Our postdoctoral scholars program provides research support and a community of mentors and peers to extraordinary Stanford postdocs advancing our understanding of the mind and brain in health and disease.
Our postdoctoral scholars program provides research support and a community of mentors and peers to extraordinary Stanford postdocs advancing our understanding of the mind and brain in health and disease. Our postdoctoral scholars program provides research support and a community of mentors and peers to extraordinary Stanford postdocs advancing our understanding of the mind and brain in health and disease.
Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholar Award
Since 2015, the Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholars program has supported innovative young researchers who engage in highly interdisciplinary research in the neurosciences, broadly defined. Our postdoctoral scholars have backgrounds in basic and clinical neurosciences, biomedical sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, engineering, education, law, business and humanities, and are all engaged in cutting edge research that will advance our understanding of the mind, brain and behavior in health and disease.
Brain Resilience Postdoctoral Scholar Award of the Knight Initiative
The Brain Resilience Postdoctoral Scholars award of the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience generate paradigm shifting insights on the mechanisms of neurodegeneration and/or how to maintain brain resilience into old age.
Application Components
Our next postdoc applications will open in Winter Quarter 2024.
This program is open to current Stanford postdocs.
Our Model
This program awards two years of fellowship funding and is pleased to provide parental leave. Postdoctoral scholars also receive $5,000 of discretionary research funds annually.
Mentorship
The program provides scientific and career-growth opportunities and guidance under the leadership of program co-directors and faculty mentors Professors Miriam Goodman and Liqun Luo. Scholars meet monthly with their cohort and program faculty mentors to share ideas and discuss approaches to scientific and career challenges, visit each other’s labs to learn about different research techniques and areas of study, and practice communicating their research to scientific and general audiences.
In addition, Brain Resilience Postdoctoral Scholars attend events and seminars hosted by the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, and are stewarded by Knight Initiative Associate Director Natasha Hussain and faculty mentor Elizabeth Mormino to learn from one another and build community around the topic of neurodegeneration and brain resilience.
Diversity
The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Postdoctoral program brings together cohorts of postdocs representing the broad range of demographic, experiential and scientific diversity. Women and postdocs from groups underrepresented in the neurosciences are strongly encouraged to apply.
| Key Dates for 2024 POSTDOCTORAL Scholar Awards | |
|---|---|
| Application Opens | Friday, August 11, 2023 |
| Application Deadline | Sunday, September 24, 2023, at 5:00pm PST Including faculty sponsor statement(s) and recommendation letters |
| Notification of Awards | Late November, 2023 |
| Award Start Date | Funding may begin between February 1, 2024 and June 1, 2024 |
Funding Period | Two years of funding from start date |
| To Apply | Apply here |
Funded Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholar projects
Discovering new volitionally-controllable neural degrees-of-freedom for neural prostheses
A top priority for people with paralysis is reach and grasp ability. Technologies such as robotic arm prostheses or electrically stimulating paralyzed muscles can meet this need. Existing methods rely on the remaining muscles, are unintuitive and require laborious sequences of simple commands. Reading out a patient’s desired movement directly from their brain could overcome these limitations.
Instrumenting the nervous system at single-cell resolution
Dr. Dante Muratore's goal is to design the next generation of neural interfaces that allow single-cell resolution when communicating with the nervous system. To achieve this, he has conceived a new way of reading information from the neural system.
Curiosity-driven social learning and interaction in artificial agents and humans
In order to reach the level of intelligence that humans possess, artificial agents need to be able to autonomously interact with other agents and humans and build rich models of how other minds work as a result of these interactions.
Combining electrical and optical measurements on voltage-gated sodium channel toxins
Ion channels in the membranes of neuronal cells are the key regulators of neuronal signaling. An ion channel works as a gate that can open and close to allow specific molecules to enter or leave the cell. One important type of ion channels are voltage-gated sodium channels (NaVs), which are essential for many processes in our brain.