Postdoctoral Research Scientist in NeuroAI — University of Rome Tor Vergata
About the Position
We are looking for a highly motivated Postdoctoral Research Scientist in NeuroAI to join our group at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. You will work at the intersection of neuroscience, AI, and cognitive science in a vibrant research environment involved in multiple Horizon Europe, EIC Pathfinder, national PNRR, and international collaborations with both research institutions and industry partners.
Our group develops methods that map brain activity into powerful semantic representations learned by large foundation models, enabling decoding, encoding, generative reconstruction, multimodal alignment, and cross-species generalization. Your work will directly contribute to next-generation NeuroAI research in visual cognition, audition, language, music/speech decoding, and the algebraic structure of brain representations.
What You'll Work On
Develop and evaluate models that project neural activity into the latent spaces of modern vision, language, and audio foundation models to study how the brain encodes perception, action, and semantics.
Build robust decoding/encoding pipelines supporting generative reconstruction (images, music, speech), cross-subject alignment, and cross-modality translation across heterogeneous neural datasets.
Use these models to test neuroscientific hypotheses about abstraction, modality-invariance, compositionality, representational geometry, and shared latent structure across species, tasks, and recording methods.
Contribute to high-impact publications, open-source tools, and collaborative research within Tor Vergata and international partner labs.
Participate in lab activities: mentoring students, presenting at conferences, and helping drive the long-term agenda of NeuroAI research.
What We're Looking For
PhD (or near completion) in physics, computer science, or related quantitative fields.
At least 2+ years of hands-on research experience in computational neuroscience, neuroimaging, AI/ML, signal processing, or related areas (PhD years count).
Solid programming experience in Python and deep-learning frameworks (PyTorch/JAX/TensorFlow), with familiarity handling real neural data (fMRI, EEG/MEG, ECoG, iEEG, or multi-unit spiking).
Background in at least one of: encoding/decoding models, contrastive learning, diffusion models or generative AI, multimodal representation learning, or topographic brain modelling.
Evidence of strong scientific output, excellent communication skills, and enthusiasm for interdisciplinary work bridging AI and brain science.
Why Join Us
A unique opportunity to help shape the emerging field of NeuroAI .
Access to state-of-the-art computing (HPC, GPUs) and multiple large-scale neural datasets.
Participation in EU-funded projects across neuroscience, AI, neuromodulation, brain-computer interfaces, and cognitive technologies.
A collaborative, international research environment.
How to Apply
Send your CV, a brief statement of research interests, and (optionally) 1–2 representative publications to:
nicola.toschi@uniroma2.eu
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis .