Christian Doeller Group:

We are offering a fully funded 3-year postdoctoral position for an exceptional early-career researcher to join the team of Christian Doeller at the Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI-CBS) in Leipzig, Germany.

You will work at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience in a dynamic, interdisciplinary, and international research environment—equipped with world-class facilities and embedded in a vibrant scientific community.

This position is part of the Max Planck Society’s Postdoc Program, which provides additional support for your scientific and career development.

The starting date is flexible.

What we study

Our research investigates how the brain builds, organizes, and uses structured representations to support cognition across domains. Under this umbrella, we explore:

• Spatial navigation, temporal, episodic, and working memory
• Learning, decision making, and knowledge acquisition
• Translational research on population coding and Alzheimer’s disease

Key research methods: fMRI (including 7T), MEG, virtual reality (VR), a wide variety of cognitive tasks, psychophysics, machine learning, deep neural networks, and computational modelling. 

Within the Department, we maintain strong synergies with the Neural Computation Group (PI: Andrej Bicanski), which develops mechanistic computational models of brain function and behavior. We also have long-term collaborations with the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim, Norway and a strong international network.

Learn more about our work:          
🔗 Department of Psychology – Christian Doeller        

Project scope

This is an open call, and the specific project will be defined flexibly in interaction with the successful candidate. The overarching aim is to address a fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience by identifying the neural building blocks—particularly, but not exclusively, within the hippocampal formation—that support the key computations underlying higher-level cognition.

A particular emphasis of this call is on interdisciplinary and cross-cutting, synergistics approaches. We therefore explicitly welcome applications from candidates with backgrounds in circuit-level systems neuroscience, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, social science or robotics who are interested in developing and conducting cognitive neuroscience experiments.

The successful candidate will also have opportunities to collaborate with laboratories across our extensive research network, both within and beyond the Max Planck Society.

What we offer

This is a fully funded, 3-year postdoctoral position (with the possibility of extension) in the research group of Christian Doeller, embedded within the Max Planck Society’s Postdoc Program. 

The position offers an exceptional opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research in an international, cross-disciplinary, and intellectually stimulating environment. As a member of the DoellerLab, you will collaborate with outstanding scientists in an open, supportive, intellectually stimulating, and high-performance environment.

Research Infrastructure:

You will have access to state-of-the-art facilities, including: 

• Four 3T MR scanners and one 7T MR scanner
• MEG, EEG, VR labs, psychophysics & eye-tracking facilities
• Access to neurological patients via the Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurology at Leipzig University Hospital as part of collaborative projects

Academic & Leadership Development – DoellerLab:

• Personalized mentoring, including tailored support for scientific and career development
• Opportunity to work towards developing independent research directions and engage in interdisciplinary collaboration
• Opportunity to co-supervise undergraduate and PhD students and contribute to training the next generation of scientists 
• Support for presenting research at leading international conferences, including opportunities for visibility and networking (independent travel budget) 
• Targeted career development planning, including external academic or industry mentors 
• Access to career development workshops, coaching, and training
• Access to leading scientific networks