Updates on recruitment plans: As of Jan 2023, I am planning to take two new PhD students in Fall 2023 (the application phase for this recruitment round has closed). I plan to take at least one more student in 2024/25 for parakeet work, and may be able to talk a quail and/or fish-focused student in 2023-2025, depending on funding.
I am looking for creative, self-motivated, collaborative people to build a vibrant and inclusive research environment. Graduate student projects will be developed in active collaboration between the student and me. Research projects generally focus on sociality and cognition and students can work on any of the three main in-house lab systems (parakeets, fish, or quail) or on some of our collaborative work with others (ie Gerry Carter’s vampire bats, etc). Parakeet work will take place in a captive population in outdoor flight pens in Gainesville, Florida. Quail and fish work will take place in the lab at University of Cincinnati.
Information on the department and grad program is here. The deadline to apply is 01-Jan. Students interested in working with me are HIGHLY ENCOURAGED to register their interest (see below) prior to applying to the program.
To register interest in joining the lab, prospective students should fill out this form. The form requests a lot of information, but drastically improves my ability to aggregate data on potential students and to filter by skills and interests. If you look like a good fit for the lab, I will follow up with you and advise you as you work towards an application to the department.
For the form, please be ready to answer the following longer-form questions:
Develop one example experiment to illustrate how you would integrate your research interests with a particular system.
What hypothesis would you like to test in your experiment?
How does your hypothesis relate to your research interests?
How would you test this hypothesis? Use examples specific to the study system(s) you identified above. Note: except in unusual cases, the study system should be parakeets, quail, or fish.
What about this topic will be compelling to others working on these ideas? What new insight could it provide?
What kind of previous experience do you have that is relevant to the project(s) you’re interested in?
Why do you want to do this kind of research in my lab particularly? What benefits do you see in working with me, and what could you add to the lab?
(I have set the form so that you can return to edit your responses — when you click “submit form” it will show you a link to click to return to edit your response. Save that link to return!)