The SoC Team is looking to recruit an enthusiastic graduate student to start in the Fall of 2027. (Check here for updates on application deadlines). The candidate will be expected to join a longitudinal study in which we deeply phenotype the experiences, brains, and behaviors of infants in order to characterize and model the emergence of visual and linguistic expertise during development. The successful graduate student would is expected to be interested in perception, language, learning, and/or computational modeling.

The research involves a range of skills, including fMRI data collection (on the GE platform), computer coding (Python, Matlab, Javascript, Bash) for experiment design and analysis, computational modeling (using CNNs, and transformers), and comfort in interacting with infants and families. Although experience in some of these areas is desired, no background in any of these is essential (although see below for the clarification that research experience is necessary). Different applicants will have different opportunities from their undergrad: if you were unable to access these research experiences, then that won’t be held against you. Indeed, it would be hypocritical to expect anything else since I had none of these skills when I got into grad school. Instead, I endorse a quote from Antoni Gaudí:

“To do things right, first you need love, then technique”

To operationalize this, the primary criteria for consideration are:

1. Do you show enthusiasm for the research program and theoretical questions?
2. Do you show evidence of independent and self-motivated learning?
3. Do you demonstrate sophistication in your research interests?
4. Do you cooperate well and work well in a team setting?

Because of the team nature of this work, complementary skillsets and research interests will be considered during recruitment.

Space is extremely limited, as fewer student slots will be available in 2026 for the same number of faculty looking for students.

Graduate school at Stanford is fully funded (i.e., you do not require student loans for tuition), and a stipend is provided for living costs (i.e., you are paid to go to school). This funding comes directly from the graduate school and is guaranteed for 5 years. As a graduate student, you will have access to subsidized Stanford housing. All costs for things like experiments and conference travel are all paid for by my research funds.

Applicants outside of the United States are encouraged to apply. If successful, visa support is provided and managed by the Bechtel International Center. For these applicants, they should seek out advice for applying to American graduate schools (of which the internet provides an abundance), since many of the application materials are expected to follow a certain format that differs from other countries.

The application process for people wishing to join the team involves an initial screening by the search committee members of the developmental area in the Stanford Department of Psychology, followed by a further round of screening by me and any other faculty mentioned in your application letter. Successful applicants will then be virtually interviewed. These stages of interviews mean that your application must appeal both to the developmental area as a whole, as well as to me in particular.

Below I give a few pieces of advice:

• If you wish to join the team then please say so clearly in your personal statement. If it does not then I won’t read it.
• The personal statement is perhaps the most important part of your application. We strongly encourage that you have your mentors read over your application to see its suitability.
• In recent years, I have noticed personal statements have gotten shorter. While brevity is good and overly long applications will be de facto penalized, you should not compromise space that could be used to describe why you are interested in the lab and what research questions motivate what you want to do. A common style of statement is to spend 80% of it explaining what you have done and then in the last two paragraphs say what you want to do and why you want to come to Stanford. This style hurts your application. I have your CV so I don’t need it to be rewritten in a narrative. Instead, the best statements are dedicated to telling me what you want to do, with details about what you have done sprinkled in throughout to justify why you are equipped to do what you want to do.
• Your application could describe an experiment or set of experiments you want to run. However, doing so is hard since one of the most important criteria I am evaluating applicants on is whether they understand what our research group does and what are the limits of our approaches. Applications should not propose experiments that are out of scope of what we could do. For instance, fMRI is a time intensive and expensive technology, so proposing a study that requires hundreds of participants indicates naivety about what we do. If you propose an elegant, novel and executable experiment idea — even if it is not tackling an ambitious goal — your application will be reviewed positively.
• Research experience is a necessity for getting into our research group. Individuals applying straight from undergrad will be considered; however, they will be compared against applicants with 1-3 years of full-time research experience, and thus will need to have exceptional research experience.
• When evaluating your academic transcript, I am looking to see whether you got consistent, quality grades in Psychology, and whether you have a background in computational or statistical skills. Perfect grades are not required, and poor grades in distant fields (e.g., a foreign language) are largely ignored. Individuals with non-Psychology backgrounds are still welcome to apply, but more scrutiny will be given to their Psychological reasoning.

