Smith College: SAR Biodiversity

Post date: Dec 5, 2015 11:05:48 PM

Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 4:13 AM

Subject: Graduate position: SmithCollege.SAR_Biodiversity

The Katz Lab at Smith College is seeking a PhD student to join a

focusing on the biodiversity of the microbial lineages within ĒSARĒ

(Stramenopila + Alveolata + Rhizaria) starting in the fall of 2016.

The goals of the project are to characterize the biodiversity of lineages

within SAR through a combination of community and genome analyses.

The project is collaborative with Chris Lane at the University of Rhode

Island (http://cels.uri.edu/bio/lanelab/) and Charles F. Delwiche at the

Work on the project combines high-throughput sequencing of communities

and specific lineages, bioinformatic analyses of resulting data, and

some microscopy of target lineages. The Katz lab will focus initially on

under sampled lineages within Ciliophora and Rhizaria. Hence, applicants

should have a desire to improve skills in microbiology, molecular biology

and bioinformatics.

Research in the Katz lab aims to elucidate principles of the evolution in

eukaryotes through analyses of microbial groups, and to assess how these

principles apply (or fail to apply) to other organisms. Currently we

focus on three interrelated areas: (1) Characterizing evolutionary

relationships among eukaryotes; (2) Exploring the evolution of ciliate

genomes; and (3) Describing the phylogeography of coastal marine ciliates.

Smith College is a member of the Five College Consortium with

Amherst, Hampshire, and Mount Holyoke Colleges and the University of

Massachusetts Amherst. Smith College is an equal opportunity employer

encouraging excellence through diversity. Hence, Ph.D. students in my

lab join either through the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB;

http://www.bio.umass.edu/oeb/) based at the University of Massachusetts

Amherst.

Prospective students should email their c.v. and a brief statement

of interest to Laura Katz (lkatz@smith.edu), and pursue the formal

application through the UMass link above.

#bio, #micro, #evolution

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