Opportunities
Graduate Student Positions
I am currently recruiting graduate students (MS and PhD) for assistantships (full tuition and stipend support) for Spring 2024 and Fall 2024. I am specifically recruiting students for opportunities:
Precision-irrigation and nitrogen management for agricultural climate resilience: This USDA-funded project will design novel methods for monitoring, predicting, and modeling nitrogen transport in cropping systems under supplemental irrigation. It combines field experiments, machine learning, physical soil water and crop models, and irrigation management to reduce agricultural nitrogen losses in a changing climate.
Climate tipping points in socio-environmental systems. This project will use various conceptual and computational modeling approaches to simulate how municipal-scale migration patterns change under different assumptions about sea level rise, flooding, and policy interventions.
Ideal candidates will have a BS or MS in engineering or another quantitative field, mathematical programming experience (R preferred; Netlogo, Matlab or Python also accepted), a strong background in math and statistics, and experience with modeling and/or geospatial analysis. Our role within Virginia Cooperative Extension provides a unique opportunity to maximize the real-world impact of our research, so the ability to communicate results to both scientific and planner/policy-maker audiences is especially valuable.
Interested students should contact Dr. Shortridge (jshortridge@vt.edu) and visit https://www.bse.vt.edu/graduate/apply.html to learn how to apply.
The Biological Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech includes roughly 30 faculty and 40 graduate students who apply engineering principles to solve problems related to sustainable utilization and management of natural resources. We use engineering science and design, along with biology, chemistry, and physics, to solve problems in biological systems ranging from watersheds to bioreactors. Virginia Tech is located in the vibrant college town of Blacksburg, Virginia. Its location in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains provides numerous opportunities for outdoor recreation, and the university is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 universities for quality of life by the Princeton Review.