For equity reasons, Dr. Ellis will not set up virtual meetings with any applicants prior to the formal interview process. If you wish to apply to the team, feel free to send him an email saying as much, but please do not feel concerned if you do not receive a reply. If you do meet Dr. Ellis in person (e.g., at a conference, campus visit), feel free to let him know you intend to apply. If you don’t have this opportunity, know that this is not a disadvantage: all applicants are evaluated in anonymized fashion and so far the majority of students recruited were unknown to Dr. Ellis prior to reading the application.

The SoC Team is looking to recruit a funded Post Doc, with applications open until the space is filled. A Post Doc will primarily conduct fMRI with awake infants while studying perception, attention, and/or learning. There are numerous experiments that are planned in these areas (and more), but interested teammates are encouraged to suggest their own ideas.

The research involves a range of skills, including fMRI data collection (on the GE platform), computer coding (Python, Matlab, Javascript, Bash) for experiment design and analysis, and comfort in interacting with infants and families. Expertise in one or more of these skills is required for consideration, although it is expected that no candidate will have experience in all domains. Moreover, the successful applicant is expected to meet the following criteria: enthusiasm and creativity for their research program, and evidence that they can work well in a team setting.

Since the team is just starting, there isn’t currently anyone to talk to about what I am like as a mentor. Applicants who make it through the initial round of consideration will have the opportunity to privately talk to my former mentees and learn what I am like as an advisor.

The salary for this position will be $80,000-85,000. This salary will increase to keep up with the cost of living. Currently, two years of funding are available; however, during that period, additional grant funding will be sought to bring that to 4 years of funding.

Postdocs with partial or full funding will be more closely considered. Funded salary will be bumped to meet or exceed the standard rate.

Graduate students in any department at Stanford (e.g., Inter-Departmental Program for Neuroscience, Symbolic Systems) are welcome to reach out to Cameron to discuss joining the lab. You should send an email with your CV and a description of why you want to join the lab. Cameron will then arrange a meeting in which you will discuss your research interests and your fit in the lab. For some programs (e.g., IDP) that require students to be funded, considerations will be made about whether fellowship funding is available

We are currently recruiting UGRAs to join our Team in Fall 2026!

Undergraduate Research Assistants will support the infant fMRI research we do by assisting with scans, helping with preprocessing the data, and supporting research tasks.

Successful applicants will show the following:

1. A demonstrable interest in developmental cognitive neuroscience research or other questions we ask
2. Evidence of trustworthiness and persistence
3. Computational and technical skill, usually shown through course work in computer science or data science
4. A warm personality and generous spirit

All undergraduate research assistants are compensated for their time, either with course credit or with money. This is necessary for equity reasons: some students don’t have surplus time to volunteer, so to avoid favoring those that have that luxury this rule is set. This means that space for research assistants is limited in the team. Research assistants are expected to work 5–10 hours per week during the semester, with opportunities available to research full-time in the summer.

When offered the UGRA position, the candidate will be asked to review and sign our Responsibilities, Expectations, and Benefits Contract before beginning.

If you are interested, please fill out this UGRA application by September 12th. If you have any questions, feel free to email Nicole (sahrling@stanford.edu) or Dr. Ellis (cte@stanford.edu).

Members of the Stanford community are welcome to collaborate with the SoC team as an affiliate. Infant fMRI involves intricate data collection that takes a long time to get trained in. People are welcome to collaborate with this level of commitment, but collaborations can take on lesser forms. For instance, secondary analyses of research data are possible. Moreover, research that does not focus on infant fMRI but is in our wheelhouse is also encouraged.