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San Francisco, California, United States
Onsite
Available
(formerly Forest Neurotech)
Arbor is a nonprofit research organization working on one of the hardest open problems in clinical neuroscience: how to change brain circuits by design.
Millions of people with depression, chronic pain, and other brain disorders have no treatment that works. Modulating activity in the brain circuits underlying their symptoms – with electrical stimulation, focused ultrasound, or magnetic stimulation – can work spectacularly well. But it doesn't work reliably, and we can't predict who it will help.
That's what Arbor aims to fix. The starting point is a new class of experiment: intervene, measure how the circuit responds, track the symptom, and repeat in the same individual over months. We’re building the necessary experimental platform. It currently includes the Forest 1 ultrasound system, which works like a wearable functional MRI, but with higher resolution. The system images activity across large brain volumes, including deep brain structures, and will soon stimulate as well. We are also adding electrode-based interfaces in animal studies. From these data, we'll build models to make neuromodulation predictable.
Arbor is a Focused Research Organization within the Convergent Research family, and the new name for Forest Neurotech. We're a mission-focused nonprofit, doing multidisciplinary translational work that doesn't fit in a lab or on a company roadmap. We have the funding to run the first phase, and we're a small team – the people we hire now will shape what Arbor becomes.
This is the person who runs our human experiments.
Our human neuroscience program is expanding, building from a small intramural program and an active UK collaboration with ARIA. The studies will start with functional ultrasound imaging, later paired with focused ultrasound neuromodulation. Participants are people with a sonolucent cranial implant, usually placed after surgery for traumatic brain injury, stroke, or a tumor. These individuals often have comorbid conditions that neuromodulation may be able to improve. The studies are longitudinal and causal: intervene, image the circuit response, track the symptom, and repeat in the same person over months. Today the studies run in the clinic or lab; eventually we want to run them in participants' homes.
Your job is to make those experiments happen: designing the studies and running them, including travel to clinical sites, setting up rigs, collecting data alongside our staff and clinical partners, and interpreting the data we collect. You'd work directly with our analysis lead on the computational side and with engineers on the device platform.
We're hiring at multiple levels and will calibrate scope and title to your experience. At the earlier end, you'd run studies we've designed together and take on more as you go. With more experience, you'd own research lines end to end, hold our clinical site relationships, and help set the direction of the human research program alongside the CEO and the rest of the scientific team.
We're also still a small, startup-like organization, so everyone fills multiple roles, including hands-on science and the work that gets science done.
Note: We're also hiring a Head of Clinical Science, a broader role leading how Arbor thinks about clinical impact across the organization. If both sound like you, apply to either and tell us.
Design longitudinal, causal, within-subject human studies: imaging first, then neuromodulation
Run those experiments, or oversee them as the program grows
Own the experimental rigs: specify what's needed, keep them running, and work with our engineers on device usability and improvements
Work with research collaborators, including travel to clinical sites
Support participant recruitment alongside our clinical operations lead
Analyze and interpret data, with our analysis lead
Write up results, publish, and present at scientific meetings
Help shape the human neuroscience program
A PhD and experience running human neuroscience research. Your background could be cognitive, affective, or clinical neuroscience, human neuroimaging, or human neuromodulation. Prior work grounded in disease is a plus but not a requirement.
The successful candidate will have:
Experience running human studies end to end, including recruitment, data collection, and analysis
Comfort with hardware and software: you may not have built a rig, but you can troubleshoot one
Sufficient computational skills to run standard data analyses on your own and to advise and critique more innovative ones
Directness without friction – you say what you think, ask when you don't know, and aren't looking to compete with your colleagues
A deep interest in seeing your work reach patients
Nice to have: functional or focused ultrasound experience; TMS, DBS, or intracranial neuromodulation work; experience with clinical populations; signal processing or imaging analysis; ability to design and build experimental rigs; IRB and protocol writing; having worked somewhere small enough that you had a lot to build.
Our benefits include:
Medical, dental, and vision – most plans fully covered for you and your dependents
401(k) with up to 6% match
Company-paid life and AD&D, with voluntary supplemental options
15 holidays plus a floating day for your birthday
3 weeks PTO increasing with tenure, and separate sick leave
Arbor will consider sponsorship for U.S. work authorization case by case. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed, and immigration timelines can affect start dates. Where we sponsor, we cover the legal and government fees.
Arbor is an equal opportunity employer. We hire based on talent and experience and don't discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
