A fully funded PhD. position with Dr. Eric Lamb in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan is available examining the causal links between rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities and the performance of crop cultivars. This project is supported by the Global Institute for Food Security and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. This is a unique opportunity to join a large interdisciplinary project spanning the fields of agronomy, microbial ecology, bioinformatics, and statistical ecology. Variance in crop plant performance will be intensively measured in large field experiments and soil microbial community structure will be assessed using high-throughput next generation sequencing.
A PhD. student with a strong statistical ability is needed to work with in dynamic group including soil and plant ecologists, bioinformaticians, agronomists, and computer scientists to understand how soil communities drive crop productivity. You will focus on linking environmental variables and soil microbial community structure to crop plant performance using structural equation modeling and associated methods. Opportunities to expand your work to plant-microbial datasets collected in native grassland systems are also available. This project has an anticipated September 2016 start date. For more information: Eric Lamb: http://homepage.usask.ca/~egl388/ Global Institute for Food Security: http://gifs.ca/researcharea/root-soil-microbial-interactions/ Requirements A thesis based (research) MSc. degree (note an individual with a course based MSc. in statistics may be considered, but would be required to begin in an MSc. program with the option to transfer to a PhD. program after 1 year. Graduate level experience and training in one of the following fields: microbial ecology, bioinformatics, statistical ecology, or computer science. Application Procedure Apply via e-mail to Eric Lamb ([email protected]) with a package including: 1. Cover letter describing your background and research experience 2. an up-to-date CV 3. unofficial transcript(s) 4. an example of your writing (e.g. a paper, extract from a thesis, or class project).
