Deep Soil Ecotron Student Recruitment

The new NSF-funded Deep Soil Ecotron Facility (DSE) is recruiting seven doctoral students to join a multi-institution research team who over the next 5 years will design, commission and establish the seminal research focus for the DSE. The DSE will enable investigators to simultaneously manipulate both abiotic and biotic factors (e.g., climate, plant community, soil type) of deep soils to understand their impact on whole ecosystem processes and response to global change. The seven PhD students will take leading roles in the establishment of core projects and capabilities that contribute to the DSE scientific objectives:

• Determine how deep soil communities and processes affect and interact with surface soils to influence whole ecosystem processes. 
• Determine how deep soils respond to global and land-use change, such as increasing soil temperature and shifts in agricultural management practices. 
• Integrate information gained from the DSE into Earth System models to improve model architecture and performance.
• Develop and design sensors for the in-situ monitoring of deep soils. 

The cohort of students will receive unprecedented training in project management and leadership in large, interdisciplinary scientific experiments. This leadership and project management program includes participation in workshops, distributed and multi-institution graduate coursework, and hands-on-experience that will provide students with a sound understanding of physical- and cyberinfrastructure development in the environmental sciences.

Goal of recruitment: Our recruitment strategy is to hire a cohort of students whose skills and interests are complementary. The students will be housed across PI institutions necessitating excellent oral and written communication skills for remote collaboration across time zones.

Potential salary range: the student salary varies based on location (min. $24K). The doctoral student package includes stipend, tuition waiver, and health insurance.