Current Opportunities at Vanderbilt

I am seeking one postdoctoral research associate to join my lab for two years starting on July 1st 2023 (www.memnavlab.com). The primary responsibilities of the successful applicant will be to contribute to an NSF-funded research project on decision processes in human navigation. This project investigates the decision strategies that navigators use to estimate goal locations when spatial cues are inconsistent; whether navigators account for the costs of navigational errors in principled and quantifiable ways; how prior knowledge or experience is incorporated into navigational decisions; and how navigators combine information from artifactual spatial cues (e.g., a mapping app) with natural spatial cues (e.g., visual & body-based cues) when making navigational decisions. Most of our experiments are conducted in immersive virtual reality. The research facilities are excellent and include a fully-immersive VR lab using HMDs with location tracking and a Cyberith Virtualizer omni-directional treadmill. The postdoctoral fellow can also take advantage of the collaborative research environment, facilities, and support in the Department of Psychology, Department of Computer Science, Vanderbilt Brain Institute, and Vanderbilt Data Science Institute.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in psychology or a related discipline and must have experience programming VR studies. Experience with computational or mathematical modeling is desired but not essential. Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Salary will be based on the NIH postdoctoral scale. Applicants should send a cover letter, brief research statement, current CV, and the names and addresses of three references to: Timothy P. McNamara @ t.mcnamara@vanderbilt.edu.