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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Postbac Fellowships

A Postbac fellowship at MPFI allows recent college graduates to build research skills and experience in leading neuroscience labs, preparing them for further graduate education. Our postbacs earn top placements in academic and professional research programs.

Postbac Benefits & Highlights

  • Attend conferences, seminars and networking events
  • Laboratory skill bootcamps
  • Postbacs work on a semi-independent project with close mentorship
  • Access to institute resources for scientific and career development
  • Competitive salary and benefits
  • Access to wider scientific and educational environment of MPFI, Florida Atlantic university and The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology on our welcoming, shared campus.

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.

  • Open to international and domestic candidates
  • B.A./B.S. in a related scientific field
  • Available for 1 or 2 years of full-time research
  • Interested in Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. programs
  • Neuroscience or related research experience preferred
  • Will not be simultaneously employed or enrolled in a degree-granting program

Research Areas

Potential candidates identify and apply directly to work in MPFI labs that match their research interests. Identify potential labs of interest by looking through our research pages at the link below. Once you have identified a lab of interest, please email training@mpfi.org to express your interest in a specific lab and see if they are currently accepting postbacs.

What We Study(opens in new tab)

Recent Postbac 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