Our team is looking for highly motivated graduate and undergraduate students to better understand the mechanisms of adolescent addiction. Students applying for the research program should have the the following personal characteristics: be highly motivated, independent, reliable, detail-oriented, punctual, confident, mature, well-rounded, conscientious, with excellent communications skills (written and oral), and who aspire to be leaders in their chosen field of study. In particular, students interested in pursuing the fields of industry, medicine and/or science, are highly encouraged to apply.

We aim to develop students who will have personal and scientific laboratory skills that can successfully lead them to be highly competitive in the job market. Students interested in scientific publishing, grant writing, presentations, and/or learning hands-on laboratory skills in the disciplines of brain imaging, pharmacology, neurochemistry, drug addiction, adolescent neurobiology and/or behavior are all encouraged to apply.

For Graduate Students: Please apply through the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program or Pharmaceutical Sciences.  Feel free to contact Dr. Shahrdad Lotfipour (shahrdad@uci.edu) if you are interested in rotating with our research group and/or applying to the UCI Graduate Programs.

For Undergraduate Students, you should be interested in investing a minimum of at least two-years into the research program as well as 15-20 hours / week into the Bio Sci 199 course in Addiction Biology. For Bio Sci majors, students should have already completed Bio Sci 94 & Bio Sci 194S. Non-Bio Sci majors are not required to take Bio Sci 94.

When applying for this position, please email your expression of interest, curriculum vitae (with contact information for 1-2 references) and academic transcript to: shahrdad@uci.edu.

For Undergraduate students, when expressing your interest via email, please also include 1-3 paragraphs on:

(i) Why you are specifically interested in applying for this research opportunity & Addiction Biology (Bio Sci 199) course,

(ii) What you hope to attain & learn from this research opportunity & Addiction Biology (Bio Sci 199) course, and,

(iii) Why you are particularly well suited for this research opportunity & Addiction Biology (Bio Sci 199) course.

For work-study students, please include this information as part of your application. For high school or non-UCI students, acceptance may be granted into our group based on an individual bases and requirements set forth by the Student Research Intern Program (SRIP). Please send your expression of interest to shahrdad@uci.edu.