Postdoctoral fellow

We seek trainees who have a specific interest in midlife brain aging, its origins in early life, and its implications for mental 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. We collected a first wave of MRI data in 875 Study members when they were 45 years old and are currently collecting a second wave of data as 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 and, furthermore, to map these changes onto a number of health outcomes including risk 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 including those collected through ADNI, UK Biobank, BrainLat, and ENIGMA. The trainee will be collectively supervised by Ahmad Hariri, Avshalom Caspi, and Temi Moffitt. Applications 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.