The Institute for All Minds seeks a full-time, on-site Scientist to lead research on a novel form of neurodegeneration. The principal goal of this program is to determine whether this form of neuronal death contributes to one or more of the top currently untreatable neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and ALS.
Responsibilities:
(1) Develop our research strategy by extensively reading, understanding and applying existing knowledge on neurodegeneration to how to best investigate our novel form of neurodegeneration
(2) Conduct mouse neurosurgery, stereotactically targeting injections into the mouse brain
(3) Confirm neural manipulations using brain histology and immunohistochemistry
(4) Record and analyze histological imagery, including quantification
(5) Train and manage a team of undergraduates on (2)-(4) to increase the throughput of discovery
(6) Do whatever is necessary for our scrappy research start-up to succeed!
Minimum Qualifications:
(A) PhD in Neuroscience
(B) Extensive experience with stereotactic surgery with mice, histology, immunohistochemistry, image analysis, and neural circuit analysis
(C) Avid, broad reader of the scientific literature who is deeply curious with a passion for learning. When you go to the beach, you bring a journal.
(D) Highly flexible and adaptable and very responsive to feedback
(E) Creative problem-solver that loves to think up solutions from many different angles
Ideal Qualifications:
(F) Extensive experience with extracellular physiology (e.g. Neuropixels)
(G) Always thinking of whether there is an alternative approach that would be more efficient and effective at reaching the goal
(H) Thrives when working independently with intermittant guidance
Compensation:
The Institute offers a competitive salary, paid time off, a retirement plan, medical insurance, as well as perks such as free meals, parking and 20% time to work on a project of your choice, as pioneered by Google.
About the Institute for All Minds:
We take a very broad approach to our problems and strongly favor exploration over hypothesis, especially in the early stages of a project. Most hypotheses are wrong, so we are better off screening and letting the right approaches surface. We believe scientists should focus on problems that matter and ensure that time and energy are well-spent, not bogged down by unnecessary overhead and bureaucracy. We try to use the simplest words available to explain what we are doing and why we are doing it. When traditional approaches fail, we ignore conventional thinking and try to attack a problem from first principles using methods that are most likely to provide the right answer. We have established an independent institute to apply this philosophy in a scrappy, fast-paced, intense environment.
The Institute is a 501c3 non-profit public charity dedicated to understanding (1) how the brain causes conscious experience and (2) how neurons die during neurodegeneration.
The founder, Nikhil Bhatla, PhD, has focused on scientific approaches for studying conscious experience since 2007. He received his BS at Stanford University in Product Design (Mechanical Engineering and Art) and a minor in Computer Science. Following years working at Google, he received a PhD in Neuroscience from MIT, where he worked in a Nobel prize-winning lab. He then completed a Neuroscience postdoc at UCSF and UC Berkeley as a Miller Fellow, where he developed an innovative approach for studying conscious visual perception using mice (described in "Acute requirement for the hippocampus in putatively conscious vision revealed by a mouse model of blindsight", Current Biology, 2026). In 2024, he started the Institute for All Minds to continue this work independently.
The Institute is located in Downtown Berkeley blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus and the BART subway station.
Application Instructions:
Please do not apply through Indeed. Instead, email [email protected] describing why you are excited about this position and why it is a good fit for your interests and skills, with your resume / CV as an attachment. If your resume / CV or cover letter is generated or modified by AI, please indicate this at the top.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Benefits:
Application Question(s):
- Please remember that you must attach a cover letter describing why your skills and interests make you a good fit for this position. You can do this below or with an attachment at the end of the application. Candidates WITHOUT a cover letter will not be reviewed. If the cover letter is generated or modified by AI, please indicate this at the top. Thank you.
Education:
Experience:
- stereotactic surgery: 5 years (Preferred)
- brain histology, immunohistochemistry, and image analysis: 5 years (Preferred)
- extracellular physiology in awake mice (e.g. Neuropixels): 5 years (Preferred)
Work Location: In person
