Research Staff Assistant

• Job Type: Support Staff - Non-Union
• Bargaining Unit:
• Regular/Temporary: Temporary
• End Date if Temporary: 8/2/2027
• Hours Per Week: 35
• Standard Work Schedule:
• Building: Jerome L. Greene Science Center
• Salary Range: $44,800 - $44,800

Position Summary

Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute unites world-class scientists across diverse academic disciplines to conduct groundbreaking research that transforms our understanding of the brain and its influence on the mind and behavior.

As a leading neuroscience institute, our mission is to decipher the mind and brain to better understand behavior. Our researchers are committed to foundational science, uncovering the principles that shape how the brain develops, functions, and recovers.

With more than 50 labs, the Zuckerman Institute serves as a hub for collaboration, bringing together Columbia’s top scholars to drive research in bold new directions. Located in Manhattanville, our state-of-the-art Jerome L. Greene Science Center provides an inspiring home for discovery in one of the world’s most dynamic cities.

The Kriegeskorte Lab is seeking a Research Staff Assistant to support computational neuroscience research focused on understanding and evaluating neural representations across biological and artificial systems. The incumbent will contribute to the development, validation, and benchmarking of analytical models and methodologies, perform quantitative analyses using experimental and simulated datasets, and assist in evaluating the effectiveness of computational approaches for comparing representational structures. The position requires strong analytical and computational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to collaborate on research projects involving data analysis, model development, and scientific interpretation.

This is a full-time temporary grant funded role.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

• Develop and validate flexible representational models, including proposing and refining a set of representational alignment measures to be benchmarked
• Lead cross-animal model recovery analyses, using neural recordings as ground-truth-labeled data to objectively evaluate the discriminative power of different representational alignment measures
• Conduct model-recovery simulations to assess whether similarity measures can recover key architectural parameters from simulated neural data
• Contribute to systematic comparisons of representational alignment measures across varying geometry estimators, levels of fitting flexibility, and geometry comparators

Additional responsibilities include:

• Benchmark recovery performance across cortical areas and hierarchy levels, characterizing where and why different measures succeed or fail
• Investigate the correspondence between recovery performance on simulated versus empirical neural data
• Support the development and validation of analysis pipelines, contributing to an open-source toolbox

Minimum Qualifications

• A Bachelor's degree or higher in a relevant scientific or engineering field required.

Preferred Qualifications

• A minimum one (1) year of related experience in a research environment is highly preferred.

• The ideal candidate must possess strong analytical and computational skills, excellent attention to detail, and have a collaborative style that fosters teamwork and cooperation as well as the ability to work independently within a diverse and dynamic team environment.

Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran

Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.