Brain Aging, Duke University
Dear fellow developmental psychologists,
The new school year is just around the corner, but we are already looking ahead to fall 2025!
In a longstanding collaboration at Duke University between the Moffitt-Caspi Team
https://moffittcaspi.trinity.duke.edu/ and the Hariri Lab https://www.haririlab.com/home.html, we are recruiting a new postdoctoral fellow for fall 2025. We seek an early-career researcher who has a specific interest in midlife brain aging, its origins in early life, and its implications for mental health and physical health in later life. The research training will be grounded in the ongoing longitudinal Dunedin Study, which has followed a population-representative birth cohort for six decades, funded by the National Institute on Aging.
We collected a first wave of brain MRI data in 875 Study members when they were 45 years old and are currently collecting a second wave of data as Dunedin Study members turn 52 years old this year. We expect the second wave of data collection to be ready for analysis by fall semester 2025. This will lead to many opportunities to map individual life histories (e.g., childhood adversity, environmental exposures, history of mental illness) onto changes in midlife brain structure, cognitive changes, epigenetic aging measures, and risk markers for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. The research training will also afford opportunities to extend findings from the Dunedin Study through other MRI datasets and epigenetic datasets, including those collected through ADNI, UK Biobank, BrainLat, and ENIGMA. The trainee will be collectively supervised by Avshalom Caspi, Ahmad Hariri, and Temi Moffitt. Applications for Postdoc training can be submitted through a number of T32 Training Grant programs in the Duke Medical School. Ideal candidates will have existing research experience with MRI data analysis including a strong background in programming, or experience with epigenetics research. Contact us to discuss your application.
Thank you, and warm wishes,
From Temi Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi
Closing Date:
Contact: terrie.moffitt@duke.edu