Join Us: Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution
The Simons Foundation is accepting applications for their Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution. Deadline: July 31, 2025.
If you've been looking for ways to join our lab as a PhD student, bringing funding through a fellowship like this is an excellent way to do so. The award goes directly to you as the student, and we don't need to sponsor it. So the application comes down to your ideas, thoughts, and intuition. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass this along to them.
What we’re interested in
We'd be interested in hosting students focused on the ecology and evolution of marine sediment- and soil-dwelling archaea and bacteria.
Research interests that align particularly well with our ongoing work include:
Isolating novel microbes from marine or soil samples
Understanding how genome contents interface with physiology
Identifying novel ecological attributes of uncultured organisms
Studies that include an AI component to link and predict ecological, evolutionary and physiological traits
Our Approach
We study microbial systems ecology through a straightforward pipeline: isolate non-model organisms from the environment, sequence their genomes, and link genomic attributes to their ecology in natural systems. It's the kind of work that bridges the gap between what lives in the lab and what happens in the real world.
What We Bring to the Table
We’ve got several novel enrichments and pure cultures for groups that are widespread but for which we have little ecological or evolutionary understanding. Our deep culture collection includes marine sediment microbes from Pacific coastal sediments, soil microbes from the American Southwest and California - the California samples were collected from across 177 Level IV ecoregions found in the state.
These cultures and enrichments can be used directly for your studies. There's potential for linking them to biogeography questions, genome evolution across different soil conditions, or whatever direction your curiosity takes you. Having access to this kind of established collection means you can hit the ground running rather than spending your first year just getting cultures established.
The Fellowship Details
This is a substantial award - three years of support over a five-year period, totaling $265,800 including indirect costs. That breaks down to:
$50,000 annual stipend
Up to $25,000 cost of education allowance
$3,000 research funds
Indirect costs covered
The application is a two-step process. First, submit a Letter of Intent by July 31, 2025. Finalists will be notified by October 31, 2025, and if selected, you'll submit a full proposal by May 28, 2026.
Why This Works
Fellowship-funded students have something valuable: independence. You're not tied to specific grant deadlines or predetermined project directions. You have the freedom to develop your ideas while benefiting from our lab's expertise in cultivation, genomics, and ecological context.
Ready to Apply?
The foundation is particularly interested in interdisciplinary research that links ecology and evolution to other STEM fields - physics, computer science, mathematics, chemistry. If that describes your thinking, even better.
Check out the full details here and get your application started through the Simons Award Manager.
Questions about our lab specifically? Email us or check out our Join Us page for more about what working with us looks like.
The best discoveries happen when curious minds have the resources and freedom to pursue them. This fellowship provides exactly that!