The University of Michigan Biological Station is recruiting new researchers to conduct projects at the 10,000-acre research and teaching campus in northern Michigan during the 2024 field season and offering a new research fellowship for scientists to support their work.
Between 2024 and 2027, UMBS expects to award $25-50,000 to 5-8 recipients.
The deadline to submit research proposals and fellowship applications is Feb. 1. Submit your research proposal or renewal through the research page on the UMBS website. Fill out a fellowship application through the Research Fellowship for Scientists application link.
“In these critical times of human history, scientific discovery is both awe-inspiring and urgent,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of the U-M Biological Station and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “In our second century of operations, all of us at UMBS are committed to cutting-edge, high-impact environmental research and providing information needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales. We welcome scientists around the world to bring their research programs here as we seek solutions to the critical environmental challenges of our time.”
Fellowships also are available for graduate students — view the list of fellowships on the UMBS Research Fellowships website. In 2024, UMBS will provide several fellowships totaling approximately $30,000-$35,000 to support graduate students. Review the guidelines and submit an application through the Graduate Student Fellowship application link.
Students and scientists live and work as a community to learn from the place at UMBS, which was founded in 1909 and is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
Together, students and scientists help forecast how organisms, populations, communities and ecosystems will function in the future under conditions that humans have never seen before.
Laboratories and cabins are tucked into over 10,000 acres along Douglas Lake just south of the Mackinac Bridge. UMBS students, staff and researchers reside on the 20-acre main campus but work and learn daily by immersing themselves in the diverse ecosystems of the greater Biological Station property.
The UMBS land has 11 different natural communities – from bogs and forests to meadows and beaches – within which there are 125 different landscape ecosystem types. Multiple state-recognized threatened and federally endangered species exist on site.
“The opportunities for research are limitless,” Classen said. “Northern Michigan harbors critical ecosystems that are economically important and increasingly impacted by global change factors such as species invasions, insect outbreaks, disease and climate change.”
These ecosystems include old growth and successional forests, inland and Great Lakes, and sensitive dune and wetland systems, many of which are accessible within the 10,000 acres of UMBS property.
Research areas at the Biological Station are wide ranging yet interwoven and share the collective goal of understanding the changing environment of northern Michigan.
To name only a few, there are scientists tracking carbon storage and fluxes through successive forest systems and to the atmosphere; others are monitoring mating habits and nesting sites of the endangered Great Lakes Piping Plover; and still more are assessing the impacts of dam removal on animal and plant populations in local rivers and wetlands.
“Our long-term monitoring and highly specialized research infrastructure allow scientists to generate data and ask questions that could not be answered anywhere else,” Classen said.
Review the UMBS Research Committee project review process to learn more about the review framework, evaluation criteria and timeline.
For questions about the application process, contact UMBS Information Manager Jason Tallant at jtallant@umich.edu and UMBS Research Coordinator Helen Habicht at habicht@umich.edu.
For questions about research equipment, facilities and space requirements, contact Research Coordinator Helen Habicht at habicht@umich.edu and Resident Biologist Adam Schubel at aschubel@umich.edu.
Information about living at the historic field station — from housing and dining to health and safety — is on the UMBS Researchers website.