We encourage enthusiastic undergraduate, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to contact the O’Dwyer lab about opportunities to join us. Check out what we’re up to and recent publications, and if you like what you see send us an email describing your general research interests. We are highly interdisciplinary and welcome interest from applicants with a broad range of backgrounds. The questions we work on are biological, but the tools and training to answer these questions are drawn from a variety of fields, including mathematics, physics and computer science.
Postdoctoral Positions
Postdoctoral positions in theoretical ecology are available to work with PI James O’Dwyer on projects supported by the Simons Foundation and McDonnell Foundation. Our primary goal is to develop new ecological theory to understand how biological mechanisms shift with spatial, temporal, and organizational scale.
The O’Dwyer lab is highly interdisciplinary, drawing from mathematics, physics, and bioinformatics, while the collaborative environment here at UIUC provides an opportunity for postdoctoral fellows to bridge multiple fields, across different departments and institutes. We are closely affiliated with the UIUC Program in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation and the Institute for Genomic Biology. Our lab philosophy was developed as a group, and is available here.
We are seeking enthusiastic and talented individuals to join the lab, and the specific project will be determined in collaboration with the PI. We welcome candidates with training in theoretical ecology, and also in other quantitative fields. Start date is flexible, and funding is available for multiple years, contingent on satisfactory progress. To apply, send a CV, a one page statement of research interests, a representative paper, and contact information for three references to James O’Dwyer at jodwyer@illinois.edu. Applications will be considered as they arrive, and informal inquiries are welcome.
NSF Fellowships at the Intersections of Biology and Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering
The NSF postdoctoral fellowship scheme currently has a focus on the intersection of biology with other STEM fields, deadline October.
Human Frontier Science Program Fellowships
Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships are for applicants with a Ph.D. from outside the life sciences (e.g. in physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering or computer sciences), who have had limited exposure to biology during their previous training. Deadline August.
Graduate Applications and Fellowships
Applications either to the Program in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation or the department of Plant Biology provide good routes to joining the lab as a graduate student. Students accepted into either program are guaranteed support in the form of Teaching Assistantships (TAs), and there are also Research Assistantships (RAs) available in my lab to support students for some period of time without teaching.
We strongly encourage anyone applying to the lab to apply for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. In addition, underrepresented minorities should consider applying for a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship. These fellowships provide great salaries and research funds. Deadlines for these applications typically occur early in the Fall semester.