Students are the essence of an interactive and exciting laboratory.  I believe that graduate education needs to be individually tailored for each student, and that there is no single prescriptive formula for success in graduate school.  As an advisor, I place a premium on students who are creative, independent, hard working, and willing to challenge themselves intellectually.  I am particularly enthusiastic about advising prospective students interested in the intersections between community and ecosystem ecology, and who want to integrate multiple approaches for understanding natural systems.  My students work on a broad diversity of themes at study sites around the globe, and generally they have strong research interests in aquatic ecosystems.  Prospective students interested in working with our group in the tropics should be prepared to confront the realities of functioning independently in another cultural setting. I find the tropics to be a wonderful and fascinating place to work, from both biological and cultural perspectives. However, the challenges of a second language, unavailability of research supplies, abundance of creatures that can impart varying degrees of discomfort, and the constant necessity to improvise are simply not for everyone. All graduate students in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) are guaranteed five years of financial support and admission to our program is very competitive. Please contact me (asf3@cornell.edu ) about openings in my lab, if it sounds like your graduate school interests broadly overlap with my own.

 

You may also interested in some of the following links:

 

Cornell Program in Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity - for information about the Cornell BEB program and NSF IGERT training grant.

 

Cornell Graduate School - for general information regarding Cornell University.

 

Ithaca Terrifica - for general information regarding arts and culture around Ithaca.