We have finished evaluating and accepting applications for the open Ph.D. student position in the Climate Dynamics group and won’t be admitting more students this cycle. There will be a similar opening next year, with a start date in Fall 2024 and application deadline in late 2023.
A position in the Ph.D. program of Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science will be available in the research group of William Boos, with start date in August 2023. The student who takes on this position will, over the course of five years and in collaboration with William Boos, produce a body of original research that constitutes a doctoral thesis. This position is not tied to any particular project, and candidates are encouraged to think broadly and ambitiously about possible thesis topics. Interested students with strong quantitative backgrounds are encouraged to apply for admission to the doctoral program of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science.
The Ph.D. qualifying exam must be passed near the end of the second year, and all students are strongly encouraged to serve as a teaching assistant for at least two semesters during the five-year program – this provides a minimal amount of teaching experience, which is important if you intend to have any sort of career in academia.
This graduate student position includes complete financial support, meaning that tuition, fees, health insurance, and a salary are all paid while you make satisfactory progress toward the Ph.D. degree. This typically means that five years of funding are provided. I can no longer provide information on salary amount, as communication regarding this should be done only through official channels due to the new union contract with graduate students. The financial support that we provide for your five years of graduate studies amounts to about $550,000 and comes from a variety of sources, primarily governmental research grants to the Boos group; fellowship programs and compensation from the university for teaching assistant duties may also contribute.
Prospective students who are interested in this opportunity are encouraged to apply to the EPS Graduate Program and to send an email to William Boos to let him know your application is coming. Video calls will be arranged with a subset of candidates after applications are reviewed (typically in January and February); unfortunately we do not have the capacity to arrange calls with interested prospective students before the application deadline.
Berkeley charges an application fee of USD 135 for US citizens and Permanent Residents, and USD 155 for all others. Students who cannot afford to pay this application fee can apply for a fee waiver if they are a US citizen or Permanent Resident. Unfortunately, Berkeley does not offer any formal fee waivers for international students. However, if you are an international student who cannot afford to pay the application fee, you may upload a single PDF file containing a complete transcript (unofficial is fine), a personal statement, a statement of purpose, and a cover letter briefly explaining your need for an application fee waiver to this web portal by November 1, 2022 (one month ahead of Berkeley’s official application deadline of December 1). Students whose applications are very strongly competitive will be contacted and asked to provide a full application, including reference letters, by the December 1 deadline, and the application fee will be paid by the Boos research group.