Head of Clinical Science

Job description

## About Arbor Neuroscience (formerly Forest Neurotech) Arbor is a nonprofit research organization working on one of the hardest open problems in clinical neuroscience: how to change brain circuits by design. Millions of people with depression, chronic pain, and other brain disorders have no treatment that works. Modulating activity in the brain circuits underlying their symptoms – with electrical stimulation, focused ultrasound, or magnetic stimulation – can work spectacularly well. But it doesn't work reliably, and we can't predict who it will help. That's what Arbor aims to fix. The starting point is a new class of experiment: intervene, measure how the circuit responds, track the symptom, and repeat in the same individual over months. We’re building the necessary experimental platform. It currently includes the Forest 1 ultrasound system, which works like a wearable functional MRI, but with higher resolution. The system images activity across large brain volumes, including deep brain structures, and will soon stimulate as well. We are also adding electrode-based interfaces in animal studies. From these data, we'll build models to make neuromodulation predictable. Arbor is a Focused Research Organization within the Convergent Research family, and the new name for Forest Neurotech. We're a mission-focused nonprofit, doing multidisciplinary translational work that doesn't fit in a lab or on a company roadmap. We have the funding to run the first phase, and we're a small team – the people we hire now will shape what Arbor becomes. ### The Role This is a broad role, and a foundational one for the organization. We're looking for someone to lead how Arbor approaches applied human neuroscience and how we think about clinical impact: which conditions we work on, which symptoms we try to move, and what it would mean to succeed. The initial focus will be on defining and expanding our human neuroscience program – building from a small intramural program and an active UK collaboration with ARIA. The studies will start with functional ultrasound imaging, later paired with focused ultrasound neuromodulation. Participants are people with a sonolucent cranial implant, usually placed after surgery for traumatic brain injury, stroke, or a tumor. These individuals often have comorbid conditions that neuromodulation may be able to improve. Designing this program is both a scientific and clinical challenge. The circuits to study, interventions to try, and physiological and behavioral readouts to monitor should all advance our long-term mission while providing something useful for the people who take part. You'd be leading that thinking, alongside the CEO and the rest of the scientific team. The role reaches beyond that program. Arbor also runs preclinical animal work, builds research platforms, and is starting a larger modeling effort. You'd be part of the small group making decisions about all of it, and the person thinking hardest about how this science reaches patients. You'd also be central to our work with external collaborators, especially clinical ones: finding the right partners, deciding which collaborations are most important for our mission. We’re also still a small, startup-like organization, so everyone fills multiple roles, including hands-on science and the work that gets science done. **In your first six months**, you would develop a plan for the human research program, make sure the infrastructure is in place to support it, and begin ramping up recruitment. You'd also have established new external relationships, including clinical sites and access to datasets. Our goal is to be analyzing longitudinal, interventional human circuit data by the end of the year. **Note:** We're also hiring a Human Neuroscientist [link], a more focused role running our human studies. If both sound like you, apply to either and tell us. ### What You’ll Do - Lead Arbor's thinking on clinical scientific direction: which diseases and symptom dimensions we pursue, and why - Lead the scientific design of the human program — targets, tasks, stimulation strategy, outcome measures - Run human studies, hands-on, alongside our scientific and clinical staff - Interpret results, with our analysis lead and computational collaborators - Build and evaluate external partnerships with clinical teams, and set priorities among them - Advise the animal and modeling programs on clinical relevance - Assess groups who want to use our platforms, and help decide where those collaborations go - Write white papers, journal articles, and the materials that support fundraising - Hire and build the human science team as the program grows ### Who We’re Looking For An accomplished clinician-scientist or clinically oriented neuroscientist with a substantial independent research record. You should understand psychiatric or neurological dysfunction from a circuits perspective, with the clinical grounding to know the patient populations involved. You might be a psychiatrist or another clinician, in which case we can protect time for practice. But an MD isn't required – a PhD with deep clinical research experience is just as welcome. The successful candidate will have: - Considered views about how translational neuroscience can be most effective - A strong network of clinician and researcher colleagues - Cross-disciplinary breadth across areas such as neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, imaging, clinical assessment, and clinical practice - Experience running human studies end to end - Directness without friction – you say what you think, ask when you don't know, and aren't looking to compete with your colleagues **Nice to have:** experience with focused ultrasound, functional ultrasound, DBS, or TMS; transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches to psychiatric symptoms; work with large multimodal imaging datasets; IRB and regulatory experience.