Join the lab

People of all identities are welcome in our lab. We strive for an open, communicative, and inclusive lab environment, and over the years our lab has hosted students and post-docs with a diversity of backgrounds, identities, and life experiences (see lab members here). We have done fieldwork around the world (see here), collaborating in each place with local communities and scientists. One hope of this work is to increase international collaboration and training, so if you are considering coming to the United States for graduate school or a post-doc, please write. I speak Spanish at home and French fluently, so if either of these languages are more comfortable for you than English, please feel free to use them when writing. (O sea, no duden en escribirme en español, ou on peut communiquer en français si vous voulez). 

Graduate students: I am always considering curious, motivated, and hardworking Master’s and Ph.D. students for work on evolutionary morphology and biomechanics in frogs (and maybe other organisms). We recently moved the lab to the University of California at Riverside, and we’re hoping to recruit at least one student for Fall 2025. If you think you’d like to work with us, please send me an introductory email that includes some project ideas, your CV, and a recent transcript. Then we can discuss options to come and work in the lab. 

Post-doctoral researchers: I am not actively looking for a post-doc, but if you are interested, please contact me to talk about where we’re going with new research at UCR and whether you might fit the kind of research we’re planning.

Undergraduate students: I am always considering adding undergraduate students to the lab. Yet whether I accept new students will depend on the availability of space—if there are no ongoing projects that would work well for a new student, it’s difficult. If you are interested in what we do (see here) and want to learn about opportunities, please contact me by email or stop by my office. Note that students interested in enrolling for research credits MUST contact me within the first two weeks of classes (in any given quarter).

Workshop in phylogenetic comparative methods: This August the Moen lab will be hosting a one-week workshop in phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs). We aim this workshop at graduate students and post-docs in biomechanics, locomotion, and functional performance, as funding for the workshop was provided by the National Science Foundation as part of a project on evolutionary biomechanics. Our key intent is to offer instruction to those working at lower scales (e.g., experimental work on single species) but who are interested in extending their work to study evolution across many species. This is our second iteration of the workshop, and both times we hosted it at a biological field station. Applications for the current workshop are closed but we plan to offer it again in July 2025. See here for our last call for applications.