Post-Doctoral position - Quantification of cerebral vascular pulsations during sleep and implications for brain clearance- CDD 24 mois

Joining Mines Saint-Étienne means committing to an institution where science and innovation build a more sustainable future. It is a school of excellence where everyone has the opportunity to unlock their full potential and contribute to tackling the challenges of tomorrow.

Ranked among the top engineering schools in France and recognized worldwide, our school, a member of the Institut Mines-Télécom, educates the talents of tomorrow while actively addressing major industrial, digital, and environmental challenges. By joining us, you become part of a community of 500 members of staff, 2,500 students and take part in an ambitious project: combining academic excellence, cutting-edge research, and positive societal impact.

The Institut Mines-Télécom brings together France’s leading Grandes Ecoles to tackle major industrial, digital, energy, and environmental challenges. With its eight public Grandes Écoles and two affiliated Graduate Schools, it is the leading public institute dedicated to engineers and managers. Together, we imagine and build a sustainable future by educating the leaders who will shape tomorrow’s transitions.

🎯 What we expect from you

As a postdoctoral researcher, you will be at the heart of our missions in education, research, and innovation, assigned to the Centre Ingénierie Santé (CIS). Within this department you will combine your passion for science and for societal impact in health.

CIS brings together engineers, physicists, biologists, and clinicians to address health-related questions through integrated experimental, computational, and clinical approaches. CIS hosts research activities spanning biomechanics, medical imaging, physiological modelling, and translational research, with strong links to hospital infrastructures.

This postdoctoral position is funded within the ERC Consolidator Grant project BrainSomnia, awarded by the European Research Council. The BrainSomnia project aims to understand how sleep-related vascular pulsations drive mechanical transport and clearance processes in the brain, and how alterations of these pulsations—due to ageing or sleep disorders—contribute to impaired clearance of neurotoxic proteins, thereby increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The project relies on a tightly integrated approach combining mechanical and mathematical numerical modelling, experimental modelling, in vivo data from both preclinical models and human volunteers.

Within BrainSomnia, you will primarily contribute to the acquisition and analysis of in vivo data of cerebral vascular dynamics during natural sleep in preclinical models of Alzheimer’s disease, providing key experimental inputs for the modelling and translational components of the project. The position involves close interaction with engineers, physicists, biologists, clinicians, and imaging platform staff, within a strongly transdisciplinary research framework.

Main tasks

• Experimental design and protocol development

You will contribute to the preparation and validation of BrainSomnia-specific experimental setups, including the acquisition, assembly, and testing of an EEG sleep monitoring system compatible with functional ultrasound imaging. You will deploy and validate this system in coordination with the external fUS imaging platform to enable simultaneous assessment of sleep stages and cerebral vascular dynamics.

2. Pilot study

You will conduct a pilot study to validate feasibility and data quality, with particular attention to optimising experimental conditions to preserve natural sleep and CNS biomechanics. This includes defining indicators of stress and sleep quality prior to imaging. You will contribute to the optimisation of surgical procedures to reduce stress and ensure adequate recovery, determine appropriate healing times between surgery and imaging sessions, and participate in the organisation of preclinical logistics to ensure alignment with the study design and ethical requirements.

3. In vivo data acquisition

You will perform preclinical surgical procedures and carry out functional ultrasound imaging to quantify cerebral vascular dynamics during natural sleep, combining EEG-based sleep monitoring and complementary recordings. You will also perform additional imaging under anaesthesia to characterise vascular structure. In parallel, you will contribute to blood sampling and post-mortem tissue collection for downstream analyses.

4. Biosample processing and translational analyses

You will contribute to post-mortem analyses including immunolabelling of brain tissue to assess amyloid-β, vascular, and glial markers, followed by microscopy imaging. In parallel, you will participate in blood biomarker analyses from a human cohort using immunoassays. You will also contribute to the analysis of brain-derived microvesicles in blood.

5. Data analysis

You will work in close collaboration with team members and imaging specialists to interpret vascular dynamics extracted from functional ultrasound data. This will include image reconstruction, registration to reference atlases, and segmentation of relevant biological structures. You will contribute to sleep stage labelling in both preclinical and human datasets.

6. Integration and dissemination

Throughout the project, you will actively participate in transdisciplinary discussions linking biological observations with transport physics and mechanical interpretations of brain function. You will contribute to knowledge sharing within the team and disseminate scientific results through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and outreach activities.