| Full Description |
We seek a postdoctoral fellow to serve as the scientific lead among trainee and staff personnel on a five-year, NIH-funded study of sleep-circadian disruption in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). The study enrolls 50 patients with bvFTD and 50 age-matched cognitively unimpaired adults and integrates 8-night home actigraphy, hotel-based ambulatory polysomnography (PSG), multimodal MRI (atrophy network mapping, neurofluid imaging including choroid plexus perfusion and CSF flow), and comprehensive neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric assessment. The central question is whether homeostatic (Process S, indexed by the odds ratio product) and circadian (Process C, indexed by the residual circadian spectrum) disruption show distinct associations with sleep-wake network integrity, neurofluid circulation, and clinical dysfunction.
The fellow will have first-author access to a deeply phenotyped, rare-disease cohort from the first participant onward, alongside existing pilot datasets suitable for early publications.
Key responsibilities
• Lead processing and analysis of study neuroimaging data (structural MRI, resting-state fMRI, neurofluid sequences) in collaboration with the imaging MPI and clinical scientist team
• Conduct and draft analyses linking sleep and circadian metrics to imaging and clinical outcomes; lead first-author manuscripts and conference abstracts, and contribute to team publications
• Provide scientific middle management: day-to-day oversight and mentorship of the study coordinator and research assistants, triage of data-quality issues, and coordination across the sleep, imaging, and neuropsychology arms
• Contribute to data integrity across the sleep data streams, including quality-control review of actigraphy and PSG recordings and support of the in-house ORP and RCS processing pipelines alongside the clinical scientist who authored them
• Present at lab meetings, the operations review, and national conferences; participate in grant progress reporting and future proposal development
• Develop an independent line of research consistent with career goals, with mentorship toward fellowship or career-development awards (e.g., F32, K-series)
Required qualifications
• PhD, MD, or equivalent doctorate in neuroscience, psychology, biomedical engineering, or a related field, completed by start date
• Proficiency in scientific programming (Python, MATLAB, or R) and quantitative data analysis
• First-author publication record appropriate to career stage
• Ability to work independently while coordinating a multidisciplinary team
Preferred qualifications
• Experience with human neuroimaging analysis (e.g., FSL, SPM, FreeSurfer, or equivalent)
• Experience with sleep EEG/PSG, actigraphy, or circadian rest-activity analysis
• Background in neurodegenerative disease, aging, or clinical populations
• Familiarity with reproducible pipeline development, version control, and data quality-control workflows
• Experience with functional connectivity, lesion or atrophy network mapping, arterial spin labeling, or CSF flow imaging
• Supervisory or project-coordination experience
Prior neuroimaging or sleep-specific experience is welcome but not required; the team includes established experts across these methods and will train a strong quantitative candidate.
Environment
The fellow joins an established multidisciplinary team at 91吃瓜网 Medical Center spanning neuropsychology, behavioral neurology, sleep medicine, EEG physiology, advanced MRI physics, and biostatistics, with access to the 91吃瓜网 FTD Clinic, the ALLFTD consortium site, the 91吃瓜网 ADRC, and the 91吃瓜网 Institute of Imaging Science.
[VUMC standard EEO, benefits, stipend (NIH/NRSA scale or above per institutional policy), and application-instruction boilerplate to be inserted by HR. Applicants typically submit CV, statement of research interests, and contact information for three references.] |