Postdoc + PhD positions in ERC funded project ACTOR
The lab of Constantin Rothkopf (https://www.pip.tu-darmstadt.de/) at the
Centre for Cognitive Science @ TU Darmstadt is looking for PhD and
Postdoc applicants interested in becoming part of the ERC project ACTOR.
While some positions are focused on human behavioral experiments others
are more focused on computational work.
The goal of this project is to use both human behavioral experiments and
computational modeling to understand human sequential behavior in tasks
including continuous psychophysics, visual behaviors such as gaze
selection and blinking, sensorimotor control involving intuitive
physics, navigation, and food preparation in the framework of sequential
decision making/planning/optimal control/RL.
Our group is part of the Centre for Cognitive Science and the AI Center
at TU Darmstadt, which are home to an internationally outstanding group
of PIs and junior researchers working in the areas of computational
cognitive science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. We are
part of several research consortia and engage in multiple fruitful
research collaborations. The lab has state of the art equipment for eye
and body tracking, VR, naturalistic task monitoring, psychophysics and
access to one of the most generous computing infrastructures in Germany.
We foster an inclusive, supportive, and collaborative environment driven
by scientific curiosity and mutual respect and we maintain close
interactions with other research groups including joint lab meetings.
While some of the positions are geared towards more behavioral work
others are strongly focused on computational modeling. Applicants may
therefore have a background in computer science, cognitive science,
neuroscience, psychology, engineering, or related fields. Don’t hesitate
to contact me for more details.
Please send the official application to the dean of the department of
human sciences dekanat@humanw.tu-darmstadt.de including a CV, a two page
cover letter explaining your research interests, motivation, and your
long-term career goals, and contact information for 2-3 references in a
single pdf file. The code for the PhD position is “167” and for the
Postdoc position “168”. Applications will be reviewed on a continuing basis.
The Frankfurt-Darmstadt metropolitan area is located in the heart of
Europe and is one of the most international regions in Germany with a
diverse community and rich culture repeatedly earning high rankings in
worldwide surveys of quality of living. Frankfurt recently reached 7th
place worldwide in a ranking of attractiveness by the Economist and
Darmstadt has repeatedly ranked among the top innovation driving cities
in Germany.
Finally, to get a better idea about some of our work, here some
publications by our group:
– Tatai, F., Straub, D., Rothkopf, C. A. (2023). People use Newtonian
physics in intuitive sensorimotor decisions under risk. In Proceedings
of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 45, No. 45).
https://escholarship.org/content/qt0rg3z8f6/qt0rg3z8f6_noSplash_c1cad85c077ef907da73774219eb7aed.pdf
– Kadner, F., Willkomm, H., Ibs, I., & Rothkopf, C. (2023). Finding your
Way Out: Planning Strategies in Human Maze-Solving Behavior. In
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol.
45, No. 45).
https://escholarship.org/content/qt94t1t8kw/qt94t1t8kw_noSplash_3a5e798a923f3583ede08b1f4ccfe488.pdf
– Kessler, F., Frankenstein, J., Rothkopf, C. A. A dynamic Bayesian
actor model explains endpoint variability in homing tasks, bioRxiv, 2022.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.09.515854v1
– Straub, D., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2022). Putting perception into action
with inverse optimal control for continuous psychophysics, eLife 11, e76635.
https://elifesciences.org/articles/76635
– Schultheis, M., Straub, D., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2021). Inverse
optimal control adapted to the noise characteristics of the human
sensorimotor system. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems,
34, 9429-9442.
https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2021/hash/4e55139e019a58e0084f194f758ffdea-Abstract.html