Project Scientist / Research Faculty Role

See: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF06612 for more information and to apply for the role. (Note that the site says the original date of review is 8/19 - but the position is still open).

The Bliss-Moreau Laboratory is recruiting a post-postdoc level scientist to help lead the lab’s mission of carrying out rigorous womb-to-tomb affective neuroscience in rhesus monkeys.  The laboratory is based at the California National Primate Research Center, one of the seven National Institutes of Health funded National Primate Research Centers, at the University of California, Davis.  This is an in-person position.

The lab has both behavioral and neuroscientific foci; candidates should have expertise in either monkey behavior or neuroanatomy (either/both histology and MRI) and a willingness to learn the skill sets complementary to their expertise.  Expertise with macaque monkeys is highly desirable. Strong quantitative and writing skills are required.  Historically, people in this role have contributed significantly to the mentoring of trainees and participated/been mentored in grant writing. Currently funded work includes neuroanatomical evaluation of our pre-clinical Alzheimer’s model, modeling variation in psychological trajectories later in life to predict risk and resilience, studies of the neurobiology of interoception across the lifespan, and a large-scale study of how social environment impacts cognitive, affective, and neural aging trajectories.  The person who joins the team will also have access to significant archival data.  Opportunities to teach in the Department of Psychology may also be available.

 The titles in which we can hire are part of UC Davis’ “Academic Federation” and unionized (see here and here), including full benefits, a set salary scale, and specific timing for regular merit reviews with associated raises.  Initial appointments in these titles are typically for 2 years, dependent on funding availability. The project scientist title is a non-PI title and evaluated based on participating in the lab’s research and mentoring, with no expectation that people pursue or secure their own funding or independent research programs.  Project scientists can request a “PI exemption” to apply for their own funding, which we encourage for people who wish to pursue a PI path at some point. The research faculty titles (in the “professional researcher” series) are PI titles and are evaluated in part by people’s ability to secure their own funding and develop/lead their own research programs.  There are different advantages to each role, largely dependent on a person’s long-term career goals.  It is also possible to start in a non-PI role and transition to a PI role.  This could be a transitional position (as in, a shorter term position for someone looking to launch their own lab) or a career position for the right person.

Postdocs

While we do not currently have and open recruitment (job posting) for postdocs, we are able to consider potential candidates for such positions. Please send your CV and a brief note about why you are interested in joining the lab as a postdoc to Dr. Bliss-Moreau at eblissmoreau@ucdavis.edu. In your note of interest, because be clear and explicit about why our lab’s work is of interest to you and why your training to date makes you well suited for it.

Graduate Students

  • We will be considering applications in Winter 2024/2025 for admission in Fall 2025. Priority will be given to students applying to the Psychology Graduate Group.

  • The UC Davis application system asks applicants to list (in rank order) potential mentors. If you wish to train with Dr. Bliss-Moreau in our lab, it is really important that you list her as your first choice of mentor in your applications.

  • We are particularly interested in people who are interested in studying:

    • Neuroanatomical studies of the brain networks that generate affect in both health and disease states (work in monkeys)

    • How affective and social life changes across the lifespan (work in monkeys or humans)

    • Comparative studies of affective processing (including work with humans, monkeys, and other species)

    • How people perceive the affective and emotional states of animals

Please note: Dr. Bliss-Moreau often receives requests from potential students to discuss projects and applications prior to the application deadline. To be fair to all applicants, not bias admissions decisions, and allow all applicants to be considered based on the same information, she does not have these conversations in advance of the application deadline. It is possible that based on application materials, she may contact a long list of applicants after the application deadline and prior to formal interview invitations being made. Otherwise, the opportunity to have these conversation will happen in the context of formal interviews.

Graduate Program Options for Training in the Bliss-Moreau Lab: UC Davis graduate programs are structured by “graduate group” rather than department. Our lab is associated with the Psychology Graduate Group (which awards PhDs), the Animal Behavior Graduate Group (which awards PhDs), the Neuroscience Graduate Group (which awards PhDs) and the Animal Biology Graduate Group (which awards both MS and PhD degrees). Psychology, Animal Behavior, and Animal Biology are mentored programs – students are admitted to work with a specific faculty member and do not rotate. Neuroscience is a rotation program – the first year of study is spent working in different labs which allows students and mentors to ensure fit.

If your goal is to train with Dr. Bliss-Moreau and the Bliss-Moreau Laboratory, then you should consider applying to multiple programs if your interests overlap with multiple programs. For example, the Psychology program can be structured to functionally look like the Neuroscience program or the Animal Behavior program.  The Animal Biology program can look a lot like the Animal Behavior program. Admissions to the different programs varies year-to-year and in some cases the admissions decisions are made at the level of an admissions committee, with very little input from faculty. In other cases, faculty may have a say but there may not be enough slots to admit all talented applicants. For admissions this year (Fall 2024), we will be giving priority to students who matriculate through the Psychology Graduate Group because the group ensures funding via TAships.

Note that application fees can be waived for some applicants; information about that can be found here.

Whether or not admissions decisions are made by committee, our lab group uses a wholistic review process for applications which means that we do not consider a specific element of the applications more so than others and we seek to understand the context in which applicants have developed as scholars. That said, it is very important that applicants’ essays clearly indicate why they are interested in training specifically in our group on the topics on which we work. We rely on essays to understand how applicants’ interests dovetail with our existing work and core themes and will only consider applicants whose interests overlap substantially with our own. Strong application essays are those that demonstrate that the applicant is aware of the work happening in the laboratory (see our publication page for more info) and make direct links between the applicant’s scientific interests and the work happening in the group. It is also important to note that our application system asks applicants to rank order faculty mentor preferences; this information is used to determine which faculty consider which applicants. If you wish to train in the Bliss-Moreau Lab, it is wise to list Dr. Bliss-Moreau as your first choice.

Our current work is focused on understanding the basic biology that generates the building blocks of emotion and social behavior and how that biology develops both in evolutionary time and across the lifespan - what we call “womb-to-tomb” affective science. Presently, we are exploring some of these questions in the context of studying the consequences of developmental diseases (specifically Alzheimer's disease and fetal Zika virus infection) in animal models (specifically rhesus macaques). These studies ask specific questions about how neurodevelopmental diseases impact neural, social, affective, and cognitive processing, but also allow for questions to be asked about normal healthy developmental processes (because each project has non-impacted ‘control’ animals). We also have major projects that seek to understand how social context shapes affective processes across the lifespan and how affect varies and is conserved across the animal kingdom. Our work is guided by a “constructivist” approach to emotion that postulates that emotions are not hardwired entities but come to be via the combination of more basic parts. You can read about this perspective in this brief publication.  We do not study discrete emotions in animals.

All students in the laboratory work on core projects, although there is ample space and freedom to develop an aspect of the project into their own once they have worked on core projects and built a solid set of experimental and theoretical skills. Students who wish to work with rhesus monkeys will be prioritized in admissions decisions. 

Undergraduate Students

As of the publicized review date (May 7) received >100 applications for a very small number (2-5) of positions and so are no longer accepting applications. Should our first round of recruiting efforts not be succesfull, we will reopen the application and post the link here.