The Shizuka Lab at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln is recruiting a full-time research technician to start in August, 2024. This is a one-year position.
The research technician will be working with Dr. Dai Shizuka at School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (www.shizukalab.com[DS1] c). The primary duties of the research technologist include conducting data collection for ongoing field-based avian ecology research, data processing, and data management. In addition, the research technologist will help coordinate work between the PI, multiple undergraduate students, graduate students, and stakeholders at field sites. The research technician will be involved in field research projects in Nebraska during both fall/winter and spring/summer seasons. The fall/winter projects focus on social behavior of winter resident birds in local woodlands, and spring/summer projects focus on social behavior and communication in breeding birds across Nebraska. The job is based in Lincoln, NE.
Minimum Required Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in biological sciences or related field; Valid U.S. driver’s license. Prior experience with field ornithological techniques such as bird banding, bird identification, and/or behavioral observations.
Preferred Qualifications: Strong attention to detail and excellent organizational skills. Ability to work in adverse weather conditions in both winter and summer.
Dr. Allison Johnson, Research Assistant Professor (she/her)
Dr. Allison Johnson is a Research Assistant Professor associated with our lab. She works on cooperative breeding in fairywrens, heterospecific recognition, long-term social network dynamics. She is also the co-founder of fairywrenproject.org. Visit her website here.
Carly Trebac, Lab Manager (she/her)
Carly at Cedar Point Biological Station
Carly Trebac (class of 2023) was inspired to start working the lab after taking Dr. Allison Johnson’s Field Avian Biology course at Cedar Point Biological Station. She then conducted her honors thesis on vocal communication in nuthatches, which she presented at the 2023 AOS meeting in London, Ontario. She is a future environmental lawyer and is applying to law programs.
Faiza Hafeez, Ph.D. Student (she/her)
Faiza with a red-winged blackbird (handled with proper permit and training).
Faiza Hafeez is a Ph.D. student who has already attained two Masters degrees, one in Wildlife Ecology from Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, and one in Psychology from University of Buffalo. She is working on unraveling the function of vocal communication networks in birds in the wild!
Quentin Smith, Masters Student, co-advised with Kate Lyons (he/him)
Quentin Smith
Quentin Smith joined Kate Lyon’s lab and our lab as a co-advised Master’s student in Fall 2021. He graduated with B.S. in Biology from Augsburg College and spent a year in the PREP program at University of Kansas. He is looking to apply network methods to understand the process of community assembly using paleontological records from Halls Cave, TX.
Brandy Williams, Ph.D. Student (she/her)
Brandy joined our lab in Fall 2022. She graduated from University of Missouri in Spring 2022. She won a Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society in 2022 and a Resilience NRT fellowship from UNL. She is interested in various aspects of avian behavior, including ecological and evolutionary implications of extraordinary parental investment such as distraction displays.
Angela Brierly, Ph.D. Student (she/her)
Angela Brierly
Angela joined our lab in Fall 2023. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from University of California, Santa Cruz and was the field manager for our long-term study on Golden-crowned Sparrows in 2021-2022. She will be working with Dr. Allison Johnson on ecological influences on cooperative breeding systems.
Sagan is a Conservation Biology major at UNL. They have been working in the lab since Fall of 2021 on a variety of projects, but they have functioned as the *point* person for projects related to soundscapes and sound analysis. They are currently working on an independent project to assess the detectability of our RFID-enabled feeders on multiple species.
Nolan Rokke (he/him)
Nolan is a senior Fisheries & Wildlife major at UNL. He joined the lab in Fall 2023 after having taken Dr. Allison Johnson’s Field Avian Biology course at Cedar Point Biological Station in the summer. He is involved in various aspects of the winter project at Reller Prairie and is getting hands on experience with bird banding and running field experiments.
Darian Pierre (he/him)
Darian is a sophomore at UNL. He joined the lab in Fall 2023 after having taken Dr. Allison Johnson’s Field Avian Biology course at Cedar Point Biological Station in the summer. He is also involved in various aspects of the winter project at Reller Prairie and is getting hands on experience with bird banding and running field experiments.
Alexis Mendez (he/him)
Alexis is a Freshman at UNL majoring in Computer Science. He conducted work over the summer before his first year at through the UNL STEM-POWER program. He prototyped our insulated roost box design, which we are planning to deploy this winter!
