INSPIRE Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park, led by Dr. Nan Xu, is hiring two post-baccalaureate research assistants to support ongoing projects on brain dynamics, neuroimaging data analysis, and associated behavioral, clinical, and metadata analysis.
These positions are ideal for recent graduates or master students who are interested in gaining research experience before applying to graduate school, medical school, or research-oriented industry positions.
- Project Focus: The selected candidates will contribute to computational neuroimaging projects that investigate large-scale brain dynamics across different populations, conditions, and disease/disorder-related datasets. The work may involve fMRI data, behavioral measures, clinical variables, physiological measures, and other associated metadata. Research topics may include brain dynamics related to neurological, psychiatric, developmental, or metabolic conditions, as well as physiological responses to experimental or naturalistic conditions. The overall goal is to identify brain-based computational biomarkers and understand how large-scale brain activity patterns relate to behavior, symptoms, clinical variables, and individual differences.
- Primary Responsibilities
- Organize, clean, and manage fMRI, behavioral, clinical, physiological, and metadata datasets.
- Assist with extraction and analysis of parcellated fMRI time series.
- Support analyses of large-scale spatiotemporal brain patterns and time-varying interactions among brain networks.
- Conduct statistical analyses relating brain measures to behavioral, clinical, physiological, or demographic variables.
- Help develop and maintain clear, well-documented data analysis pipelines.
- Depending on background and project needs, contribute to machine learning-based prediction or biomarker analysis.
- Participate in lab meetings and contribute to research presentations, conference abstracts, and manuscripts.
- Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in bioengineering, neuroscience, computer science, data science, psychology, statistics, applied mathematics, electrical/computer engineering, or a related field.
- Prior programming experience in Python and/or MATLAB.
- Strong quantitative, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to work carefully with complex datasets and document code clearly.
- Interest in brain imaging, computational neuroscience, biomedical data science, or machine learning.
- Preferred Qualifications
- Prior research experience in neuroimaging, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, data science, psychology, statistics, computer science, or a related quantitative/biomedical field.
- Experience with fMRI, time-series analysis, statistics, behavioral data analysis, clinical/physiological data analysis, or machine learning.
- Experience working with behavioral, clinical, physiological, or metadata tables.
- Prior research outputs, such as peer-reviewed publications, preprints, conference abstracts, posters, or research presentations, are a plus.
- Position Details
- Number of openings: 2
- Position type: Post-baccalaureate research assistant
- Location: University of Maryland, College Park
- Start date: Flexible; earlier start preferred
- Preferred commitment: At least one year
- How to Apply: Interested applicants should send a CV/resume, a brief statement of research interests, and a short description of relevant coding and research experience to Dr. Nan Xu at nanxu@umd.edu. Please include “Post-Baccalaureate Research Assistant Application” in the subject line.
Dates: July 13 – August 21, 2026
Instructor: Dr. Chan Lin
Location: Online
Prerequisites: BSCI330 or NEUR200