Postdoctoral/Research Associate in Experimental Psychology/Social and Affective Neuroscience

The role

We are seeking a highly motivated Research Associate to work on a Wellcome Trust–funded project using bio‑behavioural and data‑driven approaches to investigate emotion signalling mechanisms in both clinical and non‑clinical populations, led by Dr Hélio Clemente José Cuve.

You will be involved in the day‑to‑day implementation of research activities such as participant recruitment, experiment coding, data collection, developing data-driven processing and analysis pipelines, and write-up of findings for publication. You will also be involved in supporting the supervision and training junior team members (e.g. placement students), interdisciplinary collaborations with academic and industry partners involved in the project and public and patient engagement.

This post is based in the School of Psychological Science which is closely embedded within Bristol Neuroscience with wide range of opportunities for career development, networking and collaboration across brain and behavioural sciences. See also the university  strategy  tying together our mission, vision and values.

What will you be doing?

You will:

• Manage and organise day‑to‑day research tasks identifying and resolving technical, logistical or practical challenges independently.
• Design, code and refine experimental tasks, protocols and data preprocessing and analysis pipelines, and contribute to writing manuscripts for submission to peer‑reviewed journals.
• Train junior team members (e.g. placement students, UG and PGRs), collaborate with academic and industry partners, and support patient and public engagement activities

You should apply if

You have:

• A relevant PhD (completed or soon to be achieved) preferably in Experimental Psychology, Neuroscience or related fields (e.g. Computer Science, Data Science).
• Demonstrated experience conducting data-driven bio-behavioural research with human participants, including integration of different data modalities (physiological, self-reports, and behavioural data) to study cognitive and or affective processes.
• Experience with programming for research (e.g. Python, R and RStudio or MATLAB) and using data-driven pipelines with complex bio-behavioural data.
• Prior knowledge or keen interest in topics at the intersection of experimental psychology/social-affective neuroscience and mental-health.
• Ability to quickly acquire skills in novel and specialised hardware and software systems and to trouble-shoot technical difficulties promptly and effectively.
• Ability to work independently, accurately and largely unsupervised in the day-to-day running of the research project, including excellent organisational skills and attention to detail, operating successfully under pressure and meeting deadlines
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present ideas and data and write for scientific publication and to work as part of a team, including supervision of junior team members, in a professional, friendly and supportive manner.

Additional information

For informal enquiries please contact Dr Hélio Clemente Cuve helio.cuve@bristol.ac.uk

Contract type: Open ended (Fixed funding for 13 months)

This advert will close at 23:59 UK time on Sunday 18th May 2025.

Our strategy and mission

We recently launched our strategy to 2030 tying together our mission, vision and values.

The University of Bristol aims to be a place where everyone feels able to be themselves and do their best in an inclusive working environment where all colleagues can thrive and reach their full potential. We want to attract, develop, and retain individuals with different experiences, backgrounds and perspectives – particularly people of colour, LGBT+ and disabled people - because diversity of people and ideas remains integral to our excellence as a global civic institution.

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