Postdoctoral position, 2023-2024 – Computational generation and selection of musical stimuli for premature children

  • 12-months postdoctoral position, starting in March 2023, funded by the ANR PreMusic
  • Amiens, France (MIS, UniversitĂ© de Picardie Jules Verne)
  • Contact et candidatures: Florence LevĂ© (CV, list of publications, a motivation letter, and the names and contact information for one or two references)
  • See http://www.algomus.fr/jobs
  • Applications open until January 15

Contexte

The PreMusic project targets the early development of rhythmic capacities and test early rhythm-oriented musical interventions (MI) in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) to improve the functionality of neural networks responsible for perceptual and cognitive sequencing. PreMusic is a 48 months project funded by the French National Research Agency.

The consortium of PreMusic consists of experts in cognitive neuroscience, music, computational music analysis, engineers, and clinicians to conduct a structured and controlled longitudinal study, on the benefits of very early MI for premature born infants. Partners of this project are:

  • GRAMFC, INSERM, UPJV, Amiens, France
  • MIS, UPJV, Amiens, France
  • LEAD, CNRS UMR 5020, Dijon, France
  • McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada (Advisory partner)

Offer

This postdoc position is dedicated to the development of the Musical Stimuli that will be broadcast in the NICU. The computational creation of the auditory stimuli will be preceded by a pilot study in the NICU to validate the musical properties of the music to be well-suited for very-preterm children. The postdoc researcher will develop sets of musical pieces with specific rhythmic properties while ensuring diversity in other musical characteristics. Given that the majority of infants in the sample are from a Western culture, the music will contain a diversity of Western musical rhythms (specifically duple and triple meters).

Depending on the research specialty of the recruited postdoc, developments of the subject are possible towards the generation of music targeting specific rhythmic properties, perception of musical stimuli, simplification of existing musical pieces to meet auditory capacities of preterm infants.

Required qualification

The postdoc recruited should have a PhD in Computer science, Music Information Retrieval or Music Perception with skills in Computational Music Analysis.

References