Senior Scientist Position for Outstanding Female Researchers

We are seeking applications from accomplished researchers at a level comparable to an Associate Professor, Full Professor or Chair. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of high-impact research publications, a demonstrated ability to lead an independent research program, and a strong history of securing competitive research funding.

As a researcher at CWI, your primary focus will be on conducting innovative and excellent research. In addition, you will be expected to:

• lead independent research projects and contribute to or start new collaborative initiatives;
• secure competitive research funding through successful grant applications;
• contribute to education and talent development, typically dedicating around 10% of your time to such activities;
• strengthen CWI’s connections with the national and international science communities;
• engage in academic service and outreach activities, such as organizing conferences, research semester programmes, or other scientific and public events;
• contribute to the governance and administrator roles of the institute.

A PhD Student in Neuro-AI or Developmental Vision (M/F/X)

A PHD-studenT iN NeuroAI of Developmental vision (m/f/x)

to work on:

The Curriculum of Sight - How Visual Processing Develops in Brains and Machines.

For animals, it is imperative to learn as quickly as possible. To do this, we know that the mammalian visual system utilizes "inductive biases"—inherent assumptions that streamline learning for specific environments. In this project, we aim to investigate how rapid learning in mammals is facilitated by the learning curriculum shaped in the developmental stages of human infants. By comprehensively measuring and documenting these developmental stages and the associated inductive biases, we aim to identify key mechanisms that drive rapid learning in the visual system. The goal is to create a robust mechanistic neural network model of the visual system that not only mimics its processing capabilities but also its adaptability, leveraging early developmental data and ecological validity. Infant data will be acquired in collaboration with Dr. Tessa Dekker (University College London) and Dr. Ingmar Visser at UvA. The project thus aims to quantify and model the remarkable learning efficiency of the human visual system.

The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the the Machine Learning group at CWI in Amsterdam (Prof.dr Sander Bohte) and the Brain & Cognition group (Dr. Steven Scholte) at the UvA, where the PhD at CWI will focus on developing detailed and large-scale neural models of the early visual system.