Joining the lab

We are always looking for talented early-career scientists of all nationalities and backgrounds with a passion for ecology and data science. 

• If you already have your own unconditional funding secured (e.g. via a PhD fellowship, DAAD, Emmy Noether or ERC), this is great and I would be glad to discuss options for hosting you in our group. Please get in touch!
• If we have funding available, this will appear in our News section with deadlines and information about how to apply. If you don't see any offers in this section, or if deadlines have passed, you can assume there are no positions that are currently open.
• If you plan to apply for your own funding (e.g. DAAD, an Emmy Noether grant, ERC, or similar), I am glad to discuss options, as long as the idea is realistic. 
  • First, for a list of funding options, see e.g. the websites of Research In Germany or by the DAAD. Investigate if you are eligible to apply for these grants, and understand deadlines, financials and the competitiveness of the grant. Using an AI can be beneficial to ask for feedback about your competitiveness for the grant given your CV.
  • Second, before you contact me, develop a concrete project idea that is connected to the research in our group. Note that the idea needs not only fit to our group, but also to your previous CV. It's very unlikely that an application for a PhD scholarship in ecology is funded if your background is in engineering or you do not have the CV / marks / skills to support it. You can again ask an AI to check this, but make sure to ask it to give honest feedback, rather than hiding your weaknesses. 
  • Make sure that the CV you send me along with your project is complete and has a concrete account of your quantitative/computational skills: which statistical methods and which programming language(s) (R, Python, or similar) you have used, and on what data. Concrete examples, e.g. by providing URLs of GitHub repositories with your projects are appreciated. 
  • Do not use generative AI to produce your ideas, proposal, or emails - I can usually tell, and it doesn't reflect well on your ability to do independent research. Before you contact me, please confirm that the text is your own writing. I read a lot of applications; generic or clearly AI-generated inquiries (restating my publication titles as "interests," no specific project idea, no evidence of quantitative skills) will not get an individual reply.

Please understand due to German working regulations, that we cannot accept PhD / postdoc projects unless full funding is secured, even if you would offer to work for free. 

What research fits best to our group: while we are a very method-savy group, our research interest is still primarily in advancing ecological understanding. Thus, an ideal project to conduct in our group uses advanced methods, but in its core, the goal should be to tackle an important ecological question. 

We are permanently looking for students with programming / statistical knowledge to help with programming / testing software that we develop, as well for data preparation and statistical analyses - if you are interested, please send a short (0.5 page max) explanation of your motivation, a CV that describes your experience in programming and data science, a transcripts of records of your studies and ideally examples of projects that you worked on (e.g. publications, GitHub repos, other software projects …) to our secretary (see here).  

This is usually always possible with sufficient interest / knowledge. For more details, please see our teaching section.

In principle, we are happy to welcome external BSc, MSc or PhD students for internships or thesis projects, provided your profile is suitable.

However, this requires that you organise your funding yourself. We do not have the capacity support you with the organisation or visa, travel and financing. If you don't have funding available, you can consider theDAAD (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster) as well as funding from your home country, but the acquisition of this funding, including the development of a project if necessary, is your own responsibility.

Also, you should look at our information about traineeships (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster) at the UR and contact our welcome center to inquire about obtaining a trainee or student status during your stay. We can only host internships if your legal status (e.g. as an exchange student at the university) is clarified.