Junior Specialist: Oakes Lab

Dr. Lisa Oakes, Director of the Infant Cognition Lab at the Center for Mind and Brain, seek to fill a research assistant position at the Junior Specialist level starting as soon as September 1, 2025. This is an 100% position and is for one year. There may be a possibility for extension depending on funding and contingent upon adequate performance and mutual fit.

Responsibilities are described in further detail below, but in general, the person will be hired to run experimental sessions with infants. The experiments require behavioral tasks using head-mounted eye tracking from both mother and infant and other eye tracking tasks. The candidate may also develop behavioral coding schemes and code infant and child behaviors alone and in interactions, help develop and program research studies, and assist with data processing and analyses. The person hired may be involved in additional publishable research activities, including reviewing journal articles, engaging in discussions on research and the interpretation of research results, independent analysis of data, interpretation of empirical results, and the preparation of findings for submission to conferences and journals. Where appropriate, the individual would earn authorship on these publications. Applicants must be able to work flexible hours, including some evenings and weekends. For additional information on the Infant Cognition Lab, please visit our lab website at: oakeslab.ucdavis.edu.

Responsibilities will include:

Research (80%)

* The Junior Specialist will be involved in study design: using Matlab, python, and other software programming environments to create and evaluate potential images and videos to use as stimuli; contributing to decisions about stimulus features to manipulate and counterbalance.

* The Junior Specialist will be directly involved in data collection: developing computer programs for presenting experimental stimuli and collecting data, using behavioral and eye-tracking techniques to collect data from infant, child and adult research participants; using standardized assessments of development (e.g., motor development, language development) with children; recruit, interview, and consent participants or their caregivers.

* The Junior Specialist will be directly involved in data analysis: contributing to the development of statistical analysis plan; processing, coding, and conducting analysis of eye-tracking and behavioral data, using Matlab, R, and python.

* The Junior Specialist will conduct literature reviews on on-going studies, lead discussions of relevant work in lab meetings, and use this knowledge to plan manuscript preparation and plan future studies.

* The Junior Specialist will present research at national and international conferences (e.g., the biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Montreal, April 2026, the annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 2025, the biennial meeting of the International Congress of Infant Studies, Panama City, July 2026).

Professional Competence (10%)

* The Junior Specialist will attend one or more of the following conferences and will present findings at least one of the conferences: the biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Montreal, April 2026, the annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 2025, the biennial meeting of the International Congress of Infant Studies, Panama City, July 2026.

* The Junior Specialist may attend webinars, workshops, and seminars hosted by the International Congress of Infant Studies, the Many Babies Consortium, or other professional organizations; these on-line events are held several times each year and are focused on research methods, best practices, theoretical or content in the field, and professional development.

* The Junior Specialist may participate in self-guided web-based courses to learn new research skills.

* The Junior Specialist may sit in on graduate level courses at UC Davis, as appropriate, to acquire new skills or mastery of a content area.

University and Public Service (10%)

* The Junior Specialist will train undergraduate students on participant recruitment, data collection, coding and analyses protocols, actively facilitating the participation of undergraduate students in research activities.

* The Junior Specialist will be involved in the maintenance of social media aimed at disseminating information about child development research to a broad audience, including parents and families who participate in our research. This activity is an important public service that provides members of the community about research activities at UC Davis and beyond.

Bachelor's degree in Psychology or related field, experience with eye tracking research with human subjects in a laboratory setting, experience conducting research with young children, knowledge of excel, filemaker, and adobe software, experience with programming environments such as matlab, python, or R, strong organizational skills and attention to detail, availability to work flexible job hours.

Experience with testing infants or young children in behavioral research using eye tracking methods, knowledge of experimental methods to study early cognitive development, experience with and knowledge of infrared automatic eye-tracking systems including programs used to build experiments, knowledge of image processing in Matlab and python, familiarity with human subjects protocols, experience conducting interview or consenting potential research participants, experience conducting standard developmental assessments, such as the Teller Acuity procedure, the Alberta Infant Motor Scale, or assessments of language development, experience with and knowledge of research on basic visual perception, knowledge of most or all of the following software: R, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Director, Filemaker, Matlab and/or Python.

• 2-3 required (contact information only)

As a condition of employment, the finalist will be required to disclose if they are subject to any final administrative or judicial decisions within the last seven years determining that they committed any misconduct, are currently being investigated for misconduct, left a position during an investigation for alleged misconduct, or have filed an appeal with a previous employer.

• "Misconduct" means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant's previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment, discrimination, dishonesty, or unethical conduct, as defined by the employer.
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