The Social Learning and Decisions Lab (https://sldlab.umd.edu/, PI: Caroline Charpentier) at the University of Maryland, College Park, is seeking applications for a full-time project coordinator/research assistant (formal title: Faculty Specialist) to start in August or September 2025. Current research in the lab focuses on uncovering the behavioral and neural computations involved in human social and affective decision-making, with a strong interest in how individual variability in these processes relate to neurodiversity and psychopathology.
This is an excellent opportunity to gain research experience in preparation for a graduate career, and to play a crucial role in a NIMH-funded fMRI study as well as other smaller projects in the lab. Responsibilities and duties (with tentative % effort in parentheses) will include:
– (50%) Screening, recruiting and testing participants for a large task-based neuroimaging (fMRI) study focused on examining multiple aspects of social learning in neurotypical and neurodiverse individuals.
– (20%) Assisting with other projects in the lab, including a study using naturalistic paradigms to better understand strategic thinking and trust.
– (10%) Contributing to data analyses (especially data parsing and processing) for the above projects, conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications.
– (10%) Recruiting, training and supervising undergraduate research assistants.
– (10%) Managing day-to-day lab activities (shared accounts, participants payment, updates to lab website, IRB protocol amendments, maintaining/ordering equipment).
Required qualifications include (1) a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science or other related field, (2) excellent organizational, interpersonal, and communication skills, and (3) experience with recruiting and testing human participants through task-based (PsychoPy) and/or MRI studies.
Additional preferred qualifications include good computational skills, including computer programming (R, Python, or Matlab) and data analysis/statistics, interest in social neuroscience, behavioral economics, and/or computational psychiatry, desire to work with neurodivergent populations, and experience with fMRI data collection protocols and fMRI data analysis (preprocessing, GLMs).
The position is full-time (40 hr/week) for one year. Salary will be competitive, commensurate with experience, and includes health benefits.
To express interest and/or for any question, please email your CV and a short email describing your fit to the position to Caroline Charpentier (). The application portal and official job posting will be available soon through the University of Maryland. The position will be open until filled.