PhD Position – Urban Resilience to Climate Change | Florida International University

Graduate Position in Urban Resilience to Climate Change at Florida
International University

Florida International University, Miami, Florida

Two PhD graduate fellowships are available in the Department of Biological
Sciences (http://biology.fiu.edu/) at Florida International University
(FIU)
to conduct research on urban resilience to extreme events in South Florida,
beginning fall 2016. This position is part of the Urban Resilience to
Extremes Sustainability Research Network
(https://sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience/) which is a
multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research team working on
cutting-edge
science, knowledge exchange, and adaptation to extreme events affecting
cities.

Fellows in the UREx SRN will participate in distributed seminars and
student-led journal clubs, develop independent yet networked doctoral
research plans, and have opportunities to be active members in research
working groups, scenario-building workshops with practitioners, and design
studios for resilient urban infrastructure. Graduate fellows will be full
participants in annual All-Hands meetings, receive training in science
communication, attend a computation and visualization summer institute, and
lead the development of research products. The goal of this training
program
is to provide an environment and programs in which diverse people (in terms
of career stage, sector, ethnicity, culture, and discipline) may
collaboratively learn about the impacts of extreme events on urban areas
and
how to promote the resilience of urban social, ecological and technical
system infrastructure.

FIU is a public research university in Miami with a highly diverse,
vibrant,
and growing student body located near the eastern boundary of the
Everglades. The Department of Biological Sciences has strengths in Ecology,
Marine Biology, Botany, Microbiology, Evolution, and Cellular/Molecular
Biology. FIU is home to the Sea Level Solutions Center
(http://slsc.fiu.edu/), which will provide a collaborative,
multi-disciplinary framework for studying exposure and adaptation of South
Florida to climate change. Fellows will also be invited to participate in
the Florida Coastal Everglades Long Term Ecological Research program
(http://fcelter.fiu.edu/), based at FIU, which includes a very active
student organization of over 70 students from multiple departments and
institutions who conduct integrative, multidisciplinary, long-term
research.
To be eligible for positions, students must meet FIU graduate admission
requirements and complete the application procedure for the graduate
program
(http://biology.fiu.edu/graduate/). The deadline for graduate applications
is January 05, 2016, but early submission (December 2015) is highly
encouraged.

The candidate¹s research interests should include global environmental
change, socio-ecological science, coastal ecology, and ecosystem ecology.
Students should select one or more of the mentors among the three principal
investigators of the project: Dr. John Kominoski (jkominos@fiu.edu;
https://kominoskilab.wordpress.com/), Dr. Tiffany Troxler
(troxlert@fiu.edu,
http://wetland.fiu.edu/tiffany-troxler) and Dr. Evelyn Gaiser
(gaisere@fiu.edu; http://algae.fiu.edu/), and send an email providing a CV
and message of interest in the program and fellowship.