Testimonials

Mircea

Collaborative Culture

"The EEB graduate program at Princeton gave me superlative training on independent research, with excellent mentorship on identifying the important research questions and many opportunities for self-management in finding their answers. My experience in this department has fundamentally changed the way I approach problems in my profession, training me in how to dissect a problem systematically, synthesize my findings, and identify the commonalities between my immediate work and the fundamental principles that govern life, nature, and society. We have an outstanding collaborative and amicable culture, with frequent seminars, workshops, and departmental events. The professors here are inspirational titans, and the postdocs are the future torch-bearers of our field.  Going through this program has improved my understanding of the world in ways that I couldn't fathom when I first began my studies, and for this the department has my undying gratitude." 
Mircea Davidescu '17, Business consultant Applied Predictive Technologies 

Cara Brook

Outstanding Community

"I once heard my committee member, Professor Bryan Grenfell, say that, 'there's no other community like EEB in the world.' Truer words have never been spoken. In Princeton's EEB department, researchers at all stages of their careers—from undergraduate to graduate student to postdoc to professor—interact in a casual and collegial manner. Every professor knows every student's research—and vice versa—and daily, students wander freely between joint lab meetings and social gatherings, living and breathing science. Princeton EEB is home and family in a way that I have not experienced in any other academic setting." 
Cara Brook '17, Postdoc at UC Berkeley in Integrative Biology

Headshot of Josh Daskin

Fostering Success

"Princeton’s EEB department was a community not only of scientists, but also of friends for my 5 years there. A great thing about the place is the effort put into finding people who will not only do great science, but who will also get along. Beginning with interview week as a prospective student, the staff, faculty, and other students made it straightforward to do the work I wanted to do. For a student who is independent and knows how he or she works, there is likely no place that provides more intellectual freedom as a PhD student. You are treated as a colleague and given the infrastructure to succeed." 
Joshua Daskin '17, Postdoc at Yale University in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
www.JoshDaskinEcology.com

Headshot of Jenny Ouyang

Supportive Department

"When I was a first year student at Princeton, my PhD advisor moved to the Max Planck Institute in Germany. I was able to do my PhD across two continents thanks to EEB's flexibility. Dan Rubenstein was my advisor at Princeton and Ela Hauas my advisor in Germany, getting the best of both worlds. I am so grateful to have had an incredible community of graduate students, with whom I published papers as colleagues and dined as friends. Having the opportunity to easily chat with EEB’s faculty made me ask bigger questions and think on different scales. There was support when I needed it, from administrators to friends on the soccer field. It takes a village to graduate with a PhD, and I can say that I had the best village at Princeton’s EEB program."  
Jenny Q. Ouyang '12, Assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno  
www.jennyouyang.com
 

Charlotte Chang

Excellent Academic Resources

Pursuing my PhD in EEB at Princeton was a wonderful experience. The students and postdocs in EEB, and in other departments, were inspiring and driven; I learned so much from late-night conversations with my cohort and my housemate who was a PhD in political science. One unique aspect of Princeton EEB is how collaborative the department culture is. Although I spent a good chunk of my PhD abroad (in the field in China and India), I always felt like a member of the community. I appreciated that I could kick around ideas with students, postdocs, and faculty outside of my lab group at beer hour, seminar dinners, and bagel hour. Princeton also has a broad suite of resources for graduate students including an excellent writing seminar series that greatly improved my grant applications, computational programming short courses, and in-house funding for graduate student-led workshops as well as conference travel. My time at Princeton prepared me to be an independent scientist, capable of raising funds to support my own research, and trained me in how to set up fruitful research collaborations.
Charlotte Chang '17, Postdoc at University of Tennessee, Knoxville