2026 Internship Opportunities

The project will use synthetic biology approaches to evaluate the genetic accessibility of microbes within natural and synthetic communities using diverse bacterial conjugation systems to establish a toolkit for deploying genetic and metabolic circuits into environmental microbes. This will enable us to selectively engineer microbiomes to perform designer metabolic functions (e.g. polymer synthesis, biodegradation, biosensing, mineral extraction). This will also provide insight into the mechanisms underlying the spread of antimicrobial resistance in diverse ecosystems.

The Late Triassic (230-201 million years ago) was a time of intense climate change, during which most of the major groups of terrestrial vertebrates first evolved, including mammals, lepidosaurs, frogs, salamanders, crocodylomorphs, and dinosaurs. Most of these groups originate at small body sizes, meaning that targeting accumulations of vertebrate microfossils is key to answering major questions regarding the coevolution of life and the Earth system during this key interval. The intern will accompany my group for two weeks of fieldwork in west Texas, collecting both macrofossils and sediment from microfossil assemblages from several new sites we have discovered in this…

The overarching goal of this project is to assess the relationship between ocean circulation and climate change during one of the hottest periods in Earth’s history, the Late Cretaceous, using neodymium isotopes sourced from fossilized fish teeth as a tracer for past ocean circulation patterns.

Wildfires have become more frequent and severe in recent years and been found to be linked to the increase of vapor pressure deficit (VPD), the difference (deficit) between the amount of moisture in the air and how much moisture the air can hold when it is saturated. Yet it is unclear to what extent this trend is due to long term climate change or internal climate variability and whether it would continue in the future. To address these questions, we propose to examine VPD over global land areas by looking into both observations and a suite of high-resolution climate model…

This project will establish four 1-hectare permanent forest plots at The Watershed Institute (Hopewell, NJ) to monitor forest structure, carbon stocks, and their contribution to ecosystem carbon fluxes. These plots will form a long-term ecological monitoring network following GEOTrees protocol, enabling comparisons with similar plots worldwide. The data collected will serve as a foundation for future research on forest dynamics, biodiversity, and carbon cycling, and will directly support The Watershed Institute’s mission to advance environmental stewardship through science, conservation, and education. This initiative also aims to provide a hands-on research experience for Princeton students interested in ecology, climate science, and…

This internship provides an opportunity to participate in cutting-edge environmental microbiology research focused on the bioremediation of PFAS contamination in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) impacted sediments. Students will contribute to studies involving Acidimicrobium sp. A6, a unique bacterium capable of transforming PFAS through an iron-coupled ammonium oxidation process known as Feammox. The research emphasizes bench-scale laboratory experiments designed to understand the environmental factors that promote A6 activity and enhance PFAS degradation. Students will help investigate how conditions such as temperature, pH, nutrient supply, and iron availability influence microbial growth and defluorination efficiency. This experience will provide valuable insight into how…

Ocean life depends on phosphorus, a nutrient whose inventory can rise and fall over geologic time scales. Normally, phosphorus is removed from the ocean by getting buried in seafloor sediments. However, in very low-oxygen environments, sediments can leak phosphorus back into the ocean instead of storing it. This return of phosphorus can help sustain biological production, yet the magnitude of this release — and how it varies with environmental conditions such as temperature, bottom-water oxygen, and nutrient levels — is still not well quantified. The intern will compile real measurements of phosphorus, oxygen, nutrients, temperature, and iron from pore water…

Students will measure greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from sectors including the ammonia supply chain for the hydrogen economy, agriculture, and wastewater treatment plants. All of these sectors have highly uncertain emissions, and new sensing approaches and technologies allow for a better understanding of their spatiotemporal variabilities. Students will prepare for field sampling campaigns, conduct measurements, and analyze data to understand emissions characteristics of these sources.

Introduced species are everywhere. Human activity in the current century has transported organisms thousands of miles away from their native ranges, resulting in the establishment of thousands of introduced species in the U.S. alone. Introduced species often interact with the native environment in harmful ways, reducing biodiversity. What happens when two introduced species from different home ranges interact competitively with each other? The Pin-tailed Whydah (Vidua macroura), native to Africa, is an obligate brood parasite: it lays its eggs in nests of other bird species and relies on them to care for its eggs and young. Whydahs have been introduced…

In human-dominated landscapes, working lands and restored habitats are vital for sustaining biodiversity as urbanization fragments natural ecosystems. Agricultural fields, grazed pastures, and managed meadows must serve not only economic purposes but also act as refuges for wildlife. How these lands are managed ultimately shapes vegetation and floral resource availability, influencing which fauna persist. Understanding these dynamics is essential for balancing production and recreation with conservation. Using Duke Farms as a model landscape, this project will examine how three management approaches, grazing, mowing, and passive management, filter insect community composition across grasslands. We will characterize insect and plant community composition…