Postdoctoral Scholar - Northwestern University Neurodevelopmental Diversity Laboratory

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Northwestern University’s Neurodevelopmental Diversity Laboratory (NDL), directed by Dr. Molly Losh (http://ndl.northwestern.edu), is seeking a postdoctoral scholar to join our research team.

The lab is currently conducting NIH-funded research focused on language in autistic adolescents and adults, across English and Mandarin Chinese. The postdoctoral scholar will play a central role in implementing this project, with primary responsibility for leading testing sessions of Mandarin-speaking autistic individuals and their families, as well as non-autistic peers. This includes clinical-behavioral characterization, language elicitation, and behavioral and neurophysiological experiments. The postdoctoral scholar will also contribute to data preprocessing, participate in discourse and computational linguistic analyses, lead scholarly publications, assist with recruitment efforts, and coordinate with our team of collaborators. The successful candidate will have opportunities to develop independent research, participate in other NIH-funded projects in the lab, and to pursue independent funding.

Principal Accountabilities

  1. Conduct experiments and analyses related to language, cognitive, and neurophysiological phenotypes in autism, with a focus on Mandarin-speaking populations

  2. Assist in supervision and mentoring of research staff

  3. Lead and contribute to publications resulting from lab research

  4. Contribute to grant writing and funding applications

Minimum Qualifications

  • PhD in Communication Sciences and Disorders, Psychology, Linguistics, or a related field

  • Bilingual or multilingual proficiency in spoken and written Mandarin and English for cross-linguistic research

  • Interest in research on autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions

  • Evidence of research productivity (e.g., peer-reviewed publications)

Preferred Qualifications

  • Research and/or clinical training related to neurodevelopmental conditions

  • Experience in language-related research

  • Demonstration of research independence

  • Expertise in formal and discourse language analysis

  • Strong quantitative analytic skills

  • Excellent communication and writing abilities

Application Instructions

Interested applicants should email application materials to Dr. Joe Lau at josephcylau@northwestern.edu.

For full consideration, please submit materials by March 30, 2026. Applications should include:

  1. A cover letter describing how your work aligns with the lab’s research

  2. A current CV

  3. Up to two publications or manuscripts most relevant to the lab’s scope

Applicants will also be asked to provide contact information for 2–3 references willing to submit letters of recommendation..