Join the lab!


Postdoctoral researchers

If you have shared research interests and would like to discuss a potential position, please email Kate to discuss opportunities. The lab is always on the lookout for strong postdoctoral candidates.

BU’s Center for Systems Neuroscience sponsors two-year fellowships that potential postdocs can apply for, with the deadline typically in late January each year. Please reach out to Kate if you are interested in applying.



Ph.D. students

Kate will likely not be admitting students during the 2026 - 2027 cycle, to begin in fall 2027. But please reach out if you think your interests are exceptionally well-aligned with the lab.

In future years, prospective students can apply to join the lab through the ‘Brain, Behavior, and Cognition’ program or the ‘Developmental Science’ program in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. It is also possible for students to join the lab through the University-wide ‘Graduate Program in Neuroscience’, though this program begins with a year of rotations. You can find more information about applying here and information about application fee waivers here.

Competitive applicants to the lab will have:

Research in the lab is both developmental and computational. Because of this, students will be expected to have an interest in some aspect of development and a desire to learn computational methods (e.g., developing and fitting cognitive models; analyzing neuroimaging data). However, the Ph.D. is an opportune time for learning. You do not need to have any specific computational modeling skills (beyond working fluency in at least one programming language) and you do not need to have experience conducting developmental research to be a competitive applicant to the lab.



Post-bacc RAs / Lab managers

We do not currently have any openings for full-time postbacc research assistants and do not anticipate having any in the near future.




BU undergraduates and MA students

Please note: We have filled all of our undergraduate RA slots for Fall 2026 (and likely for Spring 2027). Please check back next fall for additional openings.

The lab often has opportunities for BU undergraduates (and potentially for MA students), either as volunteers, paid RAs (if eligible for work-study), and directed study or UROP students.

If you are a current student at BU interested in joining the lab, please fill out our interest form. Once you fill out the form, you can expect to hear from us within a few weeks about whether or not we have a potential opening. Please fill out the form thoughtfully – while we do not expect undergraduates to have research experience, we do expect that students have made themselves familiar with some of our past publications and have a genuine interest in the specific research we do.

Unfortunately, the lab does not have any openings for non-BU students.




High school students

Unfortunately, the lab does not have the capacity to train high school students, and we do not accept high school volunteers. Kate cannot mentor individual high-school research projects. If you email Kate, she will tell you this same thing.