Advice
for applicants:
The Pierce Lab typically accepts one or two new graduate students every year.
Students in the lab work on many different projects, although in general they
all address some aspect of insect behavioral ecology and/or species interactions.
Many students work on a thesis project of their own design. In addition, the
website describes several on-going, collaborative projects that students are
welcome to join.
Members
of the laboratory have come from Australia, Brazil, Colombia, China, Denmark,
Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal,
Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the UK and the US. Students and
Postdoctoral Fellows from the Pierce lab have gone on to careers in academia,
museums, state and federal agencies, private NGO's and industry. Former students
and postdocs currently hold positions at the University of Copenhagen, Michigan
State University, University of Toronto, University of East Anglia (UK), University
of Maryland, University of Texas, Stanford, Kalamazoo College, UC Irvine,
University of Alaska, Macquarie University (Australia), Australian National
University, Western Carolina University, Florida Atlantic University, Princeton,
SUNY Buffalo, UC San Diego, the Milwaukee Public Museum, The National Science
Foundation, Biogen, Smith-Kline Beecham, BD Biosciences Technologies, and
the Institute for Animal Health (UK)
If you are interested in applying, here are a few suggestions about how to
proceed:
1. Send an email to Naomi Pierce
with a letter explaining your background and research interests. Please attach
your current CV or resume to your email. You should also feel free to contact
any of the graduate students or postdocs in the lab to ask them more specific
questions about the lab and/or life in Cambridge and at Harvard.
2. Send an email to the Graduate Secretary for the Department
of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, Pamela Greene (pgreene@oeb.harvard.edu),
to request application forms and information about the Department. Pam will
be the person in the Department tracking the progress of your application,
so she is an important person to contact, and she can keep you informed regarding
the status of your application.
3. Additional faculty at Harvard whose research interests are similar and/or
complementary include the following (in no particular order). If you haven't
done so already, you might also contact some of these faculty regarding opportunities
in their labs.
Brian
Farrell
David Haig,
Kathleen Donohue,
Paul Moorcroft,
Colleen Cavanaugh,
Gonzalo
Giribet,
Scott Edwards,
Dan Hartl,
Fahkri Bazzaz,
Bill Bossert, and
Martin Nowak
and in other departments,
Andrew Murray
(Molecular and Cell Biology),
Catherine Dulac (Molecular
and Cell Biology)
Marc
Hauser (Psychology),
Cheryl
Knott (Biological Anthropology),
and Richard
Wrangham (Biological Anthropology)
4. After you have applied, you should plan to visit late in the term. Set
up your own schedule (by email), and organize it so that you can meet everyone
of interest to you in one or two days. It is expensive to stay in Harvard
Square. If you don't know anyone in the area, please ask— one of the
professors you will be visiting will almost certainly have a grad student
or postdoc who can put you up for a night or two. Alternatively, a nearby
(walking distance), safe and moderately priced Bed and Breakfast is the Irving
House (http://www.irvinghouse.com/).
Visiting later rather than earlier in the term (i.e., sometime in November
or early December at the latest) will insure that you remain relatively fresh
in the minds of the faculty/Graduate committee when it is time to make decisions.
Unfortunately, our department will typically only pay for your travel expenses
if you are later accepted to the program. It may not be possible for you to
interview if you are applying from overseas or if you have a tight budget.
If you can possibly manage it, however, a visit is strongly recommended. It
can be a crucial part of the decision-making process for both parties involved.
