PostDoc Position: Harvard University Environmental Fellows Program

The Harvard University Center for the Environment created the Environmental Fellows program to enable recent doctorate recipients to use and expand Harvard’s extraordinary resources to tackle complex environmental problems. The Environmental Fellows will work for two years with Harvard faculty members in any school or department to create new knowledge while also strengthening connections across the University’s academic disciplines.

The award:
The fellowship include a salary of $62,000 per year, employee  health insurance eligibility, up to $2,500 reimbursement for travel expenses, and a $2,500 allowance for travel and other professional expenses.

The Harvard University Center for the Environment expects to award approximately six fellowships for the 2016 cohort. The Center will organize a co-curricular program to ensure that the fellows get to know each other and each other’s work. All fellows will attend biweekly dinners with their colleagues, faculty members, and guests.

The application:

1. Please complete the online form and attach the relevant supporting documents as PDFs:

a) curriculum vitae including list of publications.
b) detailed research proposal, maximum of five pages, references counted separately. Within the proposal, applicants should explain their reasons for applying to a Harvard residential environmental fellowship.
Note: While applicants should discuss the proposal with their potential faculty hosts, the final product should clearly be the work of the applicant.
c) up to three publications/writing samples.

2. Three letters of reference, including one from the applicant’s dissertation adviser.

3. A letter of support is also required from the applicant’s host committing to serve as a mentor and explaining his or her commitment to the proposed research, including the provision of office or lab space and any financial commitments.

Applicants are encouraged to ask their referees and hosts to email letters of reference as PDFs or, if necessary, as Word documents attached to the emails. Referees and hosts should send their letters directly to the attention of James Clem at the Center at environ@fas.harvard.edu.

The Center will notify applicants to confirm receipt of a complete application.

Please use the Apply through website button for more information and to submit an application.

• Candidates for 2016 Environmental Fellowships should have received their terminal degree between May 2012 and August 2016. (Fellows must have filed their dissertation before starting their appointment in September 2016.)
• Candidates with a doctorate or equivalent in any field are eligible, and they may propose research projects in any discipline. Applicants without a Ph.D. may apply if they have studied in fields where the Ph.D. is not the typical terminal degree. All successful candidates will be able to demonstrate experience performing scholarly research.
• Each candidate must secure a commitment from one or more Harvard faculty members to serve as a mentor and to provide office or lab space for the two-year fellowship.
• Harvard is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. The Center strongly encourages women and minorities to apply.
• Candidates may have received their degrees at any university in the world. Foreign nationals are eligible for fellowships, though study at Harvard generally requires proficiency in English.
• Candidates who received terminal degrees from Harvard, and post-docs currently working at Harvard are eligible for the fellowship provided their research and host arrangements take them in new directions and forge new connections within the University. Harvard candidates should not propose to continue to work with the same professors or lab groups with whom they are currently associated. No candidate should propose to work extensively with his or her thesis advisor.
• Successful candidates should be prepared to commit to work at Harvard for the full two years of the fellowship. This fellowship requires residency in the Cambridge area and any fieldwork trip must be scheduled for the summer or January recess.

The Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) encourages research and education about the environment and its many interactions with human society.

The Center draws its strength from faculty members and students across the University who make up a remarkable intellectual community of scholars, researchers, and teachers of diverse fields including chemistry, earth and planetary sciences, engineering and applied sciences, history, biology, public health and medicine, government, business, economics, religion, literature and the law. The most pressing problems facing our natural environment are complex, often requiring collaborative investigation by scholars versed in different disciplines. By connecting scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, the Center for the Environment seeks to raise the quality of environmental research at Harvard and beyond.

The Center seeks to provide the next generation of Harvard-educated researchers, policymakers and corporate leaders with a comprehensive interdisciplinary environmental education, while fostering linkages and partnerships amongst different parts of the University as well as between the University and the outside world.

Through a variety of grants and fellowships, the Center supports research related to the environment at every level, from undergraduates through senior faculty members. By sponsoring symposia, public lectures, and informal student convocations, the Center connects people with an interest in the environment.