The original posting is here: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/266902

UiT The Arctic University of Norway has established «The Arctic MSCA-IF program» to select excellent young researchers planning to submit applications for a Marie Skƚodowska Curie individual fellowship (MSCA-IF) in order to pursue a research career (uit.no/afu/arcticmsca). We invite applications from promising young researchers within the field of Computational Psychiatry. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-IF at UiT together with Dr. Gerit Pfuhl. This is an opportunity to accelerate your research career while living in the urban research city of Tromsø, uniquely located at the top of the world surrounded by some of Europe’s last pristine wild nature.

This call is one of 31 from pre-selected supervisors at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through the “Arctic MSCA-IF program” (uit.no/afu/arcticmsca/supervisors). Successful postdoc candidates will be invited to Tromsø (travel and accommodation expenses covered) for a two-day MSCA-IF symposium on May 30-31, 2018. At this event, the candidates will present their past research achievements, discuss future plans with their potential supervisor and learn how to write a successful MSCA-IF application. Together with the supervisor, the selected candidates will start developing their MSCA-IF application towards the MSCA-IF deadline of September 12th 2018.

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of Computational Psychiatry as presented by Dr. Pfuhl:

Cognitive and biological markers of mental disorders

Mental disorders are only diagnosed after onset of the pathology. This is partly due to mental disorders amounting to a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference, with multiple aetiologies converging on the same symptoms. In this project we aim to bridge behaviour and biology by modeling behavior in the predictive coding framework, which describes the brain as an inference machine (Friston, 2005). Accordingly, the brain’s function is to model its environment by updating its prior with new information. The speed or learning rate, though, differs across domains and also people, e.g. patients with autism and schizophrenia show an aberrant high learning rate. In this project we aim to elucidate which parameters differ along the autism-psychosis continuum through novel behavioural tasks and non-invasive methods. By applying hierarchical models we can then identify how the different types of uncertainties and the learning rate interact. The project also involves clinical collaborators to translate the findings into the clinic. This will allow developing successful prevention and training programs for people at risk, as well as allow a more tailored treatment through individually adapted behavioural therapy.

Please send your CV (max 3 pages) and describe a research project that will strengthen and complement the presented research (max 2 pages) to ArcticMSCA@uit.no by Feb 2rd 2018. Mark your Application “Gerit Pfuhl”.

Postdoctoral position in computational psychiatry @ UiT The Arctic University of Norway