Contact

Open Positions

We welcome inquiries from prospective students and collaborators at all career stages. If you are interested in joining the lab, please contact Dr. Riva by email at federicoriva@cunet.carleton.ca explaining why you are interested in joining the team and which research questions you foresee answering in your research.

PhD opening: Managing Landscapes to Sustain Biodiversity

This project aims to provide guidance for designing landscapes that sustain and promote biodiversity. Relevant themes include habitat fragmentation, connectivity, and heterogeneity, and how these factors influence optimal area-based conservation strategies for protecting species and ecosystems. The project may leverage datasets compiled at local, provincial (Ontario), continental, or global scales, depending on the student’s interests and the specific research questions developed, and builds on a long tradition of related work conducted at GLEL. Supervision: Dr. Federico Riva, in collaboration with Drs. Lenore Fahrig and Amanda Martin.

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PhD opening: Contributions of Citizen Science to Biodiversity Conservation

This project aims to assess the potential of citizen science data for biodiversity conservation. The student will use long-term, spatially explicit data on butterfly abundance for tens of butterfly species, compiled through the eButterfly community science platform, to examine how local, landscape, and regional characteristics promote species persistence. Additional research directions that may be explored include: (i) Evaluating how participation in citizen science influences relationships between people and nature; (ii) Assessing the capacity of artificial intelligence tools to accurately classify butterflies; and (iii) Identifying hotspots of climatic risk for North American butterfly species.

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Lab Culture & Values

We strive to maintain the supportive and intellectually stimulating research environment of GLEL. Our lab culture is grounded in a few core principles (see Resources for more details on lab policies and standards):

  • Lab philosophy — We work on questions for which we truly do not know the answer. We are fully committed to open, reproducible, and transparent research practices.
  • Equity, diversity, and inclusion — We welcome people of all backgrounds, identities, and abilities. We strongly believe that science is a collective endeavour, and we actively seek interdisciplinary partnerships and value diverse perspectives.
  • Mentoring and work-life balance — The growth of every lab member is guided depending on different career goals, with different strategies for students interested in academia, government, or the private sector. We value independent thinking and support healthy ways to combine private life with academic responsibilities.

Get in Touch

Department of Biology
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada