Job Title: Research Associates (multiple positions), System 3

Reports to: A Pre-Doctoral Fellow, with a System 3 Principal Investigator as overall mentor

Location: Bengaluru

Experience (in years): At least 1 year of paid, full-time work experience

Nature of work: Full-time, fixed term of 12 months, with potential for renewal

About Ashoka University

Ashoka University is India’s premier interdisciplinary teaching and research university. An institution that has become a beacon of academic excellence in less than 10 years since its inception. At Ashoka, we encourage you to embrace the recent, push the boundaries for continuous learning, and adapt to a world of constant change because we believe that each Ashokan is capable of becoming a thought leader.

As part of our thriving and committed workforce, you will:

Be Mission-Driven: Champion interdisciplinary learning, innovative pedagogy, and academic rigor to transform Indian higher education.

Think Strategically: Collaborate with visionary minds to shape the future of higher education through strategic planning and a forward-thinking approach.

Act Authentically: Embrace authenticity and integrity, fostering an inclusive and supportive environment where every voice is valued.

Take Accountability: Own your work and drive positive change, as an empowering individual seeking to make a meaningful contribution.

Build Collaboration: Experience the power of teamwork and diverse perspectives, working collectively towards our shared goals.

Deliver Excellence: Strive for excellence in all aspects, upholding the highest standards of academic excellence, student support, and professional development opportunities.

About the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change

At the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC), we bring together behavioural scientists, policy experts, and researchers to develop novel insights and catalyse action. We partner with governments, non-profits, and corporations to embed behavioural science in programme design, creating solutions that work in practice and at scale. Established by Ashoka University with Gates Foundation support, we make development more people-centric through real-world applications of behavioural science.

In recent years, CSBC researchers have contributed 25 peer-reviewed articles to top journals, advancing the nation’s behavioural evidence base and catalysing collaborations with leading institutions such as the University of Chicago, Yale School of Management, the University of Michigan, the Collegio Carlo Alberto, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. For more information, please visit https://csbc.org.in/.

About System 3

System 3 is a new research lab under the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC). It will rest on two pillars.

Basic science, from India: Most of what the world knows about how people think, trust and decide comes from a few narrow populations. India, with its range of languages, identities and institutions, is where those claims can be properly tested. We will run foundational, curiosity-driven research on cognition, judgement and behaviour, to learn which findings travel and which were only ever local.

We take inspiration from the MIT Media Lab: open, accessible and joyful in the pursuit of credible science.

AI and Behaviour: System 1 and System 2 describe the fast and slow thinking of the human mind,



both shaped by the social and institutional worlds around us. System 3 will ask what happens to that mind in the age of AI. How do we learn, judge, trust and decide when intelligent machines are part of everyday life? What do we gain, and what do we quietly give away? This will be a major focus of our research agenda.

The two pillars will reinforce each other. Understanding the human mind in all its diversity will let us study how AI changes it.

We are a small team, early in our journey, based in Bengaluru. We are looking for people who like building something from scratch, who take ownership without waiting to be asked, and who are as comfortable rolling up their sleeves as thinking big.

Role and Responsibilities

System 3 is hiring Research Associates to be the engine of the lab. The Associates will run studies, work with data and help bring the lab’s research to life, learning how rigorous behavioural science is done from the Pre-Doctoral Fellows they work with every day. The role suits someone who is curious about research and about how people think and decide, and who wants to learn by doing it in a small, ambitious team.

Reporting to a Pre-Doctoral Fellow, the Associates will be part of the lab’s core team.

What the Research Associates will do:

1. Run studies

- Set up experiment sessions, run them with participants and collect data carefully and accurately.
- Keep materials, schedules and records organised so that every study runs smoothly.

2. Bring people into the lab

- Support the recruiting participants, scheduling sessions, and keeping participants coming back.
- Reach out to the wider public to invite them to take part in research.

3. Work with data

- Clean, organise and analyse data under guidance, using AI tools where useful and checking what they produce.
- Document every step so that others can check the work and build on it.

4. Support the science

- Search for and summarise research papers.
- Help prepare study materials, figures and drafts for the Pre-Doc Fellows and Principal Investigators.

5. Open the lab to the curious

- Help organise public lectures and discussions on behavioural and cognitive science.
- Welcome anyone who is curious, whether or not they have a science background.

Qualifications and Skills Required

Qualifications

- A bachelor’s degree in any discipline that shows quantitative ability or strong analytical reasoning, for example philosophy, a pure science, computer science, economics or engineering. Candidates without a quantitative background should be willing to learn basic statistics and programming, with support from the lab.
- At least 1 year of paid, full-time work experience in any field is required. Experience in research, AI or an applied behavioural science field is preferred.

Technical Skills

Required

- Data analysis in Python, R, Stata or Matlab, or the ability to pick it up quickly.
- Using agentic AI tools for research (coding, analysis, literature work), and protecting the team from hallucinations.





Desirable Associates work with different Principal Investigators and projects, so we do not expect any one person to have every skill below. Strong candidates will have the Required skills plus some of the Desirable skills for social sciences or cognitive sciences or AI.

Any area

- Data collection through Qualtrics, SurveyCTO, oTree, z-Tree or similar.
- Familiarity with regression and basic statistics.
- Adapting tasks and measures across languages and populations (translation, back-translation).

Economics and sociology projects
- Experience with survey or field data, and regression analysis of it.
- Familiarity with running economic or social experiments.

Psychology and cognitive science projects
- Programming behavioural experiments in PsychoPy, jsPsych or lab.js, including online studies (for example Pavlovia).
- Familiarity with cognitive tasks and measures (reaction time, accuracy, memory or attention tasks).

Professional Skills

- A structured, analytical thinker with a working understanding of causal reasoning, such as why correlation is not causation and why control groups matter.
- Curiosity about how people think and decide. Candidates who have not formally studied human behaviour should be very curious about it.
- Eagerness to learn, and openness to guidance and feedback from the Pre-Doc Fellows.
- Careful, organised and reliable, with attention to detail.
- Comfort with reaching out to people and encouraging them to take part in research, or a real willingness to learn how.
- A preference for flat teams, where a good idea counts for more than a title.
- Willingness to do whatever a research start-up needs, from running sessions to setting up a room for a public talk.

Application Submission Process We invite you to embark on this journey by submitting your application to the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change. To ensure your candidacy receives the attention it deserves, kindly follow the application submission process outlined below:

Prepare Your Materials: Please put together the following.

- An updated CV: Showcase your professional accomplishments, skills, and experiences.
- A concise cover letter: In no more than one page, explain why you are applying and which of your skills you expect to rely on in your first month on the job.
- A professional referee: In your email mention the name and email address of a manager or colleague who can speak to your work (a professional, not an academic, reference). We will contact referees only after screening CVs, so please let them know we may be in touch.

Submit Your Application: Email your materials to [email protected], ensuring the subject line reads as follows: “RA_System 3_”. Make sure your surname is included in the titles of all attachments. This will help us efficiently process your application. Include Essential Details: Along with your materials, kindly provide the following information:

- Last compensation received: We value your expertise and acknowledge the importance of fair compensation.
- Expected salary: Share your aspirations for growth and remuneration.
- Notice period: Inform us of the time required to transition from your current role, if applicable.

Pursuit of Excellence: At Ashoka University, we strive for excellence in all aspects of our operations. Therefore, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted as part of our rigorous selection process.

📌 Research Associate (New Delhi)
🏢 Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
📍 New Delhi