Master and PhD Positions in Dairy Cattle Behavior and Welfare
Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University
West Lafayette, USA
Two graduate research assistantships, one Master-level and one PhD-level, are available in the Neave Research Lab at the Department of Animal Sciences at Purdue University beginning preferably Summer or Fall Semester 2024 (located at main campus in West Lafayette, IN, USA). The selected graduate students will be advised by Dr. Heather Neave, Assistant Professor of Applied Ethology and Animal Welfare. Graduate students receive a stipend, fringe benefits and tuition coverage for the duration of their research program (2 years for Master-level, 3 years for PhD-level). Research topics of the Master and PhD programs will be in the area of animal welfare and applied ethology, especially developing methodologies to assess animal personality, emotional state, and/or cognition in order to understand how dairy cows and calves experience their environment and management practices. The selected graduate students will lead all aspects of their research project(s) (i.e., developing project hypotheses and experimental design, collecting data on-farm (which can involve long days with extensive animal handling), analyzing data from video and/or automated sensors, preparing manuscripts, and supervising undergraduate research assistants). Graduate students are expected to present at local and international conferences, contribute to other research experiments, and assist with animal behavior and welfare courses.
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