Presidental Postdoc Position Description

EEB’s Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship is a two-year position with an annual salary of $65,000 plus benefits, as well as a research stipend of $8,000 per year. Postdocs are expected to be based on MSU's campus. Up to $1,000 of moving expenses may be reimbursed from the research stipend in the first year. We encourage applications from candidates in any early-career stage, from finishing PhD students to current postdoctoral scholars.

Applications are now being accepted for the 2026 cohort and should be submitted here by Nov. 10, 2025. Final interviews will take place in Jan. for an expected start date in summer 2026.  FAQs for prospective candidates and faculty mentors can be found here.

Questions can be directed to the committee co-chair Kevin Liu or any member of the committee: Ingo Braasch, Phoebe Zarnetske, Lars Brudvig, Fred Janzen, Chia Hsieh, and Jana Woerner.

The fellow is a fully participating member of EEB at MSU and is expected to have a cutting-edge research program that bridges the interests of two or more EEB core faculty members. Applicants should propose a research project that can be accomplished within the two-year time frame of the fellowship. EEB encourages prospective applicants to browse through the list of previous presidential postdocs for examples. Candidates should contact potential core faculty mentors  before applying, as each faculty mentor will need to fill out the sponsor form.

The fellow also contributes to the EEB community via a community engagement initiative. The proposed initiative is up to the discretion of the applicant but should be focused on bringing together members of the MSU EEB community. Possible ideas include (but are not limited to): a workshop on professional development or a technical research skill; a science communication or public engagement product or event; a public science initiative, a journal discussion group, curriculum development, etc. The fellow’s research stipend may also be used to support the community engagement initiative. 

Previous successful postdoc applicants have conducted community engagement initiatives that include: 

• A one-credit “Career Pathways” seminar on professional development for EEB graduate students. 
• An EEB Collaborative Research Group that wrote journal articles published in Nature Ecology and Evolution and Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
• An Art in Science competition to encourage EEB members to generate and share art based on or generated by their research.
• An EEB coworking group that helps one another be accountable to their individual goals in a fun yet structured way.
• An eeBirding group that organizes monthly birding outings for EEB members and the general public. 

Candidates should discuss their community engagement initiative with their potential mentors to ensure that it will be a good fit for the EEB community at MSU. 

Applicants will need to enter the contact information for two references willing to write letters of recommendation on behalf of the candidate. MSU will contact letter writers directly with instructions for a select number of applicants.

In addition, each faculty sponsor (not the applicant) should fill out the sponsor form to indicate their support for the candidate's application, how the candidate's research will integrate into the faculty members' labs, and a brief description of the mentor's contributions to the EEB community (service, teaching, etc.). 

The required application materials should be uploaded as four separate documents:

1. Cover letter (1 page max)
2. CV
3. Other document #1
4. Other document #2

Other document #1 should include:

• Research statement including past research accomplishments and proposed research plans as an EEB postdoctoral fellow (2 pages max)
• Community engagement proposal (1 page max)

Other document #2 should include:

• Up to two publications, preprints, or manuscripts representative of the applicant’s work (works #1 and #2 should be uploaded as a single file)