Supervision Opportunities/Areas

Angela would love to talk to potential PhD/masters/honours students who are interested in working on projects in large scale ecology, or who have exciting ideas of their own. Please get in touch via email (a.moles@unsw.edu.au).

Advice for prospective students

The Big Ecology Lab is a very collaborative group, with really wide-ranging interests. As a student in the Big Ecology lab, you’re expected to get involved with as many things as possible. For instance, you might attend a weekly discussion group, present work at conferences, help your labmates out (with fieldwork, figuring out the answers to difficult questions, and with moral support), do some undergrad teaching, go to seminars, talk science with other staff/students in the department, and come out for beer sometimes. This all takes up time; but it’s this sort of stuff that makes being a grad student fun.

If you are a PhD or MSc student, I think it is best if you can come up with your own research topic (after all, you’re going to be thinking about this topic a lot for the next 2-4 years – it might as well be something you really care about). However, I will work with you to make sure that you end up with something that’s going to be achievable, scientifically sound AND interesting. I’m open to a wide range of project topics. BSc(hons) students – I realise you might not have a clear idea of what you want to work on yet, and that’s perfectly okay. I will be really happy to talk about your ideas for research; but if you can’t come up with anything, I do have a list of project ideas that I think will be both manageable and interesting.

The single most important thing you should do while choosing a supervisor is to talk to their past/present students and ask what it’s like in their lab. Come and talk to us all!