Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)-funded project on human motivation, stress physiology, immersive behavioral testing, and biological phenotyping.
The Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics at EPFL, led by Prof. Carmen Sandi, is seeking an outstanding postdoctoral researcher with a strong technical and quantitative profile to join a SNSF-funded project investigating human motivation and stress responsiveness.
The project will develop and validate individually calibrated behavioral tasks in immersive virtual reality (VR) to quantify effort-based motivation, vigor, persistence, and goal-directed versus habitual control. It will then test how acute stress alters these processes, combining behavioral performance, physiological monitoring, movement-based phenotyping, and advanced statistical and computational analyses.
This position is part of a broader two-position recruitment linked to the same SNSF-funded project. The present call is for the position focused on human experimental implementation, participant recruitment, psychobiological assessment, biological sampling, and translational biomarker integration. A complementary position will focus more specifically on multimodal sensing, experimental systems, physiological and movement data, and advanced behavioral data analysis.
The position is funded for three years. In line with standard EPFL procedures, the contract is issued on a one-year basis and renewable annually, subject to satisfactory progress and institutional regulations.
Understanding how stress influences motivated behavior requires experimental approaches that combine rigorous behavioral testing with careful assessment of individual differences and biological stress responses. In this project, participants will complete immersive behavioral tasks designed to measure how they choose, initiate action, sustain effort, adapt to changing contingencies, and respond to acute stress.
The study will combine a standardized acute stress manipulation and behavioral assessments in VR, physiological monitoring, and biological sampling. In addition to endocrine measures, we are eventually interested -in the second part of the project implementation- in integrating broader hormonal, metabolic, inflammatory, and mitochondrial-related biomarkers to better characterize individual biological profiles linked to stress responsiveness and motivated behavior.
A central aim is to develop and validate novel motivational tasks for VR and to understand how anxiety-related traits, stress physiology, and biological response profiles shape motivated behavior. The successful candidate will play a key role in ensuring that the human experimental pipeline is scientifically rigorous, ethically sound, well organized, and suitable for future translational applications.
The postdoctoral researcher will lead the human experimental and translational phenotyping arm of the project. Responsibilities will include:
Applicants should have a PhD in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, affective neuroscience, biological psychology, psychoneuroendocrinology, clinical neuroscience, translational psychiatry, human physiology, or a related discipline.
The ideal candidate will combine strong scientific understanding of human stress and motivation with excellent organizational skills and hands-on experience in participant-facing experimental research. We are looking for someone able to lead a complex human study with rigor, care, and independence, while also contributing intellectually to the interpretation of the biological and behavioral findings.
Essential qualifications include:
Prior experience with virtual reality is welcome but not required. The successful candidate is not expected to be the main VR programmer or technical systems developer. However, they should be comfortable working in an immersive behavioral testing environment and ensuring that participant-facing procedures are implemented reliably and consistently.
Relevant experience may include human stress induction protocols, psychophysiology, behavioral testing, clinical or subclinical phenotyping, biological sample collection, experimental medicine studies, or translational human neuroscience.
Additional assets include experience with acute stress protocols such as the Trier Social Stress Test or related paradigms; saliva cortisol sampling; blood collection and processing; Biopac or comparable physiological acquisition systems; ELISA or immunoassay coordination; hormonal assays; metabolic or inflammatory biomarkers; mitochondrial-related peripheral measures; biobanking procedures; ethics submissions; longitudinal or large-scale human studies; and reproducible data-management practices. Experience in stress research, motivation, affective neuroscience, computational psychiatry, neuroeconomics, or human decision-making would be valuable.
French proficiency is a strong asset, as participant recruitment and testing will take place in the Lausanne/Geneva area. Excellent English communication and writing skills are required.
The successful candidate will join the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics at EPFL, an interdisciplinary environment focused on the biological, behavioral, and individual-difference mechanisms of stress, motivation, anxiety, and resilience.
The project will benefit from the laboratory’s previous work in human stress, motivation, immersive behavioral testing, and psychobiological phenotyping, as well as from interactions with VR, engineering, physiology, and data-analysis support structures at EPFL and in the Lausanne/Geneva area.
This position offers the opportunity to contribute to a methodologically innovative and translationally relevant project at the interface of human stress research, motivation, psychophysiology, biological sampling, and behavioral neuroscience. The project is expected to generate strong scientific publications and validated behavioral tools that can later be applied in both basic and clinical research.
Workplace: Lausanne, Switzerland, with interactions involving EPFL and relevant VR facilities in the Lausanne/Geneva area
EPFL offers an outstanding international research environment, state-of-the-art facilities, and a vibrant scientific community. We are committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion, and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.
Interested candidates should send a single PDF file including:
Applications will start to be reviewed from June 15th 2026 and will continue being assessed on a rolling basis until the position is filled. The expected starting date is flexible starting from 1.08.2026 and can be discussed. For any further information, please contact Prof. Carmen Sandi (carmen.sandi@epfl.ch).
Contract Start Date : August 1st, 2026
Activity Rate : 100.00
Contract Type: CDD
Duration: 1 year, renewable
Reference: 2216
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