Vacancies

The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour (SWC) and the Gatsby Unit invite expressions of interest from early career researchers who wish to be sponsored for external career fellowships to establish an independent research group in mechanistic theories of neural computation or learning.

SWC and Gatsby Unit share a vision to understand the mechanisms of intelligent behaviour in brains and machines. Co-located in a purpose-designed building at UCL, they bring together world-leading researchers in experimental neuroscience, computational theory, and machine learning. SWC researchers, together with Gatsby Unit colleagues, are working towards providing mechanistic explanations of how the brain perceives and predicts, builds internal models of the world, reasons and plans, makes decisions, learns from experience, and controls behaviour. Gatsby Unit has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence and theoretical neuroscience, generating foundational theories of learning, inference, and neural computation. Together, the two Centres drive a uniquely productive theory–experiment loop, with shared trainees, joint PhD programmes, and a common language across disciplines.

UCL is ranked among the top ten universities worldwide and is home to over 450 neuroscience principal investigators, offering an unparalleled environment for collaborative research.

About the role

We are seeking an outstanding early career researcher to develop mechanistic theories of neural computation that bridge experimental and theoretical neuroscience. The successful candidate will establish an independent computational research programme, supported by an external fellowship and hosted jointly at SWC and Gatsby Unit, that develops models and theories linking the activity of neural circuits to the behavioural processes that underpin perception, cognition, planning, motor control and/or learning.

We expect successful candidates to link the experimental neuroscience taking place at SWC and the theoretical and machine learning research at Gatsby Unit. While this is a computational neuroscience position without dedicated experimental space, active collaboration with existing SWC and Gatsby Unit group leaders is strongly encouraged. The successful fellow will benefit from daily interaction with experimentalists generating rich datasets on animal behaviour and neural circuit function across multiple brain systems and species, as well as with theorists and machine learning researchers developing formal frameworks for learning, inference, and decision making.

What we offer

SWC and Gatsby Unit will sponsor the selected candidate to apply for an external career fellowship. Our support includes:

• A collaborative research community at the interface of experimental neuroscience, theory, and machine learning.
• Application support and career mentoring
• Opportunity to co-mentor PhD students
• Office space and computational resources

About you

We are looking for candidates who have:

• A PhD in neuroscience, physics, mathematics, machine learning, or a related quantitative discipline
• A strong track record of developing theories or computational models of neural computation grounded in neuroscience
• An ability to work at the interface of theory and experiment, with a clear vision for how theoretical predictions can be tested in neural circuits
• Evidence of, or strong potential for, productive collaboration with experimental neuroscientists
• A compelling research plan that would be competitive for a fellowship application.

Candidates should have postdoctoral research experience and a publication record appropriate to their career stage. The ideal candidate will have a clear idea of the fellowship scheme(s) they wish to apply to and a realistic timeline for application.

Process

Following application, shortlisted candidates will be invited to present a seminar and give a chalk talk at SWC and Gatsby Unit and meet with faculty members, students and postdoctoral fellows. They will be expected to demonstrate how their research programme complements the joint SWC–Gatsby Unit research strategy and how it could contribute to collaborative work across the two Centres. After this, the Directors will select candidates for sponsorship based on fit with the Centres' research strategy and the competitiveness of their research plan for a fellowship application.

Successful applicants will be supported to apply for competitive fellowships to support their salary and research activity, including the Wellcome Trust Career Development Award, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, ERC Starting Grant, Royal Society University Research Fellowship, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship, EPSRC Open Fellowship, Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, and similar schemes.

How to apply

To apply, please send the following as a single PDF to swc.hr@ucl.ac.uk:

1. A cover letter (max 2 pages) explaining: why you are applying for the position; how your research would bridge experimental neuroscience and theory at SWC and Gatsby Unit; the fellowship scheme(s) you are interested in and a timeline for application.
2. An outline of your research programme that would be the basis for a fellowship application (max 4 pages, excluding references).
3. A full CV, including a list of publications and the names of three referees.

