Current postdoctoral opportunities

Information for prospective graduate students

Information for undergraduate students

Information for high school students

Current Postdoctoral Opportunities

Please send inquiries

General opportunities for prospective graduate students

Openings for graduate students are available in the areas of 1) Spatial Ecology and 2) Eco-informatics.
In many cases I would be able to provide RA support, though my students have been unusually successful in obtaining their own stipend and research support through NASA and NSF Graduate Fellowships, NSF Dissertation Improvement Grants, and other sources. I consider PhD applicants through the BISI [Biological Sciences] graduate program, including both the BEES [Behavior, Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics] and CBBG [Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Genomics] concentration areas, as well as through the MEES [Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences] graduate program. In addition I would be eager to advise both Masters and PhD students applying through the AMSC (Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing) graduate program.

To date, I have enjoyed working with botanists, entomologists, mammalogists, ornithologists, herpetologists, physicists, and mathematicians, among others, so I would welcome into my lab students asking a wide range of interesting questions in a variety of systems. In general, I insist that my students develop some familiarity with modeling or quantitative techniques and consider, as a part of their research, some potentially applied problem.

Priority areas for the coming year include students with skills in mathematics, GIS, and computational approaches, particularly those with interests in animal movement, extinction risk, biogeography, and macroevolutionary modeling.

Opportunities for undergraduate students

The Fagan lab regularly recruits undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds to work on research projects. Depending on student skills and project needs, undergraduates may work as research assistants or as independent undergraduate researchers, and may be mentored by graduate students, postdocs, or Dr. Fagan himself. When undergraduate students are sufficiently motivated, these research opportunities have routinely resulted in coauthored publications.

The lab is currently recruiting undergraduates who are majoring in such fields as computer science, mathematics, geography, environmental science and policy, and biology. We are particularly interested in students with computer programming skills (R, Java, C++, GIS, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.) plus students with extensive experience working with databases and spreadsheets.

Undergraduate students working on research projects in my lab routinely work for course credit, either as special topics credits, internships through the ENSP program, Honors Degrees, and other mechanisms.

In addition, for some research topics, funding is available for talented, motivated students who can devote significant amounts of time to research projects in the lab.

Opportunities for high school students

In recent years, the Fagan lab has mentored several high school students from nearby counties, including summer internships for students enrolled the magnet programs at Montgomery Blair, Poolesville, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc. Please contact Dr. Fagan directly if you are interested in such opportunities.