[visionlist] Two 4-year PhD positions in the Scene Grammar Lab

[Melissa Võ]

Dear vision colleagues,
It is my great pleasure to announce that the Scene Grammar Lab<https://www.scenegrammarlab.com/> is looking for TWO (!) PhD candidates to join our team starting early 2026 (4 years, pay scale: E13 TV-L, 75%). After 10 very fun and successful years in Frankfurt, the SGL has moved to the LMU in Munich, where we now keep busy studying scene perception, object memory and visual attention in real-world scenarios like Munich’s famous beer gardens or its pristine mountain lakes.
The SGL is part of the Neuro-Cognitive Psychology Chair<https://www.lmu.de/psy/en/chairs/neuro-cognitive-psychology/> and actively involved in raising the new generation of eager scientists by contributing to the international Master’s program “Neuro-Cognitive Psychology (NCP)<https://www.lmu.de/psy/de/studium/m.sc.-neuro-cognitive-psychology/>”, Iwhich is part of the "Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN)"<https://www.gsn.uni-muenchen.de/>. Both PhD candidates have the option of joining the GSN as part of their PhD, but this is no must.
In the lab, we use a variety of methods, including psychophysics, stationary, real-world and VR eye-tracking, EEG, as well as computational modelling approaches. Over the past years, we have become experts in studying what we call “scene grammar”, the rules that govern real-world environments. But we also cherish other theoretical views and methodological approaches… as long as they continue to help us MAKING A SCENE! Most importantly, you would be joining an international as well as super enthusiastic, fun, and warm-hearted team of great minds and personalities here in the lab.

Now what are we hiring for?
PhD#1 would join us in the context of Germany’s top-tier funding initiative, a new Cluster of Excellence The Adaptive Mind (TAM, EXC 3066). In The Adaptive Mind, we combine state-of-the-art behavioral and neurophysiological research with approaches from psychiatry and clinical psychology, as well as quantitative analyses and computational modeling using artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. Our goal is to measure and model the continuous adaptation of natural human behavior in a constantly changing and unpredictable world. Further details on the cluster project can be found here: http://www.theadaptivemind.de<http://www.theadaptivemind.de/>. In particular, the PhD (funded for 4 years) will push the frontiers on studying real-world search in real-world scenarios using a combination of eye tracking and (mobile) EEG recordings in VR.
PhD#2 would join the lab on a university position. What does this mean? While the position comes with 4h/week of teaching at the BSc/MSc level (which translates to about 2 seminars/week), it provides a longer term perspective (4+2 years). All teaching done by our group is in English, but knowing how to pronounce “GRIASDI” in Bavarian would earn you some extra smiles. The big PRO of this position is that it is NOT dependent on external funding, there’s no predefined research agenda and therefore you can be bold and creative in what you would want to work on in our lab with a perspective to stay up to 6 years! That said, with TAM’s research agenda greatly overlapping with the interests of the Scene Grammar Lab, we would hope to find research topics for PhD#2 that could contribute to the excellent TAM agenda and its inclusive spirit.
Your profile: You should have obtained an MSc-degree in a relevant field (e.g., Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Vision, Cognitive Science, ...) and share interest in the core research areas described above. Ideally you have extensive experience with eye tracking in 2D/3D/VR experiments and/or with carrying out and analyzing state-of-the-art EEG experiments (e.g. time-frequency analyses, decoding approaches). A good foundation in programming (e.g. Python, Unity) and statistical methods (e.g., Bayesian approaches, LMMs etc) would help hit the ground running, but .

Finally, if you have read this far you might also be interested in the perks of living in Munich, the “Weltstadt mit Herz”: With its roughly 1.5 million people it is the third largest city in Germany, but has retained a quite mellow “small town feeling”. You can come up with new experimental ideas while biking through town along the beautiful river, walking through the English garden or enjoying some “Gemütlichkeit” in one of the relaxing beer gardens (all just outside the lab). For those more culturally inclined, the city is home to world-renowned museums (such as the Deutsche Museum<https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/>, the Alte Pinakothek<https://www.pinakothek.de/en/alte-pinakothek>, and the Pinakothek der Moderne<https://www.pinakothek.de/en/Pinakothek-der-Moderne>, showcasing art, history, and science), a lively theatre and club scene as well as the one and only Oktoberfest. All that just to say that Munich is an inspiring place to live, work, and thrive both inside and outside the lab.

Interested candidates should send a CV, a brief statement of research interests, and the names and contact details of at least two academic references to melissa.vo at psy.lmu.de<mailto:melissa.vo at psy.lmu.de> preferably before Advent 🕯️ (Sunday, November 30th 2025), but later applications will be considered until the positions are filled. We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds, who bring passion and advanced skills to our lab and the Cluster as a whole and encourage particularly women to apply.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Melissa
…

Prof. Dr. Melissa Lê-Hoa Võ

Scene Grammar Lab
Chair of Neuro-Cognitive Psychology (NCP)
Department of Psychology
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Leopoldstraße 13
80802 Munich
Germany

www.SceneGrammarLab.com<http://www.scenegrammarlab.com/>



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