Postdoctoral position (m/f/d) | Decision-Making in Motion: From Neural Dynamics to Animal Behavior in Immersive Virtual Words

 The Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior at its sites in Konstanz and Radolfzell offers an international, interdisciplinary, and cooperative environment that opens up unique research opportunities. The goal of our basic research is to develop a quantitative and predictive understanding of the decisions and movements of animals in their natural environment.

For the Chair of Collective Behavior, led by Prof. Dr. Iain Couzin at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz. Department of Collective Behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, we are looking for a highly motivated Postdoc. The department offers a position for 2 years: Postdoctoral position (m/f/d) 100 % - “Decision-Making in Motion: From Neural Dynamics to Animal Behavior in Immersive Virtual Worlds”.

The position will be located at the University of Konstanz. The candidate can start as soon as possible and preferably before 01.05.2026.

The project

Running, swimming, or flying through the world, animals are constantly making decisions while on the move—decisions that determine where to feed, where to hide, and with whom to interact. Motion is not simply a consequence of decisions; it actively shapes how organisms represent space, compare alternatives, and resolve uncertainty. This project explores how decision-making emerges from the interplay between neural dynamics, embodied movement, and environmental structure, with a particular focus on ring attractor networks—a conserved neural architecture implicated in navigation and spatial representation across diverse taxa. These circuits provide a mechanistic framework for understanding how brains encode directions, goals, and competing options in continuous space. For example, different behavioral modes, from directed choice to exploratory search, may arise as different dynamical regimes of the same underlying ring-attractor system. This project seeks to understand how neural mechanisms of decision-making confer functional advantages, including improved discrimination between options of differing quality, flexible responses to environmental change, or robustness to noise.

Your position

The successful candidate will have the freedom to combine theory, experiment, or computational approaches to investigate how ring-attractor-like dynamics are expressed in real organisms and how they shape behavior. Possible avenues include immersive virtual-reality experiments with insects, development of new models of neural or embodied dynamics, comparative analyses across species, or novel methodological approaches aligned with the central questions. The research will be conducted in the Centre for Visual Computing of Collectives (VCC), part of the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. The VCC building is a modern, purpose-built research facility of approximately 4,000 m² designed specifically for the study of animal behavior across scales. It houses state-of-the-art laboratories, experimental arenas, and visualization systems optimized for integrating behavior, physiology, and computational analysis, including immersive Virtual Reality (VR) laboratories developed for animal experiments, and real-time behavioral tracking setups, which allow us to manipulate environmental conditions and measure neural and behavioral responses with high precision. The VCC is embedded within the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior (CASCB), providing access to shared infrastructure, high-speed data networks, and central technical services. Computational needs will be met through multiple layers of resources:

1. local GPU-equipped workstations for experiment-linked processing;
2. the University of Konstanz high-performance computing cluster;
3. advanced computational facilities at the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) in Garching, which provide large-scale CPU/GPU clusters, long-term storage, and support for data-intensive workflows; and
4. access to statewide high-performance computing resources (HLRS Stuttgart, LRZ Munich, and JSC Jülich) via national allocation schemes.

Together, these facilities provide an unparalleled environment for integrative research, combining advanced experimental infrastructure with scalable computational power to support the ambitious theoretical, modeling, and data-driven objectives of the proposed work.

Job requirements

• Applicants should hold a PhD in biology, physics, engineering, or a related field, with demonstrated research experience or training in areas such as dynamical systems, bifurcation theory, and animal behavior.
• Prior experience with neural field models, attractor neural networks, or related approaches is desirable.

We offer an interesting job in an open-minded team, a responsible and varied workplace in a growing interdisciplinary and interna­tional research institute. The payment is made in accordance with your experience and qualification and the collective agreement for the public service (TVöD-Bund). The Max Planck Society endeavors to employ more severely disabled people. Applications of severely disabled persons are expressly welcome. The Max Planck Society strives for gender and diversity equality. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

How to apply

Then we are looking forward to receiving your application until March 31, 2026, with your CV, names and contact information and cover letter.

Please submit your application documents to Human Resources hr@ab.mpg.de
 

Questions about this position will be answered by Prof. Iain Couzin icouzin@ab.mpg.de