Senior Fellows Program

Senior Fellows are resident scholars who make NCEAS their home base and have a sustained interest in working on one or more of the themes of NCEAS' work:

• Synthetic research
• Science communication and training
• Science/policy interface
• Informatics/Data Science

Our Senior Fellows often have diverse and often creative career paths, ranging from science facilitation, history, philosophy of science, policy, communications, or journalism. 

Senior Fellows typically operate as independent principal investigators and may also play roles in one of our collaborative initiatives or our partnerships (link to Partnerships). They do not always have other affiliations and titles at UC Santa Barbara, other universities, or non-academic entities. 

Fellowship Benefits

Our steady stream of visiting scientists, post-doctoral fellows, working groups, and trainings make for a vibrant work environment with great networking potential and exposure to the cutting edge of ecology and environmental science. Fellows will also benefit from the following:

• Opportunities to sit in on working groups of interest and participate in study groups, trainings, and collaborations going on at NCEAS.
• Accessibility to the UCSB main campus, including shared on-campus office or meeting space. Library privileges can also be arranged.
• Access to our in-house expertise on analytics, programming, and informatics for both casual guidance and more involved, formal project-funded support.
• Use of our grants office for facilitating grant submissions through NCEAS (with off-campus overhead rates where applicable)
• Computing and administrative support 

Fellows Contribute

Senior Fellows can fill a unique role at NCEAS as informal mentors to post-docs and other early career researchers. They may participate in ad-hoc trainings on topics in environmental science, communications, informatics, and career advancement in academia. They also support our seminar series by bringing in speakers and speaking on their own work at least once annually. 

Time Commitment 

Senior Fellowships are a two-year commitment at a minimum. We expect Fellows to be in residence for a majority of that time. A separate Visiting Fellows program is suited to a short-term residence of less than one year.

Office Arrangement 

Senior Fellows must cover the rental of office space, which is available as half (shared) or full (solo) office space. Our administrative staff works with each Fellow to design a structure for rent payment that maximizes continuity and flexibility of funds. For periods of time when residence is sporadic, an alternative office arrangement may be available.

To Apply

Send a C.V. and cover letter that briefly describes:

• Motivation for residence at NCEAS
• Area(s) of expertise
• Goals for your work at NCEAS over a 2+ year horizon
• Current or anticipated funding sources
• How you envision benefiting and contributing to the NCEAS community

Email your application materials to Ben Halpern, NCEAS executive director.

Applications are evaluated based on how well the proposed work fits with the NCEAS mission, the candidate’s record of excellence, and space availability. Continuation in the Senior Fellows program is evaluated bi-annually to re-assess a Senior Fellow’s goals and plans, and may include a presentation of recent work at a mini-symposium open to the public.