Postdoctoral Scholar

Department: SoC Comm Sciences & Disorders
Salary/Grade: RES/

The expected pay for this position is $ $60,000-$62,232, in alignment with departmental equity and market data.

Job Summary

Northwestern University's Neurodevelopmental Diversity Laboratory (NDL), directed by Dr. Molly Losh (http://ndl.northwestern.edu), is seeking a postdoctoral scholar to join our research team.

The lab is currently conducting an NIH-funded project (R01DC021849) focused on pragmatic language phenotypes in autism, using a cross-linguistic design across typologically diverse languages (English and Mandarin) to delineate biological and environmental contributions to social communication skills across the autism spectrum. By leveraging these typologically distinct languages, the study aims to characterize clinically and biologically meaningful traits among autistic speakers across linguistic systems, thereby shedding light on core neurobiological mechanisms underlying social communication in autism.

The postdoctoral scholar will play a central role in implementing this project, with primary responsibility for leading testing sessions of Mandarin-speaking autistic individuals and their families, as well as non-autistic peers. This includes clinical-behavioral characterization; conversational and narrative language elicitation; and behavioral and neurophysiological experiments. The postdoctoral scholar will also contribute to data preprocessing, participate in discourse and computational linguistic analyses, lead scholarly publications, assist with recruitment efforts, and coordinate with our team of collaborators. The successful candidate will have opportunities to develop independent research and pursue external funding.

Principal Accountabilities

• To develop new ideas, research methodologies, and analytic approaches to the lab's research programs.
• Conduct experiments and analyses related to linguistic, cognitive, neurophysiological, and clinical phenotypes in autism, with a focus on Mandarin-speaking populations
• To supervise students and research staff working in the lab
• To help write and contribute to publications resulting from research done in the lab
• To assist project management of NIH grants

Minimum Qualifications: (Education, experience, and any other certifications or clearances)

• PhD in Communication Sciences and Disorders, Psychology, Linguistics, or a related field
• Interest in research on autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions

• Evidence of research productivity (e.g., peer-reviewed publications)

Minimum Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities.)

• Bilingual or multilingual proficiency in spoken and written Mandarin and English for cross-linguistic research

Preferred Qualifications: (Education and experience)

• Research and clinical training related to autism or other neurodevelopmental conditions
• Demonstration of research independence

Preferred Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities)

• Experience in language-related research
• Expertise in formal and discourse language analysis
• Strong quantitative analytic skills
• Excellent oral communication and writing skills.

Benefits

At Northwestern, we are proud to provide meaningful and competitive benefits. The available benefits package for this position will include health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance; paid vacation and holidays; paid medical/sick and parental leave; tuition benefits for the employee and dependents; pre-tax and flex spending accounts for commuting and dependent care; generous retirement savings options; and wellness programs. For a comprehensive overview of available benefits, including eligibility details, visit us at https://www.northwestern.edu/hr/benefits/index.html to learn more.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics, including disability and veteran status. View Northwestern's non-discrimination statement. Job applicants who wish to request an accommodation in the application or hiring process should contact the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance. View additional information on the accommodations process.