Are you interested in working at the intersection of decision and affective neuroscience?

Do you want to combine computational modeling with neuroimaging or smartphone-based data collection from thousands of people to increase our understanding of mood and behavior? We are looking for you!

Visiting students. We are sometimes able to host visiting students. Contact Robb to tell him about your interests and include your CV.

Predoctoral applicants. Students can apply to the PhD program in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. If you are interested in working in the lab, contact Robb to tell him about your interests and include your CV. Application details are available here. (Deadline 1 December)

Postdoctoral applicants. Contact Robb to tell him about your interests and include your CV. Postdoctoral applicants should have experience with computational modeling and should also have experience with either neuroimaging or clinically relevant research. Applicants should be interested in contributing to the fields of neuroeconomics or computational psychiatry (both is fine too!).

Even if you are not finishing your PhD this year, it's never too early to start thinking about what you want to do next. Please reach out and introduce yourself, and we can let you know about any future opportunities. Robb’s contact details are on this page.

Relevant papers

1. Feng G, Rutledge R (preprint) Surprising sounds bias risky decision making. PsyArXiv. [Abstract]

2. Jangraw D, et al. (2023) A highly replicable decline in mood during rest and simple tasks. Nature Human Behaviour 7, 596-610. [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

3. Kao CH, Feng GW, Hur JK, Jarvis H, Rutledge RB (2022) Computational models of subjective feelings in psychiatry. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 105008. [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

4. Gillan CM, Rutledge RB (2021) Smartphones and the neuroscience of mental health. Annual Review of Neuroscience 44, 129-151. [Abstract] [PDF]

5. Chew B*, Blain B*, Dolan RJ, Rutledge RB (2021) A neurocomputational model for intrinsic reward. Journal of Neuroscience 41, 8963-8971. [Abstract] [PDF] [BioRxiv]

6. Nair A*, Niyogi RK*, Shang F, Tabrizi SJ, Rees G, Rutledge RB (2021) Opportunity cost determines action initiation latency and predicts apathy. Psychological Medicine, 1-10. [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

7. Blain B, Rutledge RB (2020) Momentary subjective well-being depends on learning and not reward. eLife 9, e57977 [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

8. Rutledge RB, et al. (2017) Association of neural and emotional impacts of reward prediction errors with major depression. JAMA Psychiatry 74, 1-8. [Abstract] [PDF] [Supplemental] [Commentary]

If you are interested to see what kind of data we can get from our smartphone apps, you can download a dataset (n=47,067) from one of our games. Code is included to replicate basic findings in published studies. There are probably lots of things we haven’t found yet in this data so let us know if you find something new!

Rutledge RB (2021) Risky decision and happiness task: The Great Brain Experiment smartphone app. Dryad Dataset. [Data]

Postdoctoral candidates should also consider possible sources of funding, many of which have deadlines up to one year in advance of starting the project. A few of the potential funding sources include:

Human Frontier Science Program Long-Term Fellowships (Deadline August)

Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowships (Deadlines November and April)

NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (Deadlines April, August, December)

NARSAD Young Investigator Grant (Deadline March)