Resources
On this page you will find various websites, blogs, and other links that offer interesting and/or helpful perspectives about science. At the bottom are some funding search engines and specific opportunities. Many of the links below are hosted by external sites. If you notice a broken link please let me know via email so that I can update it ([email protected]).
Graduate School and Graduate Life
- Finding the right advisor - this was written by Dr. Brian Todd whose lab website resource page was the inspiration for this page. He does a great job of hitting the essential points relevant to finding your graduate school advisor.
- A flow chart to getting into Graduate School - I created this flow chart myself to help prospective students navigate the daunting getting into graduate school process. It focuses in particular on finding, communicating, and selecting prospective graduate advisors. However, this flow chart can also be used by undergraduate students interested in getting some research experience of completing a thesis.
- Some modest advice for graduate students - written by Stephen C. Stearns, provides valuable, albeit sometimes cynical, advice about graduate school. It is relatively short and worth reading or at least skimming before pursuing graduate school. Also, take it with a grain of salt.
- Some acynical advice for graduate students - written by Raymond B. Huey and in response to the previous link written by Stearns. This paper is offers additional advice and a different, much less cynical perspective of graduate school.
- How to be a successful graduate student - written by Cullen and Vose this paper is geared toward PhD students but it does have some valuable advice for any type of graduate work and is worth a skim at least.
Ecology, Conservation, and the Biological Sciences
- Why ecology lags behind biology - the author encourages ecologists to focus more on the "why" and "how" than the "what" in our research.
- One hundred questions of importance to the conservation of global biological diversity - if you are interested in conservation biology you should read this paper. Effectively it provides a comprehensive list of questions assembled by a long and diverse list of scientists and practitioners that if answered, should advance conservation science and practice immensely.
- Strong inference - an old paper but an important one with useful insights about the nature of science and how research is done and hypotheses are evaluated.
Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers
- Who should be an author? - this links to Dr. Brian Todd's website page in which he does a nice job in suggesting how authorship should be determined. This does not address how to determine author order, however.
- Sounder thinking through clearer writing - An excellent paper by Peter Woodford about scientific writing that is both broad and still mostly relevant today.
- Editorial: A plea for scholarly writing - Another excellent paper to improve the quality of your science writing.
- How to write a scientific paper - A humorous look at how NOT to write a scientific paper but how most are written today
Hypothesis Testing and Statistical Analyses
- Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments - an absolute classic and must-read for any ecologist. Here Hurlbert criticizes a widely used method in field experiments.
- Are we sacrificing biology for statistics - Chamberlain makes the case for more emphasis on good biology than an obsession with statistics.
- The method of multiple working hypotheses - A very old but very important paper about the dangers of having only one "pet" hypothesis.
- T. C. Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses: An Encapsulation for Modern Students - a more modern paper revisiting Chamberlin's original paper linked previously. Note reading this paper is not a a substitute for the original.
Scholarships, Grants, and Fellowship Resources
National Funding Search Engines/Databases
Funding Offices @ FAU
Specific Opportunities
FELLOWSHIPS
SCHOLARSHIPS
GRANTS
- GRAPES by UCLA - great search engine and you do not need to be a UCLA student to use it
- National Science Foundation - a very important funding agency in science and the host of the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Grants.gov - a great search engine for government grants, less useful if you are looking for small individual grants
- ECOLOG-L - a fantastic, free list serve created by an ecologist for ecologists and anyone in environmental science. This list posts primarily job opportunities, including faculty, master's, PhD positions, and non-academic jobs.
Funding Offices @ FAU
- FAU Office of Community Engagement
- FAU Financial Aid Office
- Graduate Student Funding @ FAU
- FAU Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry
Specific Opportunities
FELLOWSHIPS
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship
- NIH Predoctoral Fellowships (F31) to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research
- Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program
- Ford Foundation Fellowship Program
- Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans
- SEEDS SPUR Fellowship
SCHOLARSHIPS
GRANTS