Location: Learning Planet institute and INSERM U1284, 8bis rue Charles V, Paris 75004

Mentorship: Ariel B. Lindner, in collaboration with Ignacio Atal

Duration: 2-3 years

Project Overview: 20% of children and adolescents have a mental or learning disorder; of those, only 1 in 4 ever receive appropriate support. The LISA (Learning, Integration, Support and Assessment)  project, under the France 2030 initiative, aims to provide a systemic response to enhance K-12 student well-being and mental health through systematic identification of each student's specific strengths and needs and support for teachers and school actors to tailor their classroom actions accordingly. At the heart of the project, teachers assess a broad range of individual characteristics of their students, including learning, behavior, cognition, emotion, and mental health and are provided with recommended pedagogic actions, based on evidence-based practices, to be implemented at the individual, sub-group or classroom levels.

LISA is a collaboration between national (iféa, the Learning Planet Institute, the Créteil, Paris and Versailles academies) and international (the Child Mind Institute (New York) and Mission Laïque France) partners. LISA will be developed and deployed over 5 years (2024-28) to reach up to 80,000 students in 200 schools, potentially expanding nationally. For more information see here.

Position Summary: We are seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to lead the R&D and evaluation of the project. The selected candidate will be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive research and evaluation framework to assess and improve the effects of LISA's interventions on teachers’ professional development and student well-being, mental health, and academic performance. The work will be carried in a rich interdisciplinary and international environment, including collaborations with Prof. B. Leventhal (LISA Medical director) the Child Brain Institute (Prof. R. Delorme, Robert Debré Hospital) and the Child Mind Institute (Dr. A. Klein) and other members of our international scientific advisory board eager to exchange, support and interact with the selected candidate.

Responsibilities:

- Contribute to the continuous improvement of the LISA project based on research insights (e.g., dimensional profiling and clustering of students, study of prevalence of mental or learning disorders within ecological school settings, recommendation of evidence-based practices…).

- Design and conduct quantitative and qualitative research to evaluate the effectiveness of LISA assessment tools and recommended pedagogic actions.

- Prepare and disseminate research findings through reports, peer-reviewed publications, and presentations at national and international conferences.

 Qualifications:

- Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Education, Public Health, Economics, or a related field.

- Demonstrated experience in conducting research (including peer reviewed publications), preferentially in educational settings.

- Strong quantitative and qualitative research skills, including expertise in statistical analysis (Python, R)

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in French and English.

- Ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and international team.

Please submit your CV, a cover letter detailing your research interests and experience related to this project, and contact information for three references in an email with subject line [LISA Postdoc] to ariel.indner@cri-paris.org. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.