We keep our eyes out for talented and motivated students to join the lab. As described below, there are often opportunities for undergraduates, Masters students, PhD students, Postdocs, and non-student interns/volunteers.
Prospective Postdocs: There are two general types of postdoc opportunities. One is when I have an advertised position to fill, usually funded from a research grant that I have acquired. You can check the lab news page for potential positions. For the other type, the postdoc has secured a fellowship to work with me. Sometimes, I work with promising postdocs to write and secure such fellowships. If you are interested in working in our lab, please contact me.
Prospective PhD students: I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students and I always consider truly promising students. This generally means they are talented, driven, pro-active, passionate about science, and have well-developed interests that overlap or otherwise fit conceptually or empirically with mine.
Space and funding is almost always tight. I cannot accept students without some funding already secured. Therefore, students who come with their own funding (e.g., a fellowship) have a leg up concerning being accepted, all else being equal. You can search on-line for fellowship funding opportunities (e.g., through NSF). Make sure you look at the resources linked to at the relevant SIO web pages.
If you think you might be a good match for my lab, please send me an email describing your interests and solid details on why you think we’d be a good match. These solid details concerning match should be based on serious digging into the research my lab has undertaken, more broad scholarship, and serious thinking about things. I often get inundated with emails, so please realize that I may not be able to set up a one on one meeting. If I do encourage you to apply, it is very helpful to come out and meet me and the lab. At least we’ll have a computer video meeting. I also recommend that you arrange to meet/video meet my current or former graduate students. I sometimes can get SIO to bring in top candidates for the spring SIO open house.
Prospective masters students: I have lots of projects that can very appropriately and tractably serve as a masters thesis project. So, I am also interested in capable and dedicated prospective students who wish to join one of SIO’s masters programs. As the SIO website says, the masters programs are usually “self-funded”, which could be an ambiguous way of saying that the student pays for themselves.
Undergraduates: The lab often has room for undergraduate interns from various departments, although we are in a temporary post-Covid lull right now. When we have major needs, we advertise these opportunities on UCSD’s REAL Portal. Internships usually start with the student getting their feet wet and proving themselves with some pure volunteering, helping a more senior lab member with research and helping with general lab maintenance. We often then switch to students getting SIO or BISP 199 credit. Some undergraduates take part in our weekly lab meeting. Undergrads often learn quite a bit about the scientific process. Given our time investment in getting someone started and trained to work in our lab, we usually start with undergrad interns committing a minimum of 8-9 hours per week for 2 quarters (2+ days/week). I can sometimes hire trained up undergrads as assistants over the summer.
Non-student interns/volunteers: Similar to undergraduate interns, we often have members of the general public who wish to volunteer in our lab (sometimes to get experience before going to graduate school, sometimes just for the sheer joy of being here, sometimes…). We generally have the same initial minimum time commitment of 8-9 hours per week for 2 quarters. If interested, please contact me about possibilities.