Are you interested in working at the intersection of decision and affective neuroscience?

Do you want to build and apply computational models of learning, decision making, or emotions? We are looking for you!

We are pleased to accept postdoc and research technician applications to start in Summer 2023 (start date flexible) in the Department of Psychology at Yale. Applicants should be interested in contributing to the fields of neuroeconomics and/or computational psychiatry.

To apply, send a cover letter, CV, and the names of 3 references to robb.rutledge@yale.edu

We will start reviewing applications on March 31, 2023. Review of applications will continue until the positions have been filled.

We build computational models of decision making to explain variability in decision making including in relation to affective experience. We use neuroimaging, pharmacology, and smartphone-based data collection to build new models for mood and behavior. Through ongoing collaborations, we are evaluating individuals with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder and Parkinson’s disease.

We are particularly interested in the following research directions:

  • Neuromodulatory influences on reinforcement learning and decision making: How do neuromodulators like dopamine and serotonin contribute to variability in decision making including irrational decisions? How does decision making change across the lifespan in relation to changes in the dopamine system?

  • Longitudinal smartphone-based data collection in mood disorders and in the general population: Can we predict how symptoms will change over months in samples of hundreds of people with depression or anxiety? How do those changes relate to the structure and connectivity of the brain? How does behavior changes over months or even years?

  • Computational models of happiness: What are the factors the determine how conscious affective experience changes from moment to moment? How does how we feel influence what we do? What are the neural circuits that underlie those influences?

Much of our research uses large datasets acquired using our smartphone platforms including The Happiness Project which has had over 15,000 downloads. Data from 47,067 participants playing a risky decision making and happiness task in our previous app is freely available on Dryad. Let us know if you discover anything interesting! A few of our collaborators include Conor Liston and Faith Gunning (Cornell Weill), Chris Lambert and Liam Mason (UCL), Sam McDougle and Avram Holmes (Yale), Molly Crockett (Princeton), and Zeb Kurth-Nelson (DeepMind).

Our lab is committed to reproducibility and we strive to incorporate principles of open science in our research, including sharing our data and code. We believe that our science is better with a diverse team. We embrace and encourage our lab members’ differences in age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our lab members who they are.