Impress employers and recruiters.
Choose from hundreds of resume examples.

Impress employers and recruiters.
Choose from hundreds of resume examples.

Target Resume Now

About the Role

The Center for Affective and Autonomic Neuroscience (CAAN) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development is seeking a Research Scientist to investigate the causes and consequences of autonomic changes across adulthood using longitudinal datasets and to contribute to new data planning and analysis. This role bridges physiology, computational analysis, and aging neuroscience.

Responsibilities

• Design and conduct longitudinal analyses linking autonomic measures to health, brain, and molecular biomarkers.
• Build and maintain reproducible pipelines to clean, harmonize, and integrate multi-modal data.
• Process and analyze cardiac signals, including spectral decomposition of heart rate variability.
• Integrate autonomic measures with neuroimaging and/or molecular data to probe mechanism.
• Lead manuscripts and develop and lead grant applications as principal or co-investigator.
• Shape the long-term scientific agenda within CAAN and represent this work at international conferences.
• Collaborate within a multidisciplinary team and mentor and supervise postdocs, graduate students, and junior staff.

Requirements

• Relevant postdoctoral experience and a PhD (or equivalent) in psychology, neuroscience, physiology, biomedical engineering, epidemiology, statistics, or a related field.
• Strong applied statistics, including methods for longitudinal / repeated-measures data.
• Ability to independently learn new quantitative methods.
• Proficient programming and data-wrangling skills (e.g., R, Python) for building analysis pipelines on complex, multi-wave datasets.
• A track record of first-author peer-reviewed publications, including first-author papers in high-quality journals.
• Experience with or demonstrated potential for grant writing.

Skills

• Spectral analysis and signal processing of heart rate / ECG data (e.g., frequency-domain HRV).
• Experience with MRI data (structural, functional, and/or related preprocessing pipelines).
• Experience with proteomic data or other high-dimensional molecular datasets.
• Experience harmonizing data across cohorts.
• Familiarity with version control and reproducible-research practices.

Location

• Berlin, Germany

Work Type

• Full-time
• Four-year fixed-term contract
• Possibility to work remotely (up to 40%)

Experience Level

• Postdoctoral experience

Education Level

• PhD or equivalent

Salary/Compensations

• Up to EG 14 TVöD

Benefits

• Access to rich multimodal datasets
• Close collaboration with researchers with complementary expertise
• Support from a data collection staff team
• Support and mentoring for publications, grant applications and career development
• Stimulating, international work environment
• Access to the training programs offered by the Planck Academy of the MPG
• Flexible working hours
• Annual bonus payment in accordance with the TVöD
• 30 days of vacation, plus December 24 and 31 off
• Daycare partnerships with dedicated places
• A parent-child room at the institute
• Excellent public transport connections
• Jobticket
• Institute canteen and biodiverse institute garden
• Various offers related to “health in the workplace” (e.g., fitness room, massage services, yoga classes)
• Extensive support services, e.g., International Office, Disability Office, Gender Equality Office, mental health support
• Diversity-sensitive working environment

About the Company

• The Max Planck Institute for Human Development studies how and why people develop differently over their lives and how environmental aspects shape this process.
• We work across disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, computer science, economics, and sociology.
• We foster academic freedom, curiosity, and collaborative work to generate insights that help shape living conditions for individuals and societies to thrive.
• We combine pioneering interdisciplinary research infrastructures with local and international collaboration to generate knowledge that strengthens individuals and society.
• Our vision is that of a healthy environment and an open society that allows individuals to realize their potential.

Equal Opportunity

• The Max Planck Society strives for gender equality and diversity.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion enrich our society and foster scientific excellence.
• We are committed to increasing the number of women in areas in which they are underrepresented and employing more people with disabilities.
• We welcome applications from people who belong to groups that are often underrepresented in the workplace due to, among other factors, age, disability/chronic illness, ethnicity, gender identity, and religion.