Systems Engineer (Research and Development Scientist and Engineer 2)

Job Description

Stanford University is launching an interdisciplinary Neuro-AI project dedicated to building a foundation model of the brain. This endeavor will involve multiple labs and faculty across the Stanford campus, including the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford Bio-X, and the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute. Leveraging cutting-edge advances in electrophysiology and machine learning, this project aims to create a functional "digital twin" — a model that captures both the activity dynamics of the brain at cellular resolution and the intelligent behavior it generates, including perception, motor planning, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving.

This ambitious initiative promises to offer unprecedented insights into the brain's algorithms of perception and cognition while serving as a key resource for aligning artificial intelligence models with human-like neural representations. As part of this project, we are seeking talented Systems Engineers with an extensive background in implementing and maintaining experimental setups used to run large-scale neuroscience experiments. Ideal candidates will have several years of practical experience in building and running multi-modal experimental setups, including implementation of state-machines, the synchronization of different data modalities (such as visual stimulation with eye tracking), and large-scale electrophysiology techniques. Additionally, candidates should exhibit a strong background in quantitative fields such as Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, or Computer Science.

This position promises a vibrant and cooperative atmosphere within the laboratories of Andreas Tolias ( https://toliaslab.org ), Tirin Moore ( https://www.moorelabstanford.com ) and other labs at Stanford University renowned for their expertise in perception, cognition, pioneering neural recording techniques, computational neuroscience, machine learning, and Neuro-AI research.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Work together with a team dedicated to developing novel stimulus and behavioral paradigms, as well as large-scale Neuropixels recordings, for experiments in head-fixed behaving animal species beyond current state-of-the-art methods.

• Build and maintain multi-modal experimental setups, including integration of hardware components (e.g. eye/face/body cameras, widefield stereo displays, binocular eye trackers, head-stages for electrophysiology, high precision timing, photodiodes and relays) and software components (e.g. LabVIEW, OpenEphys, Kilosort), the latter in collaboration with Software Engineers.

• Work together with other teams of the Enigma Project to ensure efficient, large-scale, industry-level quality of experiments.

• * - Other duties may also be assigned

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• PhD, Master’s or Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

• 2-3 years of practical experience in building and running experimental neuro-behavioral and/or neuro-physiological paradigms.

• Expertise in implementing hardware and software components for such experiments including concepts of state-machines, real-time high throughput data acquisition and storage, signal processing, visual stimulus presentation, and high resolution eye tracking

• Proficiency in LabVIEW, Matlab, and Python.

• Experience with National Instrument hardware.

• Experience with designing databases in Python/MySQL for big data.

• Experience with problem-solving and engineering solutions for large-scale experiments in neuroscience.

• Experience with networking and cloud storage.