Fifteen (15) PhD Positions in Visual & Computational Neuroscience, NextGenVis, Europe (2015)

The European Marie-Curie training network NextGenVis ("Training the Next Generation of European Visual Neuroscientists") is a collaboration between 10 European labs and companies in the field of visual and computational neuroscience. We offer 15 (3 year) full-time PhD positions. An overview of the participating labs and their research interests and projects can be found at www.nextgenvis.eu.

Program description
The human visual brain can learn and adapt to change, which solves many of the problems posed by an ever-changing visual environment. However, to maintain a coherent representation of the visual world, the brain also has to retain previously acquired neuronal mechanisms. The key is to strike a balance between plasticity and stability.

As a PhD student in NextGenVis, you can work on various questions relating to cortical stability and plasticity in health and disease, and help improve the data-analysis and computational tools to address these questions. You can study how the visual brain adapts to neural dysfunction or visual loss: Does the architecture of the visual brain stay the same, or will it rewire? To what extent is the brain plastic at different ages, and how may this relate to perception? How can current research methods to investigate the visual brain be improved? The NextGenVis program will study these questions from various perspectives. Neuroimaging and behavioural studies will be used to study the relation between cortical plasticity and perception, while modelling will be used as a useful tool to predict how changes influence perception.

New knowledge on the stability and plasticity of the visual brain can inspire new options in visual rehabilitation, in vision restoration (retinal implants), in treatment as well as the development of adaptive computer vision systems. This is why, in addition to PhD positions in academia, NextGenVis also offers positions in high-tech and pharmaceutical companies and in rehabilitation institutes.

Training
As a PhD fellow, you will follow a multidisciplinary PhD training consisting of a number of high-level training courses and workshops throughout Europe. As you will be able to experience working in industrial, health care and academic environments, you will have the opportunity to develop both your academic as well as your entrepreneurial skills.

Further details:
http://www.nature.com