Join

The Nielsen Lab is located at 4134 Valley Life Sciences Building at UC Berkeley. We are currently recruiting new postdocs and students for the lab. If you are passionate about any of the areas of research discussed here and interested in joining the lab, then please send an email to Rasmus. The Nielsen Lab is committed to supporting diversity in our field. We encourage BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ scholars to apply and we will work to support you in the lab.

Visitors

We often host self-funded visitors interested in joining us for collaborative research for a shorter or longer period. For UC Berkeley rules for visiting researchers, please see here.

Postdoctoral fellows

We are seeking new postdocs in all areas of research, but we are particularly interested in researchers with a strong background in computation and statistics and interested in methods development.

Graduate Students

Graduate students in the lab join from three different programs at UC Berkeley:
  1. Computational Biology. This program is suitable if you have a mixed background in biology and computation/statistics and you think a program with rotations between different labs in the first year is preferable.
  2. Integrative Biology. This program is suitable if you have a strong background in biology and you are not interested in lab rotations.
  3. Statistics. This program is suitable if your undergraduate degree is in statistics or math with an emphasis on probability and statistics, and if you want to pursue rigorous training in statistics during your graduate studies.

Undergraduate Students

We welcome undergraduate students interested in pursuing mentored research. Most of the work in our lab is at the intersection of computer science, statistics, and biology. We are looking for students who are interested in our research topics and enthusiastic about doing research. Specific requirements will vary depending on what projects are currently available, but most of our work is computational. We have found that students who have no prior programming experience don't get very much from the experience, so if you are interested in participating in a computational project, you will need to be able to program well in at least one language such as Python. You can prepare by taking an introductory computer science or data science course such as CS 61A or Data 8. If you are coming from a statistics or computer science background, we recommend taking at least one course in evolutionary biology. Detailed expectations for undergraduate mentees and their mentors are available here. If you are interested in getting involved in our research, check URAP for availability or email Rasmus Nielsen with your research CV and a short statement about your interest and goals for the lab.