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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.

 

Project background

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.

Main responsibilities

The postdoctoral researcher will lead the human experimental and translational phenotyping arm of the project. Responsibilities will include:

• • Coordinating participant recruitment, screening, scheduling, consent, testing, and retention.
  • Implementing the human experimental protocol with high fidelity, including acute stress and neutral control sessions, VR-based behavioral tasks, questionnaires, physiological recordings, and biological sampling.
  • Developing and maintaining standard operating procedures for participant flow, stress testing, biological sample collection, sample processing, data tracking, and quality control.
  • Training and supervising Master’s students, research assistants, or junior lab members involved in recruitment, participant testing, biological sample handling, and data entry.
  • Overseeing saliva collection, processing, labeling, storage, and coordination of endocrine assays, particularly cortisol.
  • Contributing to the possible extension of the project toward blood-based hormonal, metabolic, inflammatory, or mitochondrial-related biomarkers.
  • Ensuring high-quality participant-facing implementation, including participant safety, protocol adherence, management of pre-visit restrictions, timing of biological samples, and standardized administration of questionnaires and tasks.
  • Working closely with the complementary postdoctoral researcher to align biological, physiological, behavioral, and movement-based data streams.
  • Contributing to ethics submissions, amendments, participant-facing documents, laboratory manuals, data-management procedures, and open-science deliverables.
  • Analyzing and interpreting relationships among stress exposure, anxiety-related traits, endocrine and physiological responses, and motivated behavior.
  • Preparing reports as well as manuscripts for publication in top scientific journals and presenting findings at relevant conferences.

Candidate profile

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:

• Experience designing, coordinating, or running human experimental studies.
• Strong interest and expertise in stress, motivation, anxiety, affective neuroscience, reward, effort-based behavior, individual differences, or related domains.
• Experience with biological sampling in human participants, preferably saliva and/or blood.
• Familiarity with psychophysiological measures such as heart rate, heart-rate variability, electrodermal activity, respiration, or related indices.
• Knowledge of stress-related biomarkers, particularly cortisol, and ideally additional endocrine, metabolic, inflammatory, or mitochondrial-related measures.
• Experience with validated questionnaires and behavioral phenotyping in humans.
• Strong ability to manage participant recruitment, scheduling, screening, consent, protocol adherence, and study logistics.
• Ability to train and supervise students or research assistants involved in data collection.
• Good statistical literacy and ability to analyze behavioral, questionnaire, physiological, or biomarker data.
• Excellent attention to detail, documentation skills, and ability to maintain rigorous sample and data-tracking procedures.
• Strong scientific writing skills and motivation to contribute to high-quality publications.

Prior VR experience

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 strengths

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.

Scientific environment

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.

Application procedure

Interested candidates should send a single PDF file including:

1. A cover letter describing their research background, technical and quantitative expertise, and fit for this position.
2. A detailed CV, including a full list of publications.
3. A brief research statement describing relevant previous work and methodological expertise.
4. Contact details for three professional references.
5. Optional but encouraged: examples of previous protocols, human-study coordination experience, biomarker work, analysis pipelines, or other outputs illustrating the candidate’s expertise.

Applications should be sent to:

Prof. Carmen Sandi

Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics

EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

[email protected]

Applications will start to be reviewed from June 15^th 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.

Employment conditions

Institution: EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Laboratory: Laboratory of Behavioral Genetic

Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation

Position type: Postdoctoral researcher

Duration: Three years of SNSF-funded project support; contracts are issued for one year and renewable annually according to standard EPFL procedures

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.