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Postdoctoral Researcher – Meditation and real-time fMRI. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

The Department of Psychiatry in conjunction with the Magnetic Resonance Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine (http://mrrc.yale.edu/index.aspx) has an opening for a postdoctoral researcher to conduct research aimed at determining the neurobiological mechanisms underlying mindfulness meditation.

This is an exciting opportunity to participate in projects using real-time fMRI and other novel analytic tools and techniques that were developed at Yale University. We have recently identified biologically plausible brain targets of meditation (e.g. Brewer et al., PNAS 2011). A few of the goals of this research are to 1) extend these findings by improving links between first-person subjective experience and third-person measurement of brain activity during meditation and 2) translate these findings for use in augmentation of acquisition of the meditative state in healthy and clinical populations. 

The successful candidate will contribute to these efforts by providing analysis of current datasets and developing her/his own mentored projects. The candidate will work in an interdisciplinary team of physicians, clinicians and basic scientists and have access to state-of-the-art MRI and computational facilities at the Magnetic Resonance Research Center. 

The successful candidate should be creative, able to work as part of a multi-disciplinary group with physicians, psychologists, engineers and computer scientists, and should be fluent in English and have good writing skills. Experience with fMRI techniques and analysis is important, and an interest in therapeutic applications of meditation and mindfulness training is preferred.

Preferred Qualifications for this position include:
•	PhD in psychology, biomedical engineering or related field
•	Experience with fMRI analysis (FSL, AFNI, SPM etc.)
•	Basic programming experience (bash etc.)
•	A record of publication and/or conference presentations 

Qualified candidates should submit their CV and three references to: Judson Brewer MD PhD ([log in to unmask]), Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, 300 George St. Suite 901, New Haven, CT 06511 

Successful applicants may start as early as January 2012.

Yale University is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer.  Yale values diversity in its faculty, students and staff and especially encourages applications from women and underrepresented minority scholars.