We are looking for summer students with a quantitative background (e.g. undergraduate or recent graduate students of Physics, Mathematics or Engineering, or students of other scientific degrees such as Biology and Chemistry who want to strengthen their math and/or programming skills).

Projects will have a duration between 2 and 3 months (the period can be adapted to the student’s needs). The laboratory will cover travel and accommodation in Toulouse, plus a monthly stipend.

Our research aims to develop a general theoretical framework for animal behavior, linking elementary individual behaviors to global (ecosystem-level) outcomes. We combine theoretical work with experiments in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.

Summer projects will be tailored to the student’s background and interests, including technically-oriented projects (e.g. automate an experimental pipeline with a pipetting robot), theoretical projects in decision-making, game theory and navigation and experimental projects with C. elegans.

Candidates must be able to work in an English-speaking environment. Experience in programming with Matlab and/or Python, data analysis and modeling will be useful but not required.

Interested candidates should e-mail alfonso.perez-escudero@univ-tlse3.fr before April 23, 2018.

We study how animals make decisions and move according to them. We aim to link several levels of description, from instantaneous individual decisions to their ultimate consequences and their impact in the individual’s fitness. To this end we combine theoretical work in decision-making, navigation and game theory with experiments on the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and development of quantitative experimental methods.

This lab started only a couple of months ago, and our webpage is still under construction. While we work on it, you can visit the old web page here.