The Seattle Longitudinal Study, a study of normal human
aging that has been ongoing since 1956, is seeking undergraduate research
assistants. Our current research uses structural and functional MRI to examine
the relationship between changes in brain structure and function and cognition
that occurs with normal aging in midlife and in old age. Opportunities exist
for dedicated undergraduates to gain exposure to novel and emerging
neuroimaging analysis techniques (e.g. cortical thickness analysis, resting
state network analysis, graph theoretical measures, and dynamic connectivity). Some
technical background (comfort with math and with computers) and an interest in
neuroscience are required. Desirable skills include programming (in some
language, whether it be Java or C++ or a scripting languages such as Python, R
or MATLAB), familiarity with UNIX tools, and some background in statistics
(e.g., linear regression). Students would be working with us to develop
neuroimaging pipelines to process structural and functional data and conducting
neuroimaging analyses using these pipelines and software developed by others.
This is a fantastic opportunity for a student to obtain real-world experience
as a data scientist using statistics, R, and parallelism to solve real neuroscience
problems.
We plan to hire and train one undergraduate immediately. We
are most interested in students who can work with us for at least two years, so
students who are in their first or second years are especially encouraged to
contact us. Options are available for hourly wage or student credit, depending
on the commitment of students and their fit to our project and background.
Interested students should contact by email Dr. Sherry
Willis (oldage@u.washington.edu)
and Dr. Tara Madhyastha (tara.madhyastha@gmail.com). Please provide a cv and a statement of
relevant prior experience or course work.
