Sandwalk: Get a Job in Toronto

Friday, September 11, 2009

Get a Job in Toronto

DEPARTMENT OF MOLECULAR GENETICS
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Applications are invited for a Tenure-Stream Position in Developmental Biology

The Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto invites applications for a tenure-stream appointment in developmental biology. The appointment at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, will commence on or after July 1, 2010, and will be located in the Medical Sciences Building on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto.

We seek candidates whose research addresses a fundamental problem in animal developmental biology using either established (mouse, frog, fish, fly, nematode worm, sea urchin, tunicate, etc.) or up-and-coming (stickleback, cnidarian, planarian, arthropod, choanoflagellate, etc.) models. The successful candidate will complement and enhance the Department’s existing strengths in developmental biology, model organism genetics, and other areas.

The Department is one of the premier academic life sciences departments in Canada, with 90 full-time faculty members and 300 graduate students (Molecular Genetics). The candidate will benefit from the interdepartmental Collaborative Graduate Program in Developmental Biology as well as from recent efforts at the University of Toronto and affiliated teaching hospitals to expand research in stem cell biology; cell, tissue and whole-animal imaging; proteomics, genomics and bioinformatics through new infrastructure and academic programs. Candidates must have a Ph.D. degree or equivalent, postdoctoral experience, and an established record of research accomplishment. The successful candidate will be expected to mount an original, competitive, and independently funded research program, and to have a commitment to undergraduate and graduate education.

We encourage you to submit your application online (Jobs: faculty). Please ensure that you include a Curriculum vitae that includes current and long-term research objectives. If you are unable to apply online (or alternatively have large document to send), please submit your application and other materials to: Dr. Howard Lipshitz, Chair, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, 1 King’s College Circle, Rm. 4286, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A8 Canada. Applicants should also arrange that three letters of reference be sent directly to Dr. Lipshitz, or have them emailed to mogen.chair@utoronto.ca Applications and referee letters will be accepted until November 15, 2009 or until the position is filled.

The University of Toronto offers the opportunity to teach conduct research and live in one of the most diverse cities in the world. The University is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may contribute to further diversification of ideas.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority.

2 comments :

Devin said...: Priority to Canadians and permanent residents? That doesn't seem to be the best way to get the best researchers.; Friday, September 11, 2009 7:44:00 PM
DK said...: Priority to Canadians and permanent residents? That doesn't seem to be the best way to get the best researchers.

It's the best best way to get best Canadian researchers. The one who pays the piper calls the tune. Fair game.; Saturday, September 12, 2009 10:36:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Friday, September 11, 2009

Get a Job in Toronto

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