Program and Faculty
The Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology provides its students with rich opportunities to study organic diversity, including its origins, maintenance and consequences. Our graduate students pursue topics across a broad set of interlinked fields, including ecosystem biology and biogeochemistry, community ecology and population biology, organismal biology, chemical and molecular ecology, population genetics and genomics, speciation and macroevolution.
The program emphasizes broad thinking and encourages students to be both interdisciplinary and independent. We seek students who will pursue their own innovative, question-driven research while contributing to our intellectual and social community. Many of our students develop research themes that are not derived directly from those of their advisor. Our program may be particularly well suited for students who are skilled at bridging disciplines, and who can therefore take full advantage of Cornell's expansive intellectual and technological resources in the life sciences and related fields.
Our students' research questions address fundamental issues in basic and applied sciences, span large and small spatial and temporal scales, and apply experimental, observational, theoretical, statistical, molecular and chemical approaches. Many graduates of our program go on to become leaders within their academic discipline or to have large impacts in government, conservation and public policy. Our students regularly publish in the highest profile journals and move on to prestigious postdoctoral and faculty positions.
Nearly all students in our program work directly towards a PhD degree. EEB is home to approximately 60 students at any time. Our students come from the US and several countries around the world.