Welcome to our Lab

If you are interested in joining our lab as an undergraduate, graduate student or as a Postdoc, please contact Orou directly (ogaoue at utk dot edu) with your academic CV and your research ideas. My role is to help you get ready to take the next step in your career: gain research experience, get into graduate school or work (undergraduate students), pursue a Ph.D., work in or outside of academia or obtain a postdoctoral position (graduate students), faculty position or a job outside of academia (postdoc). We will discuss your goals and career plan and how to get there. To reach these goals, I will assist you in selecting your research questions, testable hypotheses and how to test them, writing your own grant proposals, publishing your work in peer review journals and presenting your work at professional conferences.

Pre-doctoral fellowship

I strongly recommend that you apply for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (Deadline Nov. 8), EPA STAR Fellowship (Deadline Nov. 27), and Ford Predoctoral Fellowship. Tips for a strong NSF GRFP Fellowship application are available here. A really good sample of NSF GRFP applications has been compiled by Rachel C. Smith here. If you are from Africa or South America these specific funding sources apply to you: International Foundation for Science | Rufford Small Grant | British Ecological Society Grants | Borlaug LEAP Fellowship | AS Ouedraogo Fellowship | Vavilov Frankel Fellowship..

Postdoctoral fellowship

If I do not have funding to support a postdoc at the time you contact me, we will work to develop a postdoctoral proposal. The best option is to contact me about a year from your preferred start date. Here are a few sources of fellowship you could apply for: NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology | Smith Fellowship | Ford Fellowship. NSF postdoctoral fellowships are due in October with start date between June and January of following year.