Student Opportunities

Sev­eral oppor­tu­ni­ties are avail­able for tal­ented stu­dents, either cur­rently at UNSW or plan­ning to trans­fer here, to join and con­tribute to my research projects in Neu­ro­fi­nance. Some defined areas are out­lined below; I am open to any form of con­tri­bu­tion that spikes your inter­est.

Insti­tu­tional arrange­ments are very flex­i­ble. You can choose to pick Neu­ro­fi­nance as the field of your aca­d­e­mic assign­ments. Some  activ­i­ties are not suit­able for an aca­d­e­mic assign­ment, and will be done as fully paid Research Assis­tant activ­i­ties (the salary is in fact quite good and of course it is a val­ued CV item if you want to pur­sue an aca­d­e­mic career). This will be a case-by-case deci­sion, depend­ing on your pro­file and the aca­d­e­mic path you are pur­su­ing, but rest assured I won’t have you do “free work” for me ;-)

If you spot an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­nity below, please send me an email with your inter­ests, ide­ally a cur­rent CV, and we’ll fix an appoint­ment to dis­cuss fur­ther.

I am look­ing for con­tri­bu­tions from peo­ple in many dis­ci­plines: Com­puter Sci­ences, Sta­tis­tics, Math­e­mat­ics, Neu­ro­sciences, Psy­chol­ogy, and these are just the main ones… So if you feel a poten­tial inter­est in work­ing with me, just send me an email to get an appoint­ment and we’ll dis­cuss.

Math­e­mat­i­cal Mod­el­ing

  • Respon­si­bil­i­ties: the core part of a Neu­ro­fi­nance project con­sists of mod­el­ing  behav­ior in a cog­ni­tive task. Specif­i­cally, we model the deci­sion mak­ing process of dif­fer­ent types of sub­jects (ratio­nal agents, bound­edly ratio­nal agents, etc.) then sim­u­late their deci­sions in the task, and com­pare the sim­u­lated behav­ioural data to the actual deci­sions of peo­ple who per­formed the task in the lab. These com­pu­ta­tional mod­els are really advanced math­e­mat­i­cally and pro­vide quite an excit­ing chal­lenge for stu­dents with a math­e­mat­i­cal back­ground. You will be in charge of mod­el­ing the mod­els in Mat­lab, and run­ning the sim­u­la­tions. Also, while I will pro­vide the key design of the mod­els, you will have a chance to develop them with me, if inter­ested.
  • What you’ll gain: under my direct super­vi­sion, you face the chal­lenge to code in Mat­lab behav­ioral mod­els that are math­e­mat­i­cally demand­ing and at the lead­ing edge of the use of math­e­mat­ics in behav­ioral sci­ences. You will learn the key aspects of mod­el­ing indi­vid­ual deci­sion mak­ing, and gain expe­ri­ence in the rapidly devel­op­ing field of neu­ro­fi­nance.
  • Qual­i­fi­ca­tions: you should be very good at pro­gram­ming in Mat­lab; hav­ing a solid back­ground in Math­e­mat­ics, Com­puter Sci­ences and/or Sta­tis­tics –espe­cially Bayesian sta­tis­tics– is a major plus. The job may be ideal for a stu­dent look­ing for an aca­d­e­mic assign­ment in applied Math­e­mat­ics, Com­puter Sci­ence, Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing, and inter­ested in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary work. Mas­ter or PhD stu­dents inter­ested in doing research in machine learn­ing, math­e­mat­i­cal psy­chol­ogy , and exper­i­men­tal eco­nom­ics, would also be per­fect for the job.
  • Time­frame: right now the tar­get sched­ule for this project is to start in March 2011.

Soft­ware Devel­op­ment: Exper­i­men­tal Task

  • Respon­si­bil­i­ties: the tasks com­pleted by the par­tic­i­pants in the exper­i­men­tal ses­sions are com­put­er­ized. By “tasks” I mean money games cre­ated to test a hypoth­e­sis about some cog­ni­tive func­tions; e.g., learn­ing in unsta­ble finan­cial envi­ron­ments. You will code and build one of these small games on the basis the spec­i­fi­ca­tions I will give you. But I also expect a good level of sug­ges­tions and improve­ments of the basic specs, based on the objec­tives we want to achieve with the task.
  • What you’ll gain: You will first expe­ri­ence a com­plete soft­ware project cycle: you will receive the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, have to under­stand them by ask­ing me clar­i­fi­ca­tions, build mock-ups and pro­to­types, val­i­date them, then build and deliver the final soft­ware. Since the task is a game, you will have the oppor­tu­nity to strongly influ­ence the UI and the soft­ware archi­tec­ture itself (I will pro­vide the algo­rithms to use for com­pu­ta­tions though). Under­stand­ing our sci­en­tific objec­tives and then propos­ing new soft­ware designs that beat our basic specs have proved to be greatly reward­ing in the past :-)
  • Qual­i­fi­ca­tions: you should be able to code eas­ily in Java or C++ (or a pro­gram­ming lan­guage of your choice that is cross-platform and able to per­form as best), have a an inter­est for UI design and of course an inter­est for behav­ioral sci­ences.
  • Time­frame: right now the tar­get sched­ule for this project is to start in March 2011, but this is ten­ta­tive and could be delayed slightly.

Exper­i­men­tal Ses­sion Super­vi­sion

  • Respon­si­bil­i­ties: includes con­tribut­ing to the exper­i­men­tal design of a novel cog­ni­tive task, as part of an upcom­ing research project; recruit­ing and design­ing a pop­u­la­tion of qual­i­fied sub­jects as par­tic­i­pants; prepar­ing the rel­e­vant ethics com­mit­tee mate­ri­als; prepar­ing the phys­i­cal setup of the com­puter labs to run the ses­sions; super­vis­ing some ses­sions autonomously.
  • What you’ll gain: under my direct super­vi­sion, you will learn how to run an exper­i­men­tal project from A to Z. You will be involved and will con­tribute to all aspects of this exper­i­men­tal research project. Since I will work directly on this research project, the super­vi­sion will be very effec­tive.
  • Qualifications: you should be able to under­stand all aspects of the exper­i­men­tal task and to answer ques­tions from the sub­jects dur­ing the exper­i­ments.
  • Time­frame: right now the tar­get sched­ule for this work is to start in July 2011, but this is ten­ta­tive and could be delayed slightly.

Positions

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Finance — Australian School of Busi­ness, Syd­ney
Vis­it­ing Asso­ciate in Eco­nom­ics — California Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, Pasadena, CA

Student Opportunities

Are you a UNSW stu­dent look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to explore neu­ro­fi­nance? See what’s avail­able and pos­si­ble here

Contacts

Elise Payzan-Le Nestour
Room 338 - Level 3
Australian School of Business, UNSW Sydney
+61 (2) 9385 4273 | +1 626 407 3330
elise@elisepayzan.com