The Johnson Laboratory at the University of Colorado is in search of exceptional graduate students for start in 2019. The Johnson laboratory focuses on two pervasive and inter-related forms of biological change: disease emergence and species invasions. Both have important consequences not only for individuals and populations, but for entire ecological communities and ecosystem processes. Invasions and disease can also have costly economic and health repercussions for human society. Our group strives to bring a broad perspective to these questions by combining field experiments, large-scale spatial and temporal field data, molecular tools and ecological modeling. Check out our website for recent publication and research areas http://www.johnsonlaboratory.com. Students will be directly involved in one of the two following projects:
1. Understanding the community ecology of disease: this project aims to understand how interactions among species within an aquatic community collectively influence pathogen transmission and disease risk. This can include interactions among hosts (dilution effect), among parasites (coinfection), and between non-hosts and parasites (predation). The selected student would have broad intellectual freedom to develop projects within this system but would be expected to conduct fieldwork in California (during summers). Preferred start date would be summer of 2019. 2. How threatened species respond to drought, invasive species, and disease: using a compilation of data from California collected over nearly a decade, we are using multiple modeling approaches to better understand how to manage threatened species in the face of changing aquatic ecosystems. This newly funded work will combine large-scale analyses with collection of new empirical data, while also setting the stage for applied manipulations to promote conservation. Please send the following in one well constructed PDF to [email protected]. Include the following information: - Cover letter - Curriculum vitae, GPA -Your general research interests, previous experience and how your will contribute to work already being pursued in the lab. -Whether you intend to apply for a MA or PhD program. - Post-graduate career plans. -Why you are specifically interested in work being done in the lab? - Whether you have applied for any external fellowships (e.g., NSF or EPA).