Praneetha Thutika (she/her)
Praneethat is a Freshman at UNL majoring in Biology. She is the new main tech for the DNA work in the lab.
Aidan Hand (he/him)
Aidan is a junior Biological Sciences major at UNL with a focus on ecology, evolution, and animal behavior. He joined the lab in late 2023, and is working on a senior thesis looking at the survivorship of birds involved in the winter projects at Reller Prairie.
Furqan Mahdi (she/her)
Furqan extracting DNA from bird blood samples!
Furqan Mahdi (class of 2024) started working in the lab in Fall 2020 as a First Year Research Experience (FYRE) fellow and now has continued on with funding from Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) fellowship. She worked on extracting behavior data from videos for two different projects, and led the DNA work in the lab. She is a Biosystems Engineering major. She is currently an INBRE fellow working on biomedical research.
Yasmin Worth (she/her)
Yasmin practicing handling birds
Yasmin Worth (class of 2025) is a member of our inaugural class of Upward Bound Math Science (UBMS) Research Bridge Program. She graduated from North Star High School in Lincoln, NE in May 2021 and jumped right into working in our lab. She worked. on various video extraction projects, and now she is working in the Dog Cognition lab at UNL. She is Pre-Vet.
Lab Alumni:
Laura Vander Meiden (Ph.D., 2023)
Dr. Laura Vander Meiden got her B.S. from University of Miami and came to our lab with a strong interest in understanding how different species interact with each other. Her research focuses on on heterospecific interactions in the context of mixed-species flocks. She is also an aspiring environmental data journalist, where she hopes to combine her passion nad expertise in data analysis, data visualization and storytelling.
Annie Madsen (Ph.D., 2023)
Dr. Annie Madsen studies how animal culture and long-term dynamics of social networks influence populations and communities. She earned her B.S. in Biology at UNL and worked as our lab manager for a semester before joining the lab as a Ph.D. student. She was funded throughout her Ph.D. by the Resilience NRT program in the School of Natural Resources. She is working with two different study systems: our long-term study of golden-crowned sparrows, as well as long-term dataset on Asian elephants in Sri Lanka in collaboration with Dr. Shermin de Silva, founder of Trunks & Leaves. She is now an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. de Silva at UCSD. Here is her website.
Dr. Eli Strauss (Postdoc, 2019-2020)
Eli was a PoE Postdoc from 2019-2020. He came to us from the Holekamp Lab at MSU, where he completed his Ph.D. in Spring 2019. He is now spending time as Humboldt Postdoc with Damien Farine and Max Planck postdoc at the Ecology of Animal Societies group. Check out his research on his website here.
Maria Goller (Ph.D. 2020)
Maria Goller
Maria finished her Ph.D. on evolution and function of vocal mimicry in May 2020.
Emily Hudson (Ph.D. 2018)
Emily Hudson
Emily finished her Ph.D. on December 2018. She is now a postdoc in the Creanza Lab at Vanderbilt University.
Matt Wilkins (Postdoc: 2014-2016)
Matt Wilkins
Matt was a PoE postdoc and and Shizuka Lab postdoc and innovated the phenotype network approach to studying multi-component signal traits. Matt went on to a stint as a postdoc at Vanderbilt University Center for Science Outreach. He is the founder of the innovative education studio, Galactic Polymath.
Undergraduate Alumni
Sophia Maizo (she/her)
Sophia (undergraduate researcher, 2022-2023). Sophia extracted much of the video data from our social learning field experiment on Golden-crowned Sparrows (headed by Annie Madsen)! She graduated from UNL in December 2023.
Brady Pham (Undergraduate UCARE student)
Brady Pham (undergraduate researcher, 2020-2021) worked in the lab on coding video data. He is now in a Masters program on Public Health at Columbia University
Kris Hans (Undergraduate UCARE student)
Kris received funding from the UNL UCARE research fellowship to conduct work on winter ecology of birds using our new RFID feeder system.
Arich Knaub (undergraduate researcher)
Arich graduate with a major in Math and minor in Biology in Spring 2019. He now teaches math in high school.
Bridget Bickner (undergraduate researcher)
Bridget Bickner
Briget has been working as lab technician running various DNA analyses. She is now a Ph.D. student at Harvard with Dr. Robin Hopkins.
Shizuka Lab 