Simons Empire Faculty Fellow Biological Sciences (Assistant Professor)

Job description

Location: Albany, NY Category: Faculty Posted On: Mon Sep 22 2025 Job Description:
The Department of Biological Sciences (https://www.albany.edu/biology) within the College of Arts and Sciences (https://www.albany.edu/cas) at the University at Albany invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position--a Simons Empire Faculty Fellow-- at the rank of Assistant Professor in Quantitative Systems Neuroscience.

The candidate will pursue excellence in research, teaching, and service at a Carnegie R1 institution that serves a broad community and mentors the next generation of scientists.

The candidate will contribute to robust undergraduate and graduate programs in their discipline, will enhance collaboration within the Department and across various university centers to promote multidisciplinary research and increase extramural funding, and will perform community outreach and service to the University, College, and Department.

Primary Responsibilities:

Research: Scholarship and the creation of new knowledge through scholarly or creative activities.

Conducting innovative research and publishing in peer-reviewed journals, including presenting research at professional meetings and conferences and securing external funding to support programmatic research.

Teaching: Educating students, mentoring them, and fostering their intellectual development, which includes teaching undergraduate and graduate courses and course preparation and development.

Service: Contributing to the governance and functioning of the university, college, and department including participating in admissions, advising, and mentoring graduate students and chairing and serving on doctoral dissertation committees.

Functional and Supervisory Relationships:


+ Reports to: Department Chair

+ Supervises the following positions: Graduate and undergraduate students as well as any laboratory personnel (e.g., postdoctoral researchers; research scientists; technicians, etc.).


Job Requirements:

In recent years, large-scale datasets have become foundational resources in modern neuroscience, offering unprecedented opportunities to explore the brain at multiple scales.

These datasets often include recordings from thousands of neurons and genes across varied brain regions, captured simultaneously with detailed behavioral tracking and sensory stimuli presentation.

This integration of multi-region neural activity with rich contextual information enables researchers to dissect brain function in a highly quantitative and systematic manner, bridging levels of analysis from microcircuits to large-scale neural networks.

As neuroscience becomes increasingly data-driven, the need for expertise in collecting high-dimensional neural recordings alongside gene expression and metabolomic data, and the quantitative tools to analyze them, continues to grow.

Successful candidates for a tenure-track faculty position in Quantitative Systems Neuroscience must have a strong foundation in applying quantitative methodologies to systems neuroscience or related fields.

Successful applicants will develop an active, extramurally funded research program with a focus on understanding neural computations and the dynamics of neural population activity.

Ideal areas of interest include decision-making, sensory-motor integration, neuromodulatory systems, and real-time motor control and neurobiology-linked diseases.

Exploration of these areas is critical to advancing our knowledge of the human brain and how it performs computations, and we successful candidates will also be able to inspire novel quantum computing approaches and the development of new technologies.

Successful candidates will have the ability to explore learning at the population and circuit level to advance theories of neural computation.

They will also display a commitment to the generation of publicly accessible datasets, the use of innovative tools and approaches, and collaborative, theory-driven research.

The candidate will be expected to broaden the Department's neuroscience research portfolio with novel research directions and foster valuable interdisciplinary collaborations across Biology, Psychology, Mathematics, Computer Science, Nanoscale Science & Engineering, and The RNA Institute.

Access to high-performance computing infrastructure, including AI supercomputing clusters, will support ambitious, data-intensive research.

In addition to research excellence, the successful candidate will contribute to cross-disciplinary undergraduate and graduate training with the ability to offer courses in neuroscience and its integration with quantitative disciplines like artificial intelligence, neural data processing, and other related topics.

Job Requirements:
Minimum Qualifications:


+ A terminal doctoral degree (PhD or equivalent) in neuroscience, biological sciences, or related field from a college or University accredited by the US Department of Education or internationally recognized accrediting organization August 15, 2026.

+ A record of research and scholarly activity in systems neuroscience or fields directly related to the position description, as demonstrated by peer-reviewed publications, preprint manuscripts, books, or conference proceedings.

+ The ability and a plan to effectively teach undergraduate and graduate level courses

+ Experience working with interdisciplinary teams

+ Applicants must demonstrate an ability to develop inclusive and equitable relationships within our diverse campus community

+ Applicants must demonstrate an ability to support diversity, equity, access, inclusion, and belonging relative to their role


Preferred Qualifications:


+ Demonstrated experience in using quantitative approaches (broadly defined), computational modeling, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or similar tools in the field of systems neuroscience (or related discipline)

+ A record of innovation in quantitative systems neuroscience, which includes peer-reviewed publications in impactful journals

+ Experience using modern neuroscience methodologies to drive innovative research directions

+ Evidence of potential for securing extramural funding for research and creative activities

+ Experience in teaching and curriculum development at the collegiate level


Working Environment:


+ Typical office, classroom, and scientific research lab environments


Additional Information:
Professional Rank and Salary Range: A5, Assistant Professor 10 Months, Salary commensurate with experience.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, or Clery Act, mandates that all Title IV institutions, without exception, prepare, publish and distribute an Annual Security Report.

This report consists of two basic parts: disclosure of the University's crime statistics for the past three years; and disclosures regarding the University's current campus security policies.

The University at Albany's Annual Security Report is available in portable document format [PDF] by clicking this link http://police.albany.edu/ASR.shtml

Pursuant to Executive Order 161, no State entity, as defined by the Executive Order, is permitted to ask, or mandate, in any form, that an applicant for employment provide his or her current compensation, or any prior compensation history, until such time as the applicant is extended a conditional offer of employment with compensation.

If such information has been requested from you before such time, please contact the Governor's Office of Employee Relations at (518) 474-6988 or via email at info@goer.ny.gov.

THE UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY IS AN EO/AA/IRCA/ADA EMPLOYER

Please apply online via http://albany.interviewexchange.com/candapply.jsp?JOBID=193089

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