Postbac

Jumpstart your future in science. The Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience provides full-time research experience and mentorship with some of the world’s leading scientists.

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Open Postbac Positions

New graduates build skills, gain real lab experience, and bring your goals into focus in the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) Postbac program. Our postbacs earn top placements in academic and professional research programs, often more esteemed and higher paying placements than if they had pursued directly following their undergraduate studies.

The postbac program provides young scientists pivotal transitional opportunities in a world-class scientific research environment. Our fellows work under the mentorship of some of the world’s leading scientists in an environment that focuses exclusively on basic neuroscience research.

Postbac Benefits & Highlights

  • Attend conferences, seminars and networking events
  • Laboratory skill bootcamps
  • Postbacs work on a semi-independent project with close mentorship
  • Collaborative projects with research group leaders
  • Access to institute resources for scientific and career development
  • Scientific social events
  • Competitive salary and benefits

Research Areas

Postbacs get exposure to nine research groups in our state-of-the-art research facility in Jupiter, FL. We are on the same campus as Florida Atlantic University and The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology.

Our core research areas include:

  • Circuit function and behavior
  • Computational neuroscience
  • Molecular mechanisms of plasticity
  • Electron microscopy

Who Should Apply

Ideal candidates for the MPFI Postbaccalaureate Program are college graduates seeking cutting-edge lab experiences. Candidates have received their bachelor’s degree less than three years prior to the start date of the program and plan to pursue a Ph.D. in biological/biomedical sciences.

Potential candidates identify and apply directly to work in MPFI labs that match their research interests. Postbac fellows must be available to work full-time and cannot be simultaneously employed or enrolled in a degree-granting program.

Postbac Eligibility Highlights

  • Open to international and domestic candidates
  • B.A./B.S. in a related scientific field
  • Available for 1 or 2 years full time research
  • Interested in Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. programs
  • Neuroscience or related research experience preferred

Postbac fellows must be available to work full-time and cannot be simultaneously employed or enrolled in a degree-granting program.

Learn more & apply(opens in new tab)

Open Positions

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Recent Publications

Dendritic, delayed, stochastic CaMKII activation in behavioural time scale plasticity.

Jain, A., Nakahata, Y., Pancani, T., Watabe, T., Rusina, P., South, K., Adachi, K., Yan, L., Simorowski, N., Furukawa, H., & Yasuda, R. (2024). 

Nature, 1–9

Neural circuit mechanisms underlying context-specific halting in Drosophila. 

Sapkal, N., Mancini, N., Kumar, D. S., Spiller, N., Murakami, K., Vitelli, G., Bargeron, B., Maier, K., Eichler, K., Jefferis, G. S. X. E., Shiu, P. K., Sterne, G. R., & Bidaye, S. S. (2024). 

Nature, 634(8032), 191–200

Conditioned overconsumption is dependent on reinforcer type in lean, but not obese, mice.

Lewis-Sanders, D., Bullich, S., Olvera, M.-J., Vo, J., Hwang, Y.-S., Mizrachi, E., & Stern, S. A. (2024). 

Appetite, 198, 107355

Astrocyte coverage of excitatory synapses correlates to measures of synapse structure and function in ferret primary visual cortex.

Thomas, C. I., Ryan, M. A., McNabb, M. C., Kamasawa, N., & Scholl, B. (2024).

Glia

VAP spatially stabilizes dendritic mitochondria to locally support synaptic plasticity.

Bapat, O., Purimetla, T., Kruessel, S., Shah, M., Fan, R., Thum, C., Rupprecht, F., Langer, J. D., & Rangaraju, V. (2024). 

Nature Communications, 15(205)

Postsynaptic mitochondria are positioned to support functional diversity of dendritic spines.

Connon I. Thomas, Melissa A. Ryan, Naomi Kamasawa, Benjamin Scholl. (2023).

eLife, 12