Deadline: 16 July 2026

All candidates will be notified of the outcome of their application.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to equality of opportunity, to eliminating discrimination, and to creating an inclusive working environment. We particularly welcome applications from individuals who belong to groups currently under-represented at this level within SWC and Gatsby Unit. We strongly encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

Contact

For informal enquiries about the role, please contact the Directors:

• Professor Tom Mrsic-Flogel (Director, SWC): t.mrsic-flogel@ucl.ac.uk
• Professor Maneesh Sahani (Director, Gatsby Unit): m.sahani@ucl.ac.uk

For queries about the application process: swc.hr@ucl.ac.uk

We welcome applications from final-year undergraduates and Master’s students (or recent graduates) for paid project research internships that are not part of the degree course requirement.

Our research focuses on the mathematical principles of adaptive intelligent behaviour. We study (un)supervised and reinforcement learning; inference, coding and neural dynamics; causality; theory of deep learning; Bayesian and kernel methods; with applications to the analysis of perceptual processing and cognition, neural data, signal and image processing, machine vision, network data and nonparametric hypothesis testing.

Potential supervisors include: Leena Chennuru Vankadara, Arthur Gretton, Peter Latham, Agostina Palmigiano, Maneesh Sahani, and Andrew Saxe.

The internship is full time and can be up to 3 months in duration. During the internship, you will work on a research project under the supervision of experienced researchers. You will develop and apply your research skills, gain hands-on research experience, and connect with researchers at the unit and beyond. At the end of the thesis project / internship, you will write a report and present your work to the whole unit. Our internship is fully in-person to ensure interns take full advantage of opportunities to connect with our researchers and embed themselves in the unit. 

We particularly encourage applications from groups that are under-represented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields and/or who have experienced some form of educational disadvantage.

Please review the following information carefully before submitting your application.

• Eligibility

1. Be in your final undergraduate year, a Master’s student or a recent graduate.
2. Be enrolled in a relevant subject such as computer science, physics, engineering, statistics, mathematics, neuroscience, or cognitive psychology.
3. Have a strong mathematical and analytical background and a keen interest in theoretical neuroscience, machine learning or both.
4. Have proven/potential academic excellence.
5. Have a good command of the English language.
6. Be available for the entire duration to work on the project full time and in person.

• How to apply

Applications must be submitted via the Gatsby Recruitment Portal by Monday 20 July 2026, 17:00 BST. Applications by any other means will not be accepted.

You will be asked to provide the following information:

1. Academic information: Secondary school, university degrees (with copies of transcripts), research experience, awards (incl. prizes, scholarships or other relevant notable achievements), mathematics preparation, and English proficiency.
2. A brief statement describing your research interests and academic background, explaining how it fits with the Gatsby Unit (up to 300 words). In this section, please also indicate the faculty member(s) you would like to work with and your preferred start date and end date.
3. References: You will be asked to enter the names and contact information of two academic referees who have agreed to comment on your ability and suitability for the internship. To give them adequate time you should submit the referee information as soon as you know who your referees will be, even if the rest of the application is still incomplete. After you submit the referee information, an email request will be sent automatically. Please check with your referees if they have received the emails. (There have been reports of this email being treated as spam, so please ask your referee to check for a misfiled message if s/he does not see it. If the request email is missing, please contact admissions@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk as early as possible, including the name and the email of the relevant referee.) You will receive an email confirmation when each reference is received. References must reach us by the deadline stated below; it is your responsibility to follow up with your referees to ensure the references arrive on time.

Visit the Gatsby Recruitment Portal and select Gatsby Unit Predoctoral Research Experience (Jul 2026 round) to start your application. Please check the spam folder if you do not receive a verification email after registration. You won't need to complete your application in one go, as you will be able to save your progress and continue later.

In addition, we may also be able to accommodate non-UCL students who wish to carry out their MSc (or similar) academic research projects with us. Applications to do so should be submitted following the same procedure for project research internships as stated above, giving details of your academic programme as well as any constraints or regulations relevant to the research, and specifying that you are applying to carry out a MSc (or similar) research project. (If there is an internal deadline that is earlier than the internship deadline, please contact I-Chun Lin at i.lin 'at' ucl.ac.uk, explaining the situation.) Please note that such academic research visits are separate from our paid internships, and we expect any financial support or remuneration to ordinarily be arranged through your home institution.

MSc and other project students at UCL may make enquiries to their preferred supervisors in line with their usual course schedules.

Updated 2026-06-23