Join | Computational Cognition Lab

Welcome!

We are really pleased to hear that you are thinking about joining our team.

Are we the right fit for you?

Before you look further, it may be helpful to understand what kind of work you'll be doing if you join the lab.

We are an inter-disciplinary lab and do a mixture of experimental and computational work. This could involve anything from designing a behavioural study to testing a computational model. To get more information about recent work, look at our Publications page.

On any particular day you could be doing one or more of the following: meeting participants, analysing data, creating a stimuli set, debugging code, designing a simulation, reading up on some maths concepts, reviewing or discussing a paper with colleagues, etc. In short, there is a lot of sitting and staring at the screen, but also a little bit of staring at other people.

We are looking for people who enjoy experimental design, data analysis, as well as coding and building computational models. This would require familiarity with a number of software tools (e.g. Pytorch) and analysis methods (e.g. Bayesian data analysis). We don't require candidates to already know all of this, but they should be prepared to pick up some of these skills as they go along. We value people who are prepared to sit and think deeply, often staring at data files and code for long hours to understand what people and models may be doing. Most importantly, we are looking for someone who is interested in the questions that drive us and think they can contribute to the important questions in the field.

Are you the right fit for us?

We are looking for researchers from a wide range of backgrounds, including psychology, biology, statistics and computer science.

What do we offer?

CCLab provides a unique opportunity for pursuing cutting-edge research in the area of Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence.

CCLab is part of the Albany AI+ initiative. This gives us access to a state-of-the-art computing facility to run cutting-edge simulations, including an nVIDIA DGX cluster, a new on-premises nVIDIA Deep Learning facility and a collaboration with IBM Research. Additionally, the AI+ initiative brings together researchers from UAlbany, RPI and SUNY institutes to work together on some of the most challenging problems in computing and AI.

We are also part of the Cognitive Area within the Department of Psychology, with labs specialising in human vision, memory, language and cognitive neuroscience and we work closely with labs in Behavioral Neuroscience and Biology. Members of the lab will become part of this vibrant inter-disciplinary community of researchers as well as graduate and undergraduate students.

Opportunities

There are a number of different ways in which you can work with the lab, depending on your life-stage, skills and academic trajectory.

Research Assistant

Research assistantships are aimed at undergraduate and graduate students who want to spend some time in the lab, getting to know our research and people in the lab. They are a great way of understanding whether our research pathway is a good fit for you if you intend to continue doing research in the field. RAs will work either directly under a graduate student or under Dr Malhotra. Students can either volunteer or receive course credit for being an RA. We ask that RAs spend 6-10 hours per week and commit to either one or two semesters.

To apply send an email to apply@cclab.ac

Graduate Student

If you would like to pursue a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Malhotra, you are encouraged to apply to the Cognitive Psychology program at the Department of Psychology. Students are generally supported via teaching studentships and there are opportunities available for summer research assistantships. UAlbany also offers a number of competitive awards and fellowships for incoming students.

Application deadline for the CogPsy program is usually around mid-January.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Postdoctoral applications are considered on a case-by-case basis. If you are interested, please email Dr Malhotra with a brief outline of your research interests and a CV.

There are a number of funding opportunities for posdoctoral research available through national funding agencies (see here, and here). Other posdoc opportunites are tied to research grants obtained by the PI. When they are available, we will advertise them here and on relevant mailing lists such as visionlist and the Math Psych mailing list.