Opportunities

Information for Prospective Graduate Students

If you are interested to join our group as a graduate student, please read the following:

• To be successful in our group you need a strong background in Chemistry or a related field, and have excellent technical, quantitative and writing skills. The best students are curious, critical, careful and creative. Curiosity is the basis for all scientific inquiry and it means you are self motivated and keep an open mind for unexpected findings, their implications and opportunities. Being critical is essential for being a scientist and it means you always consider multiple explanations for your findings and follow-up experiments that allow you to find the best explanation. Being careful and organized is important as we work with large data sets and excellent data form the basis for everything we do. Finally, we encourage you to be creative and bring new skills and your own ideas to our projects.

• Most of our graduate students have been enrolled in graduate school through the Analytical, Environmental and Atmospheric Chemistry program of the Department of Chemistry. Our department only considers applications by PhD students.

• Applications are due in December of each year for a start in the Fall semester of the following year. Technical questions about the application process can be answered by our Graduate Program Manager.

• Application to our program is very competitive: only ~15-20% of applicants are admitted. These applicants typically have different options and not all of them accept our offer.

• Successful applicants have (i) an excellent academic record in a relevant discipline such as chemistry, physics or chemical engineering, (ii) strong support letters from their references and (iii) a clear statement that describes their specific motivation and interest in our program.

• A first selection of new applicants is typically made by late December. Prospective students who are admitted have the opportunity to visit our department in February and March of the following year.

• New graduate students are not specifically admitted into the de Gouw group. Instead, new students are admitted to the Analytical, Environmental and Atmospheric Chemistry program and find their research advisor by the end of the first semester of graduate school. Most, but not all, graduate students can typically join the group they are most interested in.

• It is always difficult to predict a year in advance if our group will take on new graduate students. It depends on the progress that our current students are making and on the success of various grant and fellowship applications.

• It is not necessary to contact Dr. de Gouw ahead of your application.

Information for Prospective Post-Docs

If you are interested to join our group as a post-doc, please read the following:

• We occasionally, but not often, have grant-funded openings for post-docs in our group.

• There are several post-doctoral fellowship programs that you can apply for to join our group. For example, the CIRES Visiting Fellowship Program funds post-docs for up to 2 years.

• If you are interested to apply for a post-doctoral fellowship, you do need to contact Dr. de Gouw ahead of time and coordinate the research proposal.