the precise placement of axonal arbours in a digital reference brain and be part of the team that builds models and interprets the results.

A key deliverable will be the creation of a gold standard online catalogue of precisely placed neurons that future generations of neuroscientists can contribute to and compare data to. The tools make use of an existing body of work consisting of web-based applications (HBP Morphology Viewer and Scalable Brain Atlas, written in JavaScript) and interactive notebooks (Python).

Besides being a member of the project team, you will also be part of the European Human Brain Project and have access to the expertise of the large neuroscience community at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.

• A PhD degree in a quantitative field (engineering, physics, computational neuroscience, etc.).
• Expertise in neuroscience or an interest in acquiring such expertise.
• Excellent programming skills, preferably in JavaScript applications or Python-based pipelines.
• Experience with neuroinformatics, visualisation/3D graphics, image processing, and/or machine learning.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a multidisciplinary environment at the forefront of science.
• Excellent communication skills in spoken and written English.

Fixed-term contract: 3 years.

• Employment: 36 hours per week.
• A maximum gross monthly salary of € 4,402 based on a 38-hour working week (salary scale 10).
• The exact salary depends on the candidate's qualifications and amount of relevant professional experience.
• In addition to the salary: an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus.
• Duration of the contract: 3 years.
• The Faculty of Science is an equal opportunity employer, committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community, and as such encourages applications from women and minorities. Radboud University strives for a diversified workforce in order to shape education and research from different perspectives. The University is taking targeted action to appoint talented men and women of different nationalities to senior positions and to keep them at our University. To achieve this, young female staff can count on support during their career in the form of a mentor programme.
• You will be able to make use of our Dual Career Service: our Dual Career Officer will assist with family-related support, such as child care, and help your partner prepare for the local labour market and with finding an occupation.
• Are you interested in our excellent employment conditions?

Radboud University

We want to get the best out of science, others and ourselves. Why? Because this is what the world around us desperately needs. Leading research and education make an indispensable contribution to a healthy, free world with equal opportunities for all. This is what unites the more than 22,000 students and 5,000 employees at Radboud University. And this requires even more talent, collaboration and lifelong learning. You have a part to play!

Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde & Informatica

The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, home to more than 600 researchers from 35 countries, is a world-class research centre devoted to understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of human cognition and behaviour in health and disease. The institute’s mission includes conducting excellent interdisciplinary research at the unique interface between genetic, molecular and cellular processes at one end and computational, system-level neuroscience with cognitive and behavioural analysis at the other end. Research in the Donders Institute is focused around four themes: 1. Language and communication, 2. Perception, action and control, 3. Plasticity and memory, 4. Neural computation and neurotechnology. 
The position will be embedded within the Donders Centre for Neuroscience (Faculty of Science), in particular in the Department of Neuroinformatics, headed by Prof. Paul Tiesinga. The PIs in the department conduct research programmes in computational neuroscience, neuroinformatics, large-ensemble electrophysiology/imaging and behavioural neuroscience in the general area of memory dynamics, sensory processing and decision making.