Get Your PhD in Biodiversity in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest
Photo by Jack Borno
This week’s cool biology job takes us to one of the most fantastically beautiful locations on the planet – the coastline of British Columbia. My good friend Brian Starzomski (see my interview with Brian here) at the University of Victoria is looking for a PhD student. Since I’ve got the inside scoop here I can tell you that this would be an amazing opportunity for someone with the right credentials, and you couldn’t ask for a more wonderful supervisor than Brian. I would very nearly consider re-doing my PhD in order to snag this opportunity, it is that awesome.
The School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) has an opening for a PhD student to join a collaborative team studying the interior and high-elevation biodiversity of sites in the Great Bear Rainforest and the Coast Range of British Columbia. The successful PhD student will be supervised by Brian Starzomski, in the School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria.
Photo by Jack Borno
Responsibilities: This PhD position is part of a large collaborative project that seeks to understand the importance of, and processes structuring, interior and high-elevation biodiversity within the Great Bear Rainforest, BC, as well as in the Coast Range. The large trees and near shore regions on the BC Coast are well known and studied, but in fact much of the interior in this region is characterized by stunted vegetation in bogs and on mountaintops. Little is known about it. Further, climate change predictions for BC show significant impacts on biodiversity in these environments. The PhD student will be responsible for studying the drivers of diversity in, for example, plant, pollinator, or soil communities. Field sites for comparison studies include those surrounding the Hakai Beach Institute on Calvert Island, BC, and high-elevation sites in the Coast Range north of Whistler, BC. Photos of the 2011 field season can be found here: http://web.uvic.ca/~starzom/research.html
Photo by Jack Borno
For more information email starzom@uvic.ca. Applications (including a CV, transcripts, the names of 3 references, and a letter of interest) can be sent to the same address. Review of applications will start December 1, 2011 until a suitable candidate is found. Note that the deadline for graduate applications to the School of Environmental Studies is January 15, 2012. All candidates should read the details at this link: http://web.uvic.ca/~starzom/prosp.html.
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For more info, contact:
Brian Starzomski, Ph.D.
Ian McTaggart-Cowan Professor
of Biodiversity Conservation & Ecological Restoration
School of Environmental Studies
University of Victoria
Social Sciences & Math Building B225
3800 Finnerty Road (Ring Road)
Victoria, BC V8P 5C2
Science in Hollywood: Hits and Misses
Earlier this week I was a guest on Breakfast Television Vancouver to discuss the portrayal of science in some recent blockbusters. The recent surge in science content in films and TV is something that I find genuinely encouraging. Public interest in subjects from immunology to forensics and even physics is expanding in part due to increased visibility in popular media (see this interesting piece from the Guardian on the subject). However, in my opinion Hollywood has an important responsibility to get the science right. It’s no longer good enough to depict science in a flippant way, as a write off to the more ‘important’ aspects of the story (as one recent film does). More and more, directors are consulting closely with scientific experts in order to depict the subject matter appropriately – which is fantastic news for the movement to popularize subjects with ‘taboo’ status.
I’m looking forward to the spring lineup of films from both the mainstream and film festival circuits – there should be plenty to discuss when it comes to the portrayal of science. Stay tuned!
You can watch my interview HERE.
Bromancing Baboons: What Else are Lonely Bachelors Going to Do?
The latest video in my ‘Biomusings’ series describes the work of PhD student David Pappano at the University of Michigan. David spends his field seasons in the highlands of Ethiopia studying the unique behaviors of bachelor gelada baboons. The social system in geladas is one where a dominant alpha male keeps a harem of females and is extremely protective over his group – which generally leaves many sub-dominant males to form groups of their own. David is examining just what happens in these all male bachelor groups…
I was still pregnant with my baby daughter Juna when we shot this video – I thought it made for a nice tie in to the family unit. Enjoy!