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Professor joy Geng seeks to fill a Part-time junior specialist position in the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis to begin August 2025. The position is for 1 year with the possibility of renewal based on performance and funding.

The lab studies the development of executive functioning, investigating how children learn to achieve goals by planning ahead, stopping themselves from doing things they shouldn’t do, flexibly switching from one activity to another, and solving problems. The lab also explores social and contextual factors that shape the development of executive function, and implications for intervention.

The junior specialist will work closely with the PI and lab group to support and participate in all aspects of the lab’s research in executive function development. The position will involve collaborating with the PI, postdocs, and grad students to develop new experimental designs and procedures, analyze and interpret data, present research at conferences, and submit manuscripts for publication.

Responsibilities will include:

Research (70%)

•The junior specialist will be actively engaged in publishable research. They will program the experiments in PsychoPy, collect eye-tracking data using either an Eyelink 100 desk top gracker or a Tobii desktop system, and collect physiological data using the Mindware system. Their duties will involve creating the experiment, collecting multimodal data, and analyzing the data.

• The junior specialist will work with a team of the PI, postdocs, and graduate students to develop the experimental plan, data collection protocol, and data analysis pipeline.

• The junior specialist will be expected to read the literature in order to contribute to scientific discussion of protocol development and the data analysis plan. They will be actively involved in developing experimental protocols and making decisions about data analysis and interpretation. The literature will include studies on attention, cognitive control, stress, and arousal. Th junior specialist will present data locally until the data is ready to be shared with the broader scientific community.

University and Public Service (30%)

● Possible conferences include the Vision Sciences Society, and/or Psychonomic Society meetings. Participation in societies will be at their own discretion.

As a condition of employment, the finalist will be required to disclose if they are subject to any final administrative or judicial decisions within the last seven years determining that they committed any misconduct, are currently being investigated for misconduct, left a position during an investigation for alleged misconduct, or have filed an appeal with a previous employer.

• “Misconduct” means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant’s previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment, discrimination, dishonesty, or unethical conduct, as defined by the employer.
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