Research requires a high level of intellectual curiosity to continuously drive learning and motivation toward acquiring new knowledge. Generating new knowledge about how the brain enables social behavior is a truly exciting endeavor. It also requires good communication skills (e.g., writing) so that your science can be understood and progress can be made.
If you are interested in joining our research team as a postdoctoral associate, graduate student, or undergraduate student, please consider the information below to help judge your fit with our work and our lab.
In our laboratory, we are particularly interested in collaborating with trainees who have the following characteristics:
- Strong interest in thinking about research topics at multiple levels of analysis and neurobiology (behavior, brain areas, circuits, cells, and molecules), even if one’s own research focuses on one of these levels.
- Quantitatively strong and experienced, or strongly interested in strengthening quantitative skills.
- Ability to communicate scientific findings and perspectives through good writing.
- Ability to think flexibly about details as well as the big picture.
Furthermore, we highly value the following characteristics in our trainees:
- Excited about the possibility of intellectually contributing one’s expertise to other lab members’ research projects.
- Thrives on forming new collaborative lines of research based on shared research interests.
Importantly, everyone in the lab must respect each other regardless of gender, race, disability, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, political or religious views, and other factors contributing to individual differences. We expect everyone to be professionally kind to one another to create a truly wonderful research environment.
We would like to emphasize that everyone is different, both in who they are and in how they contribute to science. If you are a prospective trainee from a minority group or a non-traditional background, or a prospective trainee with a disability, we particularly encourage you to consider applying to join our lab.
Thank you for your interest in our lab.
Steve Chang, Lab Director