Positions in the Schnable Lab

There are two primary tracks to joining the lab: coming in with your own funding (e.g. a fellowship) or being hired with existing grant funds in the lab.

Fellowship Applications

  • For US citizens, there are a number of fellowship programs available at the graduate level we highly encourage you to explore, specifically NSF GRFP and USDA Pre-doc, and our lab can often provide support in assembling a competitive proposal and application. At the postdoctoral level there are also a number of fellowship programs including through NSF, USDA, and LSRF and we also encourage you to reach out to Prof. Schnable if you’d like to discuss putting together an application for any of these programs.

  • For citizens of other countries, there are sometimes fellowships offered by either international programs like Fulbright or your home country that can support your training/research in our lab. We’re not always experts in all of these programs, but we still encourage you to reach out about how we can support you in these applications. It is very important to make it clear whether you are asking for support in a fellowship application or asking about the availability of a grant funding position.

Funded Positions

Our home university does not provide any baseline funding for graduate positions, nor do we have access to teaching assistant positions to support graduate students. Openings for funded positions fluctuate based on our lab’s success in winning federal awards as well as the timing of current lab members getting hired for their next (and better) jobs.

I know writing cold e-mails is hard. Most of them don’t get answers. Most of the answers you’ll receive are “I don’t have funding.” At the same time, the sad reality is that our lab receives far more applications from people hoping to be hired as graduate research assistants than we have capacity to review in detail. Things you can do to make your e-mail stand out:

  • Easiest: Make it clear you did background research before writing your e-mail. One of the simplest ways to do this is to include the phrase “Codeword Pineapple” in the subject line of your e-mail when e-mailing Prof. Schnable which shows you read through our website and found this sentence.

  • If you have a reason you’re interested specifically in coming to our lab, whatever that reason might be, mention that.

  • If you’ve already talked to a current or former lab member about our lab’s culture/research focus, mention that.

  • None of our graduate programs currently require the GRE to apply. However, if you HAVE taken the GRE, mention that you have and your scores prominently in the e-mail.

  • If you’ve worked with or know a collaborator, co-author, or current/former trainee in the lab, mention that. Important corollary, if you’ve already met Prof. Schnable, remind him when and in what context when you send the e-mail.

Opportunities for Undergraduates

The Schnable Lab is always recruiting promising undergraduates who either wish to gain experience in computational or molecular biology techniques working as paid assistants on existing research projects, or who wish to develop and carry out independent research projects within our areas of investigation through the University of Nebraska’s UCARE program.