Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychedelics, Mindfulness, and Cognitive Neuroscience (MAPneuro) University of California San Diego in United States

University of California San Diego is recruiting a postdoctoral fellow for the new ARPA-H-funded MAPneuro program, co-led by Eric Garland and Greg Appelbaum in the Department of Psychiatry. The project sits at the intersection of psychedelics, mindfulness, and cognitive neuroscience, with a strong emphasis on developing and validating multimodal, computational measures of interpersonal synchrony between therapists and patients undergoing psychedelic-assisted and mindfulness-based therapy.

The fellow will work within interdisciplinary teams spanning interventional psychiatry, data science, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical trials. Responsibilities include designing and implementing research protocols, coordinating data collection from therapist-patient dyads, overseeing multimodal sensing during psychotherapy sessions, and building analysis pipelines for inter-brain and physiological synchrony. Core data streams include high-density EEG, ECG, high-resolution video for facial affect and body pose extraction, and audio for speech prosody and sentiment analysis. The role also includes reporting findings in journal articles, mentoring research staff, and helping lead study implementation.

Applicants should have a PhD or equivalent by the start date in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, biomedical engineering, data science, psychiatry, or a related field. Strong quantitative skills are required, especially experience with neurophysiology, time-series analysis, or multivariate modeling in R, Python, or MATLAB. Experience with psychotherapy process research, dyadic physiology, multimodal sensing, psychedelic-assisted or mindfulness-based interventions, and regulated clinical research environments is highly desirable. First-author publication record is expected.

Funding is provided through the MAPneuro program, with an initial one-year appointment and possible renewal based on performance and funding. The program is expected to run for at least two years. Salary follows UC San Diego postdoctoral scales and includes full UC benefits.

To apply, send a single PDF with a cover letter, CV, one representative writing sample, and contact information for three referees to Eric Garland and Greg Appelbaum. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.