Description

Note: This page is for informative purposes only. The official call (particularly, the legal requirements for candidates) and all information related to the selection process (admission, short list, final result) is published in the Department’s website.

We are looking for a leading postdoctoral researcher for our work package 1 in a new ERC Synergy grant “DELTA-LANG – The delta of language”, no. 101118756, 2024-2029, funded with 9,939,329€ and spread over four European sites (Barcelona, Zürich, Groningen, and Tromsoe). For a press release see here. The project’s basic aim is to map clinical fluctuations in mental states onto language states, and to explore how these states in turn map onto brain states. This will be with a particular view to understanding linguistic and brain correlates of the transition from acute stages to remission in psychosis, and from there back to relapse. The main focus of the work package lies on computational analyses of meaning in spontaneous speech, exploiting neural language models and assessing their utility in mapping language to the brain in health and disease. Successful candidates do not require previous experience in computational psychiatry but need to be highly motivated to apply their analytical linguistic skills in a clinical setting. We highly value a diversity of scientific backgrounds in this cross-disciplinary project. 

Tasks. You will:

• Play a leading role in a work package dedicated to defining language states that will allow mapping language onto symptom and brain states, in a longitudinal setting.
• Creatively develop new theoretical concepts, methodological tools, and analytical pipelines.
• Have an interest or skills in neuroimaging data analysis, particularly MRI, and apply them in multimodal datasets comprising both fMRI and speech, across different languages.
• Help to establish and co-lead an interdisciplinary team of other researchers in the work package.
• Collaborate closely with research and clinical teams at other project sites in Europe.
• Be lead author on high-level publications. 

You are welcome to direct any prior inquiries to the PI at wolfram.hinzen@upf.edu. 

Qualifications

Skills/qualifications:

• Ph.D. in hand at the time of the start of the contract, in linguistics, psychology, computational psychiatry, data science, cognitive science, computer science, artificial intelligence, or another relevant field. 
• High-level analytical and computational skills as applied to the formal structure of natural language, particularly semantic structure at both lexical and grammatical levels. 
• Experience in the use of large language models (LLMs) and NLP analyses of spontaneous speech. 
• First publications in a relevant area.
• Minimum years of experience required: 4 - 10 years.

Eligibility criteria

• Academic background: 0- 40 points.
• Professional experience / suitability for the proposed profile: 0-40 points
• Other: 0-20 points

Minimum score to pass the selection process: 70 points.

If necessary, an interview may be conducted or a task may be requested from those persons who have obtained a higher score. 

Application Instructions

Applications should be submitted through the Interfolio platform including the following documents. All documents must be submitted before the closing date.

• a copy of the applicant’s (national) identity card or passport
• a single pdf containing a complete CV including the names of at least two academic referees and a detailed letter of motivation

The selection committee will evaluate the applicants’ merits based on the documentation provided. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

UPF promotes a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes applicants regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion or sexual orientation.