We are always looking for motivated, enthusiastic students to join our vibrant and active lab. We are a multicultural, multi-lingual lab group and we pride ourselves on fostering an inclusive, welcoming, and supportive environment. We welcome new members from all backgrounds, genders, and orientations. If you think you might be interested in working in the lab, the first step is to have a good look at our publications and the work we do. Also have a look at the ‘People’ page, as it lists the projects that current lab members working on.
Pathways
Aside from the occasional funded position, there are numerous routes to securing funding for honours, PhD’s, and postdocs. A few are listed below, and we will gladly do all I can to help qualified applicants attain support.
Phd and Masters: Students will need to secure a scholarship such as an RTP or the University’s equivalent (which share an application), with application rounds twice per year.
Honours: Honours is an extra year of study following, or as part of, an undergraduate degree, and involves a substantial independent research component. Students both internal and external to USyd are able to apply, and it’s an excellent opportunity to gain significant research experience.
Lab values
Our ethos
(1) Organisms inspire us, but questions drive us. We work with a wonderful array of living things, and the world of invertebrates is an enduring source of inspiration, but it is questions that ultimately motivate our work.
(2) Be kind, supportive, and generous. We share knowledge, ideas, time, resources, and tools freely wherever possible. This extends not only to the lab, but as active members of SOLES and the community at large. Collaboration is a far more productive force than competition and there are too many interesting questions to be answered to waste time defending intellectual turf.
(3) Own your work. We will gladly do all we can to provide the resources, training, support, and guidance that lab members’ require to drive a project to completion; from the initial development of ideas, through the design of experiments, to the communication of results. Irrespective of career stage — be it undergraduate or PhD — everyone is ultimately responsible for driving their project(s). This spans the day-to-day business of maintaining animals, collecting data, and solving the practical problems that inevitably crop up, through to writing up results and, ultimately, publishing.
Open philosophy
Science is a public good and we strive to ensure that the fruits of our work are freely available. The specifics will vary case-by-case, and we respect any constraints that others work under, but we seek to make all raw data, code, and publications publicly accessible in a convenient format.
Conduct
Everyone deserves to enjoy their time unhindered by unnecessary challenges. No-one should be subject to any form of harassment or discrimination including, but not limited to, offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, deliberate intimidation, stalking, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of discussions, inappropriate physical contact, or unwelcome attention. If you or someone you know does encounter such problems, however, you are strongly encouraged to contact any one of, as appropriate: Your supervisors or co-supervisors, emergency services (000, or 9351 3333 for 24-hour campus security), SOLES education, university complaints services (including their anonymous helpline), or university mental and physical health services.
Work and Health
We are all self-motivated and get our work done so members set their own working hours when not in the laboratory (which is business hours only). We only ask that everyone be available for lab meetings, seminars, and other school, university, community-related events whenever possible. Everyone is free to send messages at any time with no expectation to receive a reply outside of others’ normal working hours.