Research staff

Job Description

We are recruiting three research staff at the Agrawal Lab (https://www.agrawallab.com) and with our collaborators at the Dept. of Psychiatry, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, MAHE, for a newly sanctioned ICMR project on sleep biomarkers in major depressive disorder. The project asks whether the sleep and activity changes that follow stress in Drosophila have counterparts a wearable can detect in patients with depression. It runs jointly across three groups: the Centre for Molecular Neurosciences (fly genetics and behavior), the Department of Psychiatry at KMC (patient cohort and actigraphy), and the School of Computer Engineering at MIT Manipal (signal processing and machine learning). Open positions: 1. Project Research Scientist-I (Non-Medical), Rs. 56,000 + 10% HRA. Drosophila genetics, sleep phenotyping, pharmacological assays, and building video-based recording setups. 2. Project Technical Support-III, Position A, Rs. 28,000 + 10% HRA. Fly sleep recordings and data curation alongside participant work at KMC Psychiatry. No prior coding background required. 3. Project Technical Support-III, Position B, Rs. 28,000 + 10% HRA. Clinical research support at the Psychiatry OPD, for MPhil Clinical Psychology or Psychiatric Social Work, MSc Psychology, or MSW candidates. The fly work builds on DANCE (our eLife 2025 work) and other open-source behavioral methods for sleep analysis. Both Project Technical Support posts carry an opportunity for PhD registration at MAHE, subject to eligibility criteria. I am especially interested in hearing from people who are curious and will be comfortable working between a fly room, a clinic, and computational datasets. Eligibility and job codes are in the two attached notices. Send a single PDF with your CV, brief cover letter and two referee contacts to jobs.research@manipal.edu by September 21, 2026, quoting the job code in the subject line.