Opportunities
There are currently no salary lines unfilled.
Potential post-docs should contact me (Andrew) to discuss science. Make it a good pitch. I delete generic emails which show no evidence that a potential candidate actually knows what I do. I warm to people showing evidence of having read some of my papers and who have interesting ideas about how they would fit into my research interests or take me in new directions. I do not worry about ideas that are impractical or even silly, so long as they are interesting and reveal signs of serious brain function. I do worry about potential post-docs without strong publication records.
Potential CIDD graduate students are welcome to contact me in my capacity as CIDD Director about how they can fit into Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. It’s a great community. There are people who go elsewhere, but it’s not clear why. I am happy to advise on which Faculty would best match your interests.
Potential graduate students interested in joining the Read Group need to make me a really, really, really good pitch. I only want exceptional students who will lift my game as I lift theirs, and who will become outstanding post-docs. I am not interested in graduate students who want to do lots of course work because they really enjoyed undergraduate life with defined goals and easily achievable targets, and who some how feel research can be learned in a classroom. Nor do I want students who aim to spend several years dawdling over things they might find interesting, and who might eventually spend several more years getting something done, whether or not I find it interesting, and all on my dime which I am expected to keep providing indefinitely in a funding climate which is nasty beyond belief.
If you want to do a PhD with me, you have convince me you are fun, exciting, smart, ambitious and that you have the potential to be at least as good as my previous students and post docs, including those now on the Faculty at Oxford, Glasgow, Lausanne, Edinburgh, Exeter, Emory, Princeton, those with lifetime luxury as CNRS scientists in Montpellier, France, those with real-world jobs at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, New South Wales Crime Statistics in Sydney and the Parent-Infant Research Institute in Melbourne, and those with Fellowships or post-docs at Cambridge, Imperial, Washington, Edinburgh, Lund, Kenyan Medical Research Institute, Yale, Uppsala and, most impressive of all, Penn State. And you have to convince me that you want to do research from the get go, and that you are in a hurry.
Seriously.
If think you match up, the important but dull stuff is as follows. The graduate programs at Penn State in which I can supervise students are:
Check those websites for formal application procedures. The main practical difference between them is the course work requirements – amount and type – and the title of the degree. I’m not fussed. I’m after brains and drive.