The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Employment Opportunities

For current openings at UW-Madison, search online for position vacancy listings. If you are interested in opportunities with "Center for Investigating Healthy Minds," please add this phrase to your search terms (within the UW-Madison HR portal).

Research Credit Opportunities

Tai Chi Brain Research:  WANTED: Bright and enthusiastic undergraduates to assist with a study of the brain and tai chi.  Tai chi is an ancient Chinese "moving meditation" that is promoted both for physical and mental health benefits. This Spring semester we will continue to acquire data to determine the effects of tai chi training on attention, and we will pilot a study of the effects on brain physiology as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Research credit will be available. Please contact: Alexander K. Converse, PhD, Associate Scientist, Waisman Center Brain Imaging Core, akconverse@wisc.edu

Graduate Training

If you are interested in applying to graduate school and working in Dr. Davidson’s lab, here are some things you should know. We appreciate the interest and hope that more students get seriously involved in this kind of work since there are so many wonderful outstanding questions remaining to be studied and understood. 

Our lab relies on sophisticated neuroimaging and other related biological methods to make inferences about processes in the brain and body during emotion, in psychopathology and in response to interventions designed to change emotion and cognition, including meditation. These methods require a strong technical background to master. Among the most important skills that are required are programming and statistical and quantitative skills. Relevant programming languages used in neuroscience vary greatly depending on the focus of the research but common examples include Python, R, and Matlab. In addition, familiarity with the command line in Unix or Mac OS is essential. Knowing any programming language is better than none, and will make learning other languages easier.

In addition, significant course work in computer science, biology (neuroscience) and physics are important and highly recommended. It is not necessary that incoming students be Psychology majors. In fact, some of our most successful students have been Physics, Computer Science and Neuroscience majors as undergraduates.

It is helpful to have significant research experience before applying to graduate school. This typically means spending several years post-college in a laboratory as a research assistant. Dr. Davidson almost never accepts a student directly from college. Virtually every one of the students in our lab has spent some time (often a lot of time) following college working in a laboratory setting.

If you wish to be considered for a position in our lab, it is imperative that you have the kind of hard science, quantitative and programming background described above. If you have additional questions please inquire here: training@investigatinghealthyminds.org.

Additional graduate training resources

• UW Admissions
• Neuroscience Training Program
• Psychology

Volunteer opportunities

Thanks for your interest in volunteering. While do not have an official volunteer position opening at this time, we encourage you to sign up for e-mail updates and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter to keep apprised of new opportunities to get involved with the Center.