The University of Calgary has just announced its “Eyes High” Postdoctoral Scholars competition. As part of a larger effort to improve research capacity, the University is recruiting 50 postdocs. Some of the fellowships are targeted at certain fields, others are open to applicants in any field. It’s the latter that are relevant to folks who want to work with me (I don’t work in one of the targeted fields).
I work on fundamental population, community, and evolutionary ecology, using a mixture of modeling and experiments in model systems (mostly microcosms). For details on my research, see my lab website. Current research projects include spatial synchrony of population dynamics, interplay of stochasticity and determinism in community dynamics, local adaptation in lake bacteria, and eco-evolutionary dynamics of competing bean beetles. My hope would be to bring in someone whose interests dovetail with my own–someone who would pursue their own research while also collaborating with me on some project of mutual interest. That’s the way I worked with my former postdoc Dave Vasseur, now at Yale, and it was a good fit for both of us. Given the length of the position (2 years; see below), I think it’s best suited to someone interested in modeling, microcosm experiments, meta-analyses, or other projects that can be completed within a 2-year window.
It’s a pretty attractive deal, as postdocs go. It’s for 2 years, salary is $50,000/year plus health benefits. There are professional development workshops for the fellows. There’s an opportunity to do some teaching (up to a limit of one semester-length course during the 2 years; these are primarily research positions).
The University of Calgary is a big research university (about 26,000 undergrads), with all the modern facilities you’d expect, including high performance computing clusters, next-gen sequencing facilities, a well-equipped field station, etc. My department (Biological Sciences) is the largest on campus, with over 60 faculty and something like 180 grad students, including about 12-15 faculty in ecology and evolution depending on how you count. The university has strength in depth in evolutionary ecology, population ecology, evolutionary genetics, and other areas. The city of Calgary is a growing city of over 1 million people, located 45 minutes drive east of the Canadian Rockies with all the opportunities for recreation and field work that implies.
Application deadline is June 1, 2014, with decisions by June 30, 2014. That’s stage 1; if you get through that stage you submit a fuller application, with a final decision in early October 2014. (so I presume the earliest start date would be late fall 2014) If you are interested, please email me (jefox@ucalgary.ca), including a cv and contact details for 3 references.
Dynamic Ecology 