About the Office of Fellowship Training
OFT Mission
The mission of the Office of Fellowship Training is:
- To support and promote a productive and fulfilling research training experience in the NIMH Intramural Research Program
- To encourage career planning and guide career management during the trainee fellowship program
- To provide programs and services to assist trainees in discovering and clarifying career choices
- To provide opportunities and to encourage trainees to build a professional skill set which enables them to become world leaders in academic and non-academic careers
Come visit our booth and speak with an OFT staff member about the fellowship and training opportunities we offer at the NIH/NIMH. We will be at the following scientific meetings: Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP) and Society for Neuroscience (SfN).
Trainee Successes: Past & Present
Associate Professor Jessica Taubert is a cognitive neuroscientist with a diverse scientific background that cuts across traditional boundaries in psychology and neurobiology. She completed a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honours at Macaquarie University (2005) and a PhD in Psychology at the University of Sydney (2009). In 2009 she accepted a postdoctoral position at Emory University (GA, USA) to work jointly with Lisa Parr at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Philippe Rochat in the Department of Psychobiology. In 2011 Jessica was awarded a FSR incoming postdoctoral fellowship by UCLouvain and moved to Belgium to train as a neurophysiologist (supervised by Rufin Vogels, Wim Vanduffel, and Bruno Rossion). Subsequentially, Jessica was appointed as an Intramural Research Fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in the US.
During her time in the NIMH intramural Research Program (2016 – 2021) Jessica worked with Dr. Leslie Ungerleider in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition (LBC) and studied the neural basis of social intelligence in human and non-human primates using multiple methods including high-field functional imaging. Several key publications resulted from her fellowship research, including a number of large-scale cross-disciplinary projects that were led by Jessica. The aim was to investigate how faces are detected by the primate brain and how expressions are recognised. She also led several studies that leveraged face pareidolia – the tendency primates have to see faces where none exist – to better understand how the primate brain detects and prioritizes faces. Jessica also worked collaboratively with several other laboratories at the NIMH, including the laboratories of David Leopold and Arash Afraz. Among her service roles, Jessica represented the LBC on the NIMH IRP OFT Fellows’ Committee for 5 years and was the Committee Chair from 2018 – 2020. Additionally, she sat on the NIMH IRP OFT Steering Committee, the NIH Fellows’ Committee (FelCom) and was the Fellows’ Liaison on the NIH Animal Research Advisory Committee. In 2020 she was awarded the National Institute of Mental Health Special Act Award for reporting to campus to oversee mission critical projects and the welfare of non-human primates during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Jessica was awarded the prestigious Future Fellowship by the Australian Research Council and returned to her home country, Australia to build her own laboratory, aptly named the BrisBrain Lab for its locations in Brisbane, Australia. Shortly thereafter she was awarded the Young Investigator Award by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. Jessica continues to study the aspects of primate social intelligence that are grounded in visual cognition; how do we recognise and read social agents? Do companion animals help recover lost social functioning in neurodiverse populations? What are the typical and atypical changes in social intelligence during the perinatal period? Jessica is committed to maintaining a world-class research environment that fosters diversity, inclusion and belonging – values that were instilled in her by her training within the NIMH IRP environment.
Education
Ph.D. in Psychology, The University of Sydney Australia.
BSci First Class Honors in Psychology, Macquarie University.
Selected Publications
1. Taubert J, Japee S. Real Face Value: The Processing of Naturalistic Facial Expressions in the Macaque Inferior Temporal Cortex. J Cogn Neurosci. 2024 Jan 19:1-17. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_02108. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38261366.
2. Taubert J, Japee S, Patterson A, Wild H, Goyal S, Yu D, Ungerleider LG. A broadly tuned network for affective body language in the macaque brain. Sci Adv. 2022 Nov 25;8(47):eadd6865. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add6865. Epub 2022 Nov 25. PMID: 36427322; PMCID: PMC9699662.
3. Taubert J, Wardle SG, Tardiff CT, Patterson A, Yu D, Baker CI. Clutter Substantially Reduces Selectivity for Peripheral Faces in the Macaque Brain. J Neurosci. 2022 Aug 31;42(35):6739-6750. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0232-22.2022. PMID: 35868861; PMCID: PMC9436017.
4. Taubert J, Japee S, Murphy AP, Tardiff CT, Koele EA, Kumar S, Leopold DA, Ungerleider LG. Parallel Processing of Facial Expression and Head Orientation in the Macaque Brain. J Neurosci. 2020 Oct 14;40(42):8119-8131. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0524-20.2020. Epub 2020 Sep 14. PMID: 32928886; PMCID: PMC7574659.
5. Taubert J, Flessert M, Wardle SG, Basile BM, Murphy AP, Murray EA, Ungerleider LG. Amygdala lesions eliminate viewing preferences for faces in rhesus monkeys. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jul 31;115(31):8043-8048. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1807245115. Epub 2018 Jul 16. PMID: 30012600; PMCID: PMC6077752.