Working With Us - MICROBIAL POPULATION BIOLOGY

Creative, innovative science is driven by curiosity: it’s about ideas, about puzzles, dilemmas; it’s about finding out what is not known. Success requires tenacity and hard work, but this follows naturally from passion concerning a focal problem.

Official opening for positions can be found here.

Beside the official job offers, we are happy to receive spontaneous applications from interns, postgraduate students, post docs, and visitors that are in line with our organic approach to doing science. Ideal team members are those whose motivation stems from curiosity concerning the natural world. The project areas listed here are not intended to be restrictive and we particularly welcome approaches from those with the broadest range of interests in microbial population biology and beyond.

Advice to applicants for internships, master’s projects, or PhD positions.

The most important thing to get across in your application is your motivation for joining our department. Tell us why you want to come here as opposed to any other microbial evolution lab. Did you see Paul or another group member give a talk a feel inspired? Did you read one of our papers in class, or come across it as part of your research project? If so, which talk or paper? What did you take away from that talk or paper that made you want to come and work with us? This can be a specific evolutionary question that fascinates you, or a particular approach to looking for answers, or maybe you’ve thought of something important that we may have overlooked. By no means do we expect you to have a fully-formed research proposal ready at the time of application; we will help you develop a project based on your interests. Instead, we are looking for people who embrace our approach to doing science and have a clear concept of how their specific interests fit within our research framework.

We are happy to provide training in the techniques we use, but gaining general skills in evolutionary genetics and microbiology cannot be your sole motivation for joining the group. The process of project development, laboratory training, carrying out your research, and interpreting your results requires time. For this reason we do not accept applicants who want to join us for less than 6 months. There are rare exceptions to this rule, and if you feel that you can achieve what you have set out to do in a shorter time frame, please let us know the reason. No matter what, please make clear the length of time you would like to stay (for internships or master’s projects only).

Finally, tell us a little bit about yourself. How has your past experience shaped your interest in our work? Please attach a short CV to your application and email it to rainey[at]evolbio.mpg.de; make sure to copy the email to baron[at]evolbio.mpg.de and rogers[at]evolbio.mpg.de. If your application does not make clear your motivation for joining our department as described above, it will not be considered and you will receive an email directing you to this page. If you decide to reapply, make sure you include all three components in your application:

your specific motivation for joining our department
the desired duration of study
a brief personal statement and CV.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Applicants to join the Microbial Molecular Evolution Research Group should contact Dr. Frederic Bertels directly.