Join Our Group

Undergraduate research

There are now many opportunities for undergraduate research at Berkeley.  Please contact any of the members of Berkeley Evolab, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, whose research you find interesting.  Undergraduate students in our lab are involved in these programs, among others, as well as honors projects with different majors.

 

Applying for graduate study at Berkeley?

Environmental Science, Policy and Management Graduate Program (due date 1 Dec, 20:59 PST)

Since 1999, Rosemary Gillespie and George Roderick have been on the faculty at UC Berkeley, in a large multidisciplinary department Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) At Berkeley, ecology, evolutionary biology, and environmental sciences, are covered by several departments, but especially ESPM and Integrative Biology (IB).  The programs are very similar, collaborative, and often confused, with cross listed courses and professors serving on each others students’ committees; we work together a lot, and more than is typical for a large research university.  As a grad student, you won’t see much difference.  You should contact the professor in either department with whom you are most interested in working before applying.  The websites for ESPM, IB, and Berkeley Natural History Museums and Berkeley Field Stations are good places to see what potential advisors work on and where they work.  For grad school at Berkeley, one applies to the department with which your advisor is officially affiliated. In practice, your experience at Berkeley will be largely the same, regardless with which department your advisor is affiliated. Please ask any one of us in the Berkeley Evolab if you have more questions about the departments.

Previously, at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, Rosemary and George advised students in both Biology (previously Zoology) and Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences (PEPS) (previously Entomology) and we continue on the Graduate Faculty as Affiliates. Our students also participated in the Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology (EECB) graduate program. Respective programs should be contacted for application materials and for further information.

UC Berkeley’s graduate programs and research in ecology, evolutionary biology, and environmental sciences, are consistently ranked very highly, though one should always think carefully about the types of data that go into these rankings, and whether these sorts of data are indicative of the program in which you may be interested.  Many grad programs at Berkeley are excellent, making for an incredible intellectual atmosphere and graduate experience.  Here are some 1st place rankings for Berkeley:

Click here for a useful article by Walter Carson from the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America about getting into graduate school in ecology and evolutionary biology.  If you do not have access to this, email George and he will email the pdf.  In our opinion, the comments in Carson’s pdf are right on the mark, especially the parts about choosing an advisor, visiting the school before applying, and talking to current students. Here is an article in Nature about choosing a mentor.  Andrew Hendry at McGill University, and frequent Evolab visitor, as written a lot of good advice for young scientists.  Here is a PDF from Berkeley’s Academic Senate’s Graduate Council about UC Berkeley graduate policy, including best practices for faculty mentors, and what you should expect from them.

Many of our students have received NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowships and you should consider these the year you are applying and after.  It really helps to work with your potential advisor on these.

Students and postdocs in our lab have gone on to a variety of careers nationally and internationally in academia, state and federal agencies, NGO’s and foundations, and the private sector.  See our Berkeley Evolab Alumni (bottom of page) for links to current and former students and postdocs.

 

Post-doctoral fellows

Postdocs in our group are funded in many ways, including postdoc fellowships and grants.  In addition to our grants, we are also very willing to help write proposals.  Recent funding has included: