MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Experimental Psychology.
Professor Javier Ortiz-Tudela, from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2026 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2026 call, please consult this link).
Brief description of the institution:
The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With more than 57,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and almost 7,000 members of staff, the UGR offers 97 undergraduate degrees, 157 master’s degrees (7 of which are double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 124 departments and nearly 50 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.
The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the institution’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding.
The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2025 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 301-400th position in the world and as the 3-8 highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings, the UGR is outstanding in Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence and Dentistry & Oral Sciences (ranked between 51th-75th position), Computer Science & Engineering, Education and Hospitality & Tourism Management (between 76-100th position), and in the areas of Food Science & Technology and Business Administration (between 101-150th position). A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in the areas of Earth Sciences, Law, Management, Nursing, Psychology and Statistics, in which the UGR is positioned in the 151-200th position.
Additionally, the UGR counts with 4 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list, most of them related to the Computer Science and Mathematics scientific areas. It is also well recognised for its presence in the top 200 Universities in Europe at 83th place.
Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the prevoius Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, the UGR obtained a total of 124 projectswith a total funding of more than €30 million. For the current Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, the UGR has obtained 136 projects, so far, with a total funding of more than €38 million.
Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:
The Centro de Investigación Mente, Cerebro y Comportamiento (CIMCYC; https://cimcyc.ugr.es/) at the University of Granada is a leading interdisciplinary research centre bringing together internationally recognised work in Psychology and Neuroscience. Its mission is to produce high-impact research, train outstanding professionals, and contribute to societal well-being. Research at CIMCYC focuses on the human mind and brain, including individual variability, development, and disorders, as well as interactions with the social environment and applied domains.
A key strength of the centre lies in its unique integration of advanced research infrastructures with multidisciplinary scientific questions. CIMCYC hosts internationally active researchers who contribute to postgraduate training and engage in outreach and knowledge transfer activities, ensuring strong societal relevance. In recognition of its international leadership, CIMCYC has been awarded the prestigious “María de Maeztu” Unit of Excellence distinction by the Spanish Ministry of Science.
The research group is embedded within a European Research Council Starting Grant project and consists of a young, dynamic, and collaborative team. The group combines cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling, and artificial intelligence approaches to study how prior knowledge shapes perception, attention, and memory. It maintains active national and international collaborations, providing an excellent environment for interdisciplinary training and career development.
Project description:
CONNECTS investigates how prior knowledge and task demands shape perception, attention, and memory by resolving long-standing paradoxes in the field of semantic congruity. The project aims at developing a unified, mechanistic framework in which semantic information plays a dual role: facilitating efficient processing when inputs are congruent with expectations and enhancing detection and encoding of novelty when inputs are incongruent. Crucially, the project also examines how current goals and task constraints modulate these processes, dynamically reshaping representational structure to meet behavioural demands.
The research adopts a tightly integrated multi-method approach combining behavioural experiments, EEG, fMRI, and computational modelling. A central objective is to characterise how representations change as a function of both context (prior knowledge) and task demands, and how these transformations relate to predictive processing accounts of brain function. Analyses include multivariate pattern methods (e.g., representational similarity analysis) and model-based approaches with artificial neural networks. By aligning tasks and representations across humans and models, CONNECTS aims to provide a principled account of how knowledge and task constraints jointly shape information processing.
The MSCA fellow will contribute to experimental design, data acquisition, and advanced analyses, with opportunities to develop independent questions within this framework and engage in interdisciplinary collaborations spanning cognitive neuroscience and AI.
For more info: https://sites.google.com/view/connects-site
Research Area:
- Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC)
- Life Sciences (LIFE)
For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Javier Ortiz-Tudela (ortiztudela@ugr.es):
- CV
- Letter of recommendation (optional)
This is a Preview Listing…
You must sign in to see the full job description, and to apply.
Manage / Upgrade this job to a Full Job Listing.
Find Your Best Opportunity
Tell them AcademicJobs.com sent you!