Job Description

The department of Neurology of the University Hospital Ulm (Directors: Prof. Dr. K.G. Häusler and Prof. Dr. J. Weishaupt) is instantly looking for a
PhD Position (f/m/d) – Computer Vision-Assisted Movement Analysis and Brain Mapping
in the Precision Movement Analysis and Brain Mapping Group (Principal Investigator: Dr. Maximilian U. Friedrich, MD).
The University Hospital Ulm with its employees (f/m/d) stands for a modern patient care with high quality, top research and medical teaching oriented towards the future as well as training in attractive professional fields.The prerequisites for this are qualified and committed employee.
The PhD project focuses on the quantitative analysis of neurological movement and balance disorders using computer vision–based motion analysis and the integration of these behavioral measures with multimodal neuroimaging (structural MRI, diffusion MRI, connectomics). The overarching aim is to develop and validate digital biomarkers of neurological health and to relate these to distributed brain networks in well-characterized clinical cohorts (e.g. stroke, movement and balance disorders).
Your tasks:

• Development of sustainable marker less movement analysis pipelines and toolkits using computer vision methods (e. g. pose tracking, vision transformers, mesh models)
• Extraction and validation of quantitative movement features from clinical video data, including time-series analysis and quality control in real-world clinical contexts
• Integration of movement parameters with multimodal MRI data (e. g. lesions, atrophy foci, brain stimulation volumes, connectivity metrics)
• Statistical voxel- and network-based analysis of brain–behavior relationships
• Contribution to scientific publications and conference presentations

We offer:

• A fully funded PhD position in a highly interdisciplinary clinical research environment (TV-L E13, 65%) for 3 years.
• Access to cutting-edge methods and clinical datasets addressing clinically relevant questions
• Embedding in Ulm’s neuroscience ecosystem, including close interaction with clinicians, engineers, and imaging experts.
• An international research environment with strong collaborations.
• Structured supervision and support for independent scientific and personal development

Your profile:

• An excellent Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Neuroscience, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Physics, Medicine, or a related field
• Strong interest in computer vision, machine learning, movement analysis, and neuroimaging for clinical neuroscience
• Advanced programming skills, particularly in Python, and experience with sustainable data analysis pipelines and research software development
• Motivation to work in a highly interdisciplinary and translational research environment at the interface of clinical neurology and computational neuroscience
• Excellent English skills (written and spoken)

Contract: limited
Level of employment: part-time
application deadline: 31.01.2025
Please submit your application including CV, a 1-2 page research statement (explicitly building on the applicant’s own prior work and describing how this work would be extended or generalized in the context of the position), and academic transcripts to:
Contact:
Dr. Maximilian U. Friedrich
University Hospital Ulm
Department of Neurology
Oberer Eselsberg 45
89081 Ulm
Employment takes place through the administration department of the University Medical Center Ulm, which acts in the aim and on behalf of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. Handicapped people with equal qualifications will be employed preferentially. The University Medical Center Ulm aims to increase the proportion of women and therefore encourages qualified female to submit their application.

Skills Required