Research Scientist / Engineer, Functional Ultrasound Imaging

Astera Institute•Emeryville, CA

5d•$120,000 - $220,000•Onsite

About The Position

Astera Neuro is seeking an exceptional Research Scientist or Research Engineer to lead the development of a next-generation functional ultrasound imaging (fUSI) platform for whole-brain imaging in awake, behaving macaques. The role involves developing Astera Neuro's volumetric fUSI platform for macaques, working across hardware, experimentation, and computational analysis. This includes implementing the imaging system, designing experiments, analyzing large-scale datasets, and building functional brain atlases. The position offers the chance to create one of the world's most advanced platforms for mesoscale imaging of the primate brain, collaborating with a multidisciplinary team to enable new neuroscience discoveries. All animal research adheres to IACUC-approved protocols with a strong commitment to animal welfare and AAALAC standards.

Requirements

Conviction that the brain's internal model can be understood in full, and recognition that getting there requires a kind of science no single academic lab can do.
Appetite for building a capability that does not yet exist. Enjoy building new experimental systems as much as answering scientific questions, and comfortable moving between hardware, software, and data analysis.
Willingness to be held to an engineering standard.
Comfort building on shared infrastructure rather than private projects.
Commitment to open science. Will release tools, data, and methods, and aim to create a new dynamic of rapid, open exchange in neuroscience.

Nice To Haves

Hands on experience with in vivo functional ultrasound imaging, or with comparable high-resolution neuroimaging technologies.
Experience designing and executing neuroscience experiments in primates, including awake macaque fMRI.
Strong scientific programming skills in Python and/or MATLAB.
Understanding of primate neuroanatomy, image registration, and atlas construction.
Experience with image reconstruction and signal processing.
Experience analyzing large-scale imaging, electrophysiology, or multimodal neuroscience datasets, including with machine learning or computational neuroscience methods.
Ability to work at close quarters with software engineers, hardware engineers, and neuroscientists in a fast-moving, multi-team environment.
Track record of mentorship and technical leadership.

Responsibilities

Build, validate, and optimize a large-scale volumetric functional ultrasound imaging platform for awake, behaving macaques.
Design and execute multimodal neuroscience experiments combining fUSI with behavioral paradigms and complementary recording and perturbation techniques.
Develop robust computational pipelines for image reconstruction, preprocessing, registration, quality control, statistical analysis, and visualization.
Analyze large-scale functional imaging datasets using modern statistical and machine learning approaches.
Register imaging data across sessions and animals to generate high-resolution anatomical and functional brain atlases.
Integrate fUSI with electrophysiology and other neural recording and perturbation modalities to create comprehensive maps of brain function.
Collaborate closely with engineers and software developers to continuously improve imaging hardware and acquisition software.
Mentor research technicians, and at the senior or principal level, more junior scientists and engineers. Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and lab culture.
Publish scientific discoveries using Open Science and FAIR principles and contribute to open datasets, software, and technical documentation.