The CNS Disease Biology Group is seeking a motivated student for a computational neuroscience internship with Alkermes that will help further our drug discovery efforts. The candidate should have experience in programming and modeling techniques with an interest to apply these skills to problems in biology. The position will involve developing analysis pipelines for previously collected preclinical neuroscience data. The work will focus on video data from a variety of preclinical assays with the goal of developing unsupervised methods for classifying mouse behavior. These tools will be used to assess drug effects and identify assays that have good predictive power of clinical efficacy. There is also the possibility to work with neurophysiology data associated with preclinical mouse models.

This is a good position for students who are interested in computational neuroscience/ biology and/or looking to learn more about what a career in drug discovery would entail.

Basic Requirements:

• 1+ years of undergraduate experience. Strong programming skills, knowledge of biological systems and an interest in learning more about biology and neuroscience

Technical skills:

• Python and/or R programming experience.
• Has experience with clustering algorithms.
• An interest in biology.

Personal skills:

• The ability to work well with others to accomplish specific goals and to effectively communicate with project team members and managers is essential.
• Good presentation and oral/written communications skills which will be applied to presentations, documentation of work, and manuscript preparation as needed.

Preferred Requirements:

• Has completed at least one course in neuroscience.
• Has completed a course in computational neuroscience.
• Has experience processing video data, specifically computer vision applications.
• Has experience with unsupervised clustering models.
• Has experience with hidden Markov models.
• Has experience analyzing neurophysiology data.
• Lab experience is beneficial but not required for this position.

The successful candidate will have outstanding initiative, be highly motivated to drive our science forward, learn new techniques and procedures, and be able to effectively conceive and develop complex analysis pipelines in diverse areas

Working Conditions:

• The candidate will be expected to work at a computer for 8 hours a day.
• Onsite office setting in Waltham, MA