The Simler-Williamson lab at Boise State University is recruiting a PhD student to join the lab in Fall 2025 through the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior PhD program.

The successful applicant will conduct work examining how interactions between an emerging infectious plant disease and wildfire may trigger abrupt state transitions between forest and chaparral. The project involves opportunities to cultivate diverse field, lab, and quantitative skills in plant population and community ecology, epidemiology and disease ecology, disturbance ecology, and statistical and mathematical modeling. Graduate students will collaborate with a network of faculty and students at University of Georgia, Cal Poly, Lewis and Clark College, North Carolina State University, and UC Davis, conducting other project areas focused on soil biogeochemical mechanisms, seed banks, and forest process-based modeling.