Postdoctoral Position in Digestive Diseases - Church Lab 2026-2027

The Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center and the Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience in the Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine at UCLA, are seeking full-time postdoctoral scholars for R01-funded projects studying the brain-gut microbiome mechanisms of action underlying stress-based disorders such as obesity and cognitive decline. The Centers are comprised of multidisciplinary teams conducting clinical, translational and basic research with human populations. The postdoctoral scholars will work directly with Dr. Arpana Church, and other faculty collaborators.

The projects use multimodal MRI sequences combined with measures of the gut microbiome and dimensional neuropsychiatric, behavioral and/or diet measures (i.e., tasks, questionnaires, heart rate variability, digital phenotyping, cognitive, diet, and clinical measures) to study structural and functional circuit dynamics in various diseases. There will be opportunities to develop translational and clinical research skills (e.g., target discovery, individualized treatment development and biomarker/predictor development), in addition to analysis methods and pipelines to address basic and pathophysiological systems biology questions. There will be many opportunities to lead high impact publications starting on day one. We will be working with existing unique datasets in addition to creating new ones. Extensive mentorship will be provided to facilitate the transition to an independent research career.

Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Model complex datasets including imaging, gut microbiome, inflammation, metabolic markers, behavioral, diet, and clinical data.
2. Coordinate the acquisition of data working with a team of research assistants.
3. Be able to contribute to grants and publish manuscripts.

Qualifications:

1. Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Psychology, Microbiome/Molecular Biology, Engineering, Epidemiology, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science or a related field.
2. Strong proficiency and independence with large data analysis platforms (such as neuroimaging or microbiome platforms), multivariate modeling strategies and network connectivity analyses.
3. Established quantitative and statistical skills, including strong programming skills and comfort with diverse computing environments. Comfortable using R and/or Python.
4. A demonstrated capacity to write first author publications.
5. Great writing skills, motivated and driven to publish.

Additional Qualifications:

1. Background in bioinformatics systems, connectomics network analysis and machine learning modeling confer a very significant advantage.