Technician III- Entomology

Technician III

The Opportunity

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About the College

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is a pioneer of purpose-driven science and Cornell University's second largest college. We work across disciplines to tackle the challenges of our time through world-renowned research, education, and outreach. The questions we probe and the answers we seek focus on three overlapping concerns:
We believe that achieving next-generation scientific breakthroughs requires an understanding of the world's complex, interlocking systems. We believe that access to nutritious food and a healthy environment is a fundamental human right. We believe that ensuring a prosperous global future depends on the ability to support local people and communities everywhere. By working in and across multiple scientific areas, CALS can address challenges and opportunities of the greatest relevance, here in New York, across the nation, and around the world.

For more than 125 years, the faculty members, staff and students in the Department of Entomology have been working to advance the field of insect biology and apply that knowledge to solve real-world problems and improve lives. We are committed to training the next generation of entomologists and disseminating our work through extension and outreach, and we are consistently ranked among the top programs for insect science in the world.

Our cutting-edge research is leading to a better understanding of insect biology and diversity, to improve human and animal health and increase the sustainability of our food production and ecosystems. In addition, we actively work to make our department and the discipline of entomology diverse, equitable and inclusive. We invite you to explore our website to learn more about the department.

Damselflies and dragonflies are an ancient insect order with sex-determination mechanisms that evolved independently yet are like those of humans (i.e. XY/XX or XO/XX systems). Sex differences in morphological traits, especially color, are deeply ancestral in damselflies, but they have been repeatedly overturned by mutations in chromosomes that are shared by the two sexes. Thus, odonates are promising study systems for understanding mechanisms that create and suppress variation between and within the sexes.

Yet, damselflies and dragonflies are one of the few otherwise well-known insect orders with close to no tractable study systems for comparative genomics and evolutionary developmental biology research.

The technician will assist the PI, Beatriz Willink, postdocs and graduate students maintaining a lab population of the local damselfly species Ischnura verticalis, and performing moderately complex field and lab research, with an emphasis on field collection and monitoring, tissue dissection, nucleic acid isolation, molecular genotyping, hormone isolation and other laboratory techniques.

This is a full-time position at 97.5% FTE. This is a one-year term appointment that is contingent upon available work, funding, and…