Open Positions

Reach out to Ben Koger at bkoger@uwyo.edu for general inquiries about joining the lab. Please see below for current active job listings.

Ph.D. student

Application google form: https://forms.gle/Xqrge1zhLFLdrWDq5

Initial application review will start January 23.

The Koger Lab is recruiting a Ph.D. student to join our lab at the University of Wyoming in Fall 2026. The lab is jointly housed in the School of Computing and the Department of Zoology and Physiologyalthough prospective graduate students will join graduate programs in either the Zoology and Physiology department or the interdisciplinary Program in Ecology and Evolution. The Koger Lab specializes in designing and using cutting edge AI-driven computer vision tools to study and better understand the natural world. Specifically, we are interested in how imagery collected from aircraft, drones, satellites, and camera traps can be used to better monitor wild animal populations in natural landscapes and investigate the social and environmental drivers of finescale movement and behavior. Our research spans scales, systems, and aims with a focus both on fundamental ecological research and on building tools that have immediate impact on wildlife management and conservation. One current initiative is working with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to scalably monitor pronghorn populations across millions of acres of the American West with high-resolution aerial imagery and trust-worthy software pipelines opening a new window into how landscapes shape populations. Another project, in collaboration with the Alaska Salmon Program, focuses on studying social migration dynamics of pacific salmon and brown bears in Alaska at sub-second sub-meter precision at the individual, group, and population level. While we are fundamentally interested in understanding natural systems, our work is only possible because of the novel imaging tools we use and the computer vision and data analysis software we are able to build. As a result, our lab is a deeply interdisciplinary group with members’ backgrounds coming from ecology, engineering, and computer science. Prospective students are not expected to have experience in all of these areas, but are expected to be excited to work in such an interdisciplinary environment. Some experience with programming, whether in python, R, or another language, is a major asset. Prospective students will be able to join and build projects on topics across the scope of the lab’s current areas of research based on the shared interests of the student and the lab. Please reach out if you would like to brainstorm project ideas. Projects may be more ecologically or more computationally driven based on the student’s interests and background. The position has three years of guaranteed RA funding with additional funding through internal university grants and TA positions expected.

Application materials will start being formally considered on January 23rd and the position will remain open until filled. Please feel free to reach out to Ben Koger at bkoger@uwyo.edu with any questions or if you would like more details about how you may fit with this position.