Research Scientist, All-Optical Working Memory

About the Role

We're hiring a PhD-level scientist to join Astera Neuro's rodent neuroscience team. Your initial assignment is to read, write, and perturb the content of working memory in mouse cortex at single-cell resolution. The ideal candidate is an experimentalist who can carry the work end-to-end. You can design a working-memory task in the morning, run a closed-loop holographic write-in on the rig in the afternoon, and write the population-analysis pipeline that evening. You want institutional support and the freedom to move fast on a problem that matters.

What You'll Do

• Design and iterate a head-fixed mouse working-memory task, and get animals performing it reliably
• Run two-photon holographic photostimulation experiments: read population activity during the task, then write in and perturb the held representation at single-cell resolution
• Run holographic targeting, power calibration, and closed-loop stimulation on the all-optical rig, working with our optics engineering team
• Lead computational analysis of large-scale neural population data, including dimensionality reduction, population decoding, GLMs, and circuit-level inference
• Set the viral and transgenic expression strategy, including soma-targeted ChRmine and GCaMP
• Perform mouse survival surgery: stereotaxic viral injection, chronic cranial-window implantation, and headbar installation
• Mentor research associates and technicians and, at the senior or principal level, more junior scientists; contribute to hiring, onboarding, and lab culture
• Contribute to publications, talks, open data and tooling releases, and engagement with the broader scientific community

Required Qualifications

• Hands-on mouse survival surgery experience: chronic cranial windows, headbars, and stereotaxic injections
• PhD in neuroscience, bioengineering, physics, or a related field. Equivalent demonstrated expertise will also be considered
• Hands-on experience with in vivo two-photon calcium imaging and/or holographic (SLM-based) optogenetics in rodents
• Practical experience with two-photon systems: optical alignment, system characterization, and in vivo use
• Proficiency in scientific computing for neural-data analysis; Python and/or MATLAB, with Suite2p, CaImAn, or comparable pipelines

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with head-fixed rodent behavior and task design; closed-loop and real-time experiments
• Prior systems neuroscience research in cortex, working memory, decision-making, or motor/premotor circuits
• Experience with ultrafast pulsed lasers (Ti:Sapphire, fiber) and nonlinear optics
• Two-photon optogenetics (SLM-based holography, temporal focusing, or spiral-scanning photostimulation); soma-targeted opsins such as ChRmine

What We Value

• Conviction that the brain's internal model can be understood in full, and that getting there requires a kind of science no single academic lab can do; we're betting on scale, deep collaboration across science and engineering, and open sharing of ideas in a full-stack environment
• Willingness to be held to an engineering standard. Our decisive tests are write-in experiments: constructing a specific percept, thought, or internal state, not merely decoding one. What we cannot build, we do not understand
• Comfort building on shared infrastructure rather than private projects; rigs, surgical preparations, and analysis pipelines are standardized so they can be shared, and datasets are designed to stitch across sessions and animals
• Care for the animals: healthy, well-handled mice, supported by dedicated veterinary oversight, are the foundation of both the science and its credibility
• Commitment to open science; we release tools, data, and methods, and aim to create a new dynamic of rapid, open exchange in neuroscience

Compensation

Compensation Range: $80K - $150K

This response is AI-generated, for reference only.