PhD positions to study the ‘omics cascade of bumble bee cold tolerance
Funding for PhD students is available at The University of Alabama as part of a recently awarded NSF Rules of Life project: “Bumble bee cold tolerance across elevations – From epigenotype to phenotype across space, time, and levels of biological organization”. PhD students will be involved in studying the links between genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic variation in relation to local thermal tolerance adaptation in montane bumble bees (lozierlab.ua.edu). The project will involve extensive high throughput sequencing of bees from wild populations and experimental colonies and the use of approaches like network theory to model and draw inferences from these complex data. Students will develop questions relating to ecological, evolutionary, or conservation genomics within the broader project objectives. The focus of the positions is flexible, and we expect there will be a great deal of collaboration and overlap among students, postdocs, and PIs on the project.
I am looking to recruit highly motivated students with interests in applying modern molecular and computational tools to address ecological and evolutionary questions in a non-model organism. Applicants should have a strong academic record (GPA > 3.0), an ability for clear verbal and written communication, and a desire to learn new skills! Students funded off the grant will participate in both laboratory molecular work (primarily generation of RNAseq and genome/epigenome sequencing libraries) and computational analyses, and applicants should thus have some degree of experience or interest in both aspects of the project.
The project will involve collaborations with Janna Fierst at UA, Michael Dillon and Franco Basile at the University of Wyoming, and James Strange at Ohio State. As part of these collaborations, there may be opportunities for fieldwork or experimental work with bumblebees, depending on student interests and expertise.
Contact Jeff Lozier (jlozier@ua.edu) for more information. Anticipated start date will be Fall 2020, but we’re flexible.
Useful Links:
Lozier Lab: lozierlab.ua.edu
U Alabama Biological Sciences: bsc.ua.edu
Jeff Lozier
Associate Professor
Biological Sciences
The University of Alabama
lozierlab.ua.edu | mussels.ua.edu
« Lozier, Jeffrey » <jlozier@ua.edu>