Postdoc in detecting cognitive strategies in EEG data

The ultimate objective of this project is to detect cognitive strategies in single-trial EEG data. In very broad terms, we will use the HMP method (https://github.com/GWeindel/hmp) to discover cognitive operations in existing data, label these operations, and then train transformer models to predict sequences of operations in unseen data. Please see Weindel, Borst, & van Maanen, eLife, 2025, Weindel, van Maanen, & Borst, Imaging Neuroscience, 2024, and Den Otter, Weindel, Stuit, Van Maanen, Plos Computational Biology, 2026 for more information about these methods. The goal of the project is to be able to track differences in strategy use between novices and experts on a task and map their learning trajectory.

The ideal candidate has the following qualifications:

- interest in human cognition

- experience with neural data, especially EEG or MEG

- experience with machine learning models for classification or decoding of neural data

- programming skills, especially Python

You will be responsible for coordinating and carrying out this project, in collaboration with the two PIs (Jelmer Borst and Leendert van Maanen). We envision that you will: (1) develop a standard HMP analysis protocol and use that to analyze and label existing data, (2) develop EEG-to-sequence classification that allows for the decoding of the continuous EEG signal into a sequence of cognitive event labels, and (3) apply this to data of expertise development. The intended duration of the project is 2 years, although the initial contract will be for 1 year, with a potential 1-year extension.

This position is part of a long-term collaboration between Prof. dr. Jelmer Borst at the University of Groningen and Dr. Leendert van Maanen at Utrecht University. You will be officially appointed at the University of Groningen, where you will work in the Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computing Science and Artificial Intelligence. You will be based in the research group of Jelmer Borst, which is focused on computational cognitive neuroscience. Secondly, you will work with the group of Leendert van Maanen at Utrecht University, who investigates how people use different cognitive strategies to perform cognitive tasks. Both groups consist of several PhD students, partly working on connected topics.