A number of postdoctoral positions are or will open in my lab in the next few months. One of these positions will be collaborative with Nate Sanders and involves work on ants and climatic change. Stay tuned for that announcement. A second position has already been advertised and is based in Jules Silverman and focuses on the adaptations of native ant species to urban environments. Applicants must apply online.  See http://jobs.ncsu.edu (position # 01-07-0702) for instructions and required documentation.

In addition to these postdocs, I am looking for candidates potentially interested in applying for National Park or Bionformatics postdocs to work with our group on field work in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or with our global ant database respectively.

Undergraduate and Graduate Students

I consider potential students from diverse backgrounds and with diverse interests (Personally, I have worked on organisms ranging from Bromeliads to clams and many things in between). I expect students to be curious, hard working and interested in designing and carrying out a creative project that tells a particular story while simultaneously addressing general questions. The perfect student would be able to think broadly (from ants to Greek History), but know or seek to know some particular topic in great depth.

There are three types of graduate projects I am most interested in mentoring at present, masters projects related to my current research projects, PhD projects related to my research projects and PhD projects that use conceptual approaches parallel or complementary to mine to address questions in other systems.

Any projects that combine evolution, large-scale analyses and social insects and their mutualists are likely to be particularly fruitful in my lab, both because of my own expertise and the broader expertise in the lab group, department and University. Students in my lab will work closely with me, but also with the other members of hte lab group. Beyond the lab group, students would also be involved in a weekly social insect lunch group that brings biologists from across the University interested in social insects including myself, David Tarpy, Ed Vargo, Christina Grozinger, Jules Silverman and more than a dozen students and postdocs.

If you are interested in working with me, please send me an email. In the email you should indicate a potential project you might be interested in (it doesn't have to be THE project and almost certainly won't be, but I want to see that you can come up with a project). Also include a summary of your research experience, contact info for 3 references, GRE scores (if available), and a list of relevant coursework.