2 Graduate positions: CityUNewYork, Population Genomics

Ahoy, the Hicker-lab is now recruiting for 2 open and funded PhD positions at the CUNY (City University of New York) Graduate Center to start in the Fall of 2012. We are looking for interesting students who want to explore the interface between population genomics and community ecology, and those with strong computational and/or quantitative backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply.

The Hicker-lab is now dually equipped for both 'wet' and "dry' research activities thanks to a newly refurbished and expanded Molecular Ecology and Computational Biology lab ( qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/Biology/Hickerlab/index.html ). Students working in simulation-based evolutionary modeling of any sort can also take advantage of CUNY's NSF-funded High Performance Computing Center ( www.csi.cuny.edu/cunyhpc/ )

New PhD students will be free to explore a wide range of topics yet may be interested in exploring some of our new directions:
1. collecting and analyzing nexGen data from multiple co-distributed non-model species in order to explore how ecology, climate change and natural selection drive evolutionary change in multi-species assemblages; and/or
2. developing and deploying complex multi-taxa population genomic models that can incorporate cyclical climate shifts and realistic patterns of recurring isolation and admixture across co-distributed taxa.

A sampling of our current activities includes
1. Metacommunity Assembly and Comparative Phylogeography of Eurasian Gallwasp/Parisitoids (in collaboration with Graham Stone's lab - homepages.ed.ac.uk/amegilla/home )
2. Comparative Phylogeography of Small Mammals in Montane Africa
3. Demographic and evolutionary histories of Atlantic Syngnathids
4. Quantifying fish prey via nexgen DNA barcoding (in collaboration with Chris Meyer - invertebrates.si.edu/staff/meyer.cfm )
5. Avian speciation times
6. Species distribution modeling of Intertidal taxa (in collaboration with Eric Waltari - www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/biology/Carnaval/Carnaval_Lab/Eric.html )
7. Population Genomics of LINE retrotransposons in vertebrates (in collaboration with Stephane Boissinot - qcpages.qc.edu/Biology/Boissinot/Boissinot.html )
8. Population genetics of Hucho taimen in Mongolia (in collaboration with John Waldman - qcpages.qc.edu/Biology/Waldman/Waldman.html )
9. How The Mississippi River Functions As An Engine Of Species Diversification (in collaboration with Frank Burbrink - 163.238.8.180/~fburbrink/ )
10. Developing the new experiential course Anthropological Genomics - docs.google.com/Doc?id=3Ddcrss6d8_75g6z74bfr (in collaboration with Kate Pechenkina - qcpages.qc.edu/anthro/pechenkina/pechenkina.html )
11. MTML-msBayes (in collaboration with Naoki Takebayashi - raven.iab.alaska.edu/~ntakebay/ )

Funding for the two PhD positions partially comes from a collaborative NIH grant to Mike Hickerson and Stephane Boissinot which will offset two years of teaching for the two PhD students. The CUNY PhD program guarantees the students annual stipends, full tuition waver and benefits for the full 5 years.

The Setting:
The CUNY PhD sub-program in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior brings together a strong phylogenetics/phylogeography group spread across several CUNY campuses and the AMNH ( biology.gc.cuny.edu/eeb/faculty ), and last year 4 CUNY PhD students obtained NSF DDIG or pre-doctoral fellowships. There are a fair number of Evolution and Ecology groups in the larger NYC area (i.e. Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, AMNH, New York Botanical Garden, Yale and Stony Brook) and these along with the CUNY Graduate Center's new Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences ( sites.google.com/site/itsgccuny/evolution ) all make one's calendar full of interesting seminars and workshops. While graduate coursework is done at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan, the lab is in Flushing Queens, (a great place for adventurous eaters). The NYC subways run all day and night and students can live in any number of interesting neighborhoods (current and past students have lived in Astoria, Greenpoint, the east Village, Park Slope, and Jackson Heights). Although NYC is chock full of intellectual, artistic, musical, and political activities as well as being the "city that never sleeps", urban farms abound ( rooftopfarms.org/ ) and students can easily access a good range of habitats near (including the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the Catskills/Adirondacks and the Atlantic Ocean) and far (JFK and Newark airports have direct flights to many locales). The Ferry system also allows easy access to midtown and Wall St ( occupywallst.org/ ) from several Brooklyn locations.

Interested students should email Mike Hickerson well before the January 1 application deadline (to start in the Fall of 2012). Potential students must first be accepted to the competitive CUNY Graduate Center Evolution, Ecology and Behavior subprogram ( biology.gc.cuny.edu/eeb/admissions ).

Mike Hickerson
Assistant Professor
Queens College - CUNY Graduate Center
www.nycep.org/faculty/michael-hickerson
qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/Biology/Hickerlab/index.html