Join the lab!

We are always looking for undergraduate students looking to get research experience (and research credit), graduate students interested in getting an MSc or PhD, or post-docs interested in applying for funding to join the lab. The lab is located at Imperial College London (UK), at the beautiful Silwood Park campus. The campus offers wonderful views for a hike on your lunch break, plenty of space for experiments, and is close to a train station to allow you to pop into London if you fancy.

The lab is a team, and we work together to collect, analyze, and understand biodiversity data. Whatever your experience, major, background, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, sexuality, or disability, please consider joining us.

Undergraduate positions

Carrying out research is the best part of being a scientist, and if you’re in any way interested in biology then consider joining the lab! We don’t mind how experienced you are in biology (or science in general), but rather how enthusiastic and dedicated you are. If you join the lab, you will be carrying out real research that could lead to publications. Several other undergraduates in the lab have published papers as a result of their work, and once you have been with the lab for a little while you may have the opportunity to join in with lab meetings.

If you’re interested in joining the lab, email Will describing what sort of work you’d be interested in doing (fieldwork, computer work, or something else!), what interests you about the work we do (take a look on this site for inspiration), and a copy of your CV. We don’t care about your grades, but I’m afraid it is against Imperial College London’s policy to take on students over the summer who don’t have funding to support them. This means, in practice, that you will need to apply for a UROP: we can give you some help with this, but you will need to write the first draft of the proposal after speaking with us. The good news is that these are not too tricky to get, and they will pay you a salary over the summer so, if in doubt, reach out!

Potential MSc students

We are an inter-disciplinary lab, studying the interactions between community ecology and evolutionary biology using cutting-edge statistical techniques. We are always looking for people with experience in community ecology, evolutionary biology, bioinformatics, or any of the research areas that we explore. We have a list of ready-to-go projects available on the department’s website, but if you have an idea you’d like to discuss please just reach out. If you are interested in working with us, please send Will an email, outlining (briefly) why you are interested in joining the lab, and with a copy of your CV. He will then meet with you at lunchtime in the Refectory to talk about the project(s) you’re interested in and explain to you what you can expect in the lab.

If you have not already been accepted on a place for one of Imperial’s MSc courses, please do not contact anyone in the lab asking for help applying or confirmatino of an MSc/MRes project. We are not allowed to help you with the applications process and we have nothing to do with it. If you are interested in a course and want to find out more, we are not the people to speak to: reach out to the course convenor of that course. We cannot offer or guarantee projects ahead of you arriving to start on the course.

Potential PhD students

As a general rule we do not accept self-funded PhD students, although we would be willing to support students if their employers were willing to sponsor their degree. Every year we offer projects through Imperial’s PhD programs (such as the Grantham’s CDT): if you are interested in one of those projects please email Will directly. Imperial has other programs (such as the President’s Scholarship). If you are interested in applying for funding for one of these projects with the lab, please reach out, making your email brief, specific, and with a CV attached.

Potential post-docs

Right now we don’t have any post-doc funding, but if you would be interested in a position in the future please send Will an email. If you’re interested in writing a fellowship proposal to join the lab, then please get in touch and let’s talk: Will has been successful in helping post-docs get positions and there are internal pots of money so it is always worth asking!