Research Assistant (Neural Sociometrics)

The Baby-LINC Singapore Lab in the School of Social Sciences is looking for a talented Research Assistant in Neural Sociometrics. The incumbent will join a large-scale interdisciplinary research project, “A Sociometric AI Screening Tool to Risk-Stratify Infant Neurodevelopmental Trajectories (STARS)”, led by PI Associate Professor Victoria Leong at NTU.

This project aims to develop a novel, scalable screening tool to assess infant mental wellbeing and psychosocial health, and map translational pathways for clinical deployment and policy implementation in Singapore. STARS will collect and analyse longitudinal parent-infant “neural sociometric” data (0-3 yrs), combining innovations in two-person brain imaging (dyadic-EEG) with powerful AI machine-learning methods to risk-stratify early neurodevelopmental trajectories, with reference to cognitive and executive function outcomes.

The successful candidate will conduct cutting-edge social neuroscience research with infants and parents (involving dyadic-EEG acquisition and analysis), including children with (or at risk for) Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or infants born prematurely. The incumbent will join a dynamic and friendly international consortium as part of the Baby-LINC lab in Singapore and in Cambridge (UK).

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and coordinate participant recruitment, data collection and basic data analysis for the main experimental studies involving over 200 parent-infant dyads in Singapore. This will involve the simultaneous collection from parent and infant of multiple data streams including EEG, ECG, eye-tracking, motion tracking, video and audio data, whilst they are engaged in a variety of social interactive and cognitive tasks.

• Assist with data coding of video and audio data for behavioural analysis of parent-infant social interaction and synchrony

• Assist with related graduate and undergraduate student projects

• Perform other administrative and research duties as necessary and appropriate

Job Requirements:

• Good Bachelor’s degree (at least second-upper) in Psychology, Neuroscience, Biomedical Engineering, Medical Sciences or related Technical and Computational fields

• Experience with human psychological data collection, working with children (particularly infants) and families

• Efficient, organised and self-motivated with the ability to work to tight deadlines

• Good team player with strong interpersonal and communication skills

• Experience with EEG and/or eye-tracking data collection

• Skills in programming and/or computational analysis of data

• Interest in parent-child social interaction and the early development of executive functions and cognition

We regret to inform that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Hiring Institution: NTU