Staff Scientist - Neurodegeneration Institute for All Minds Berkeley, CA Job Details Full-time 11 hours ago Benefits Health insurance Paid time off Retirement plan Qualifications Immunological assays Image processing Histological laboratory techniques Doctoral degree Immunological laboratory techniques Bachelor of Science Physiology knowledge Doctoral degree in neuroscience Surgery Animal surgical procedures Doctor of Philosophy Attention to detail Adaptability Full Job Description The Institute for All Minds seeks a full-time, on-site Staff 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 on how to best investigate our novel form of neurodegeneration, by extensively reading and comprehending known neurodegenerative disease mechanisms (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 (F) Exceptional attention to detail

Ideal Qualifications:

(G) Extensive experience with extracellular physiology (e.g. Neuropixels) (H) Always thinking of whether there is an alternative approach that would be more efficient and effective at reaching the goal (I) 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 tolet 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 work at Google, he received a PhD in Neuroscience from MIT, where he worked in a Nobel prize-winning lab. He completed a Neuroscience postdoc at UCSF and UC Berkeley as a Miller Fellow, where he developed a novel approach to study 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 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 so at the top. We look forward to hearing from you.

Benefits:

Health insurance Application Question(s): Can you describe in more detail your experience with stereotactic surgeries? What did you inject, where did you inject, and approx. how many animals have you done surgery on? Can you describe in more detail your experience with histology? What antibodies have you used, what endogenous fluorescence have you observed, and what quantification methods have you applied? Approx. how many brain have you imaged and analyzed? Do you have any experience with training mice in an associative learning paradigm? If so, was the mouse head-fixed or freely moving, and can you describe it in more detail? 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 so at the top. Thank you.

Education:

Doctorate (Preferred)

Experience:

extracellular physiology in awake mice (e.g. Neuropixels): 5 years (Preferred) stereotactic surgery: 5 years (Required) brain histology, immunohistochemistry, and image analysis: 5 years (Required)

Work Location:

In person