Research Assistant / Associate

We are seeking a programmer / software engineer to join our project researching stereoscopic (3D) vision in the praying mantis.

A key duty will be to write code to generate visual stimuli for the behavioural and electrophysiological experiments. For consistency with other work in the lab, this will be in Matlab, using Psychophysics Toolbox and an in-house toolbox for behavioural experiments. You will write code to analyse, plot and interpret collected behavioural and electrophysiological data, helping group members to understand and build computational models of praying mantis behaviour.

You will assist with other computational / programming needs around the lab as required, including developing experiment and data analysis code for student projects, supporting students in analysing and interpreting their results, and providing technical assistance with software-related issues. You will develop reusable code to automate repetitive data processing and analysis tasks, building on and extending our in-house toolbox where appropriate.

Behavioural experiments involve the collection of data in various formats including videos of praying mantis responses to stimuli. You will develop algorithms to compute responses and other behavioural parameters from these videos, for example deciding whether the mantis made a tracking head movement to left or right, whether it made a strike, and extracting parameters such as the duration and range of the strike.

You will participate on writing up experiments for publication as scientific papers, either as co-author or lead author depending on interest/experience/ability.
The role also offers the opportunity for computational neuroscience research, developing quantitative models of mantis stereoscopic vision.