Yes! The SABIN Lab is looking to recruit at least one (and possibly two) graduate students for the Fall 2025 application cycle. Please reach out to Dr. Evans directly (tevans@auburn.edu) if you are interested in applying to work in the SABIN Lab.

I will start by saying that I think that there are multiple ways in which someone can be a good fit for our lab. In other words, there is no one single graduate student "prototype" that would be a good fit. However, I think there are a number of factors that would make an applicant a good "fit" for our lab more generally. Overall, I want to work with graduate students who are curious, hard-working, and eager to learn. Additionally, I view our laboratory as an inclusive and welcoming environment in which people enjoy working with one another (at least for the overwhelming majority of the time). Based on that, we are interested in graduate students who work well with others (i.e., not hyper-competitive) and who want to contribute to helping build a warm/supportive work environment in addition to being successful in their own careers. In terms of skillset, I do not expect graduate student applicants to have experience in all or even one of the methods that we use in the lab (e.g., fMRI, TMS, programming experiments, etc.). However, someone who would be a good fit in the lab would be interested in learning how to use one or more of these methods in their research. Of course, having experience in one or more of these skillsets is a plus, but is by no means expected/required. Additionally, given the clinical science emphasis of our research, I would say that graduate students who are primarily interested in clinical training/treatment implementation would probably not be a great fit with our lab. However, graduate students who are interested in developing novel treatments may find a strong fit with our lab depending on the specific research questions they want to ask.

Although experience in fMRI and/or TMS is certainly a plus, there is no requirement or expectation that applicants come into graduate school with these experiences. Additionally, there are several arms of our research that do not even involve fMRI or TMS, which primarily focus on self-report and reaction time data. Therefore, we are also open to prospective graduate students for whom neuroscience methods are not a central interest. That being said, I would say that prospective graduate students should be interested in experimental psychopathology methods more generally and are expected to be motivated to learn the skillsets that are important in the lab such as basic programming. We are happy to provide you with the training that you need to be successful in the lab, so our main criteria is applicants who are highly motivated to learn!

Mentorship is one of the aspects of my job that I find most personally rewarding, which I try to reflect in my mentorship approach. I like to think that my mentorship style is approachable, person-centered, and collaborative. In particular, I view graduate students as junior colleagues who offer exciting and diverse insights both in and beyond the laboratory. Throughout my career, I have benefited from establishing relationships with mentors that are career-long, so I am a firm believer in relationship-focused mentorship. In terms of mentoring style, I recognize that every graduate student is a unique individual, which means that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to mentorship will not work for the majority of graduate students. Some graduate students thrive with more hands-on mentorship, whereas other graduate students thrive with more autonomy. Additionally, every graduate student has a unique profile of relative strengths/weaknesses, which means graduate students also dramatically vary in what specific area (e.g., academic writing, career development, etc.) they would benefit from additional mentorship. As a result, I do my best to tailor my mentorship to meet each graduate student where they are at and based on what areas they need the most support. Basically, I like to think of my mentorship approach as one that is collaborative, personalized, and relationship-focused, which I hope will empower you to thrive during your time in the SABIN Lab!

Please do! You can reach me at tevans@auburn.edu. Please send along a copy of your CV with your email.

That is a good question and one that I am admittedly still figuring out myself having only recently arrived to the area! Based on my limited experience so far, I think that April Smith's description on her lab website does a great job in providing an overview of what it is like to live in Auburn (https://www.redslab.org/living-in-auburn). To give you a sense of my personal perspective, I have lived in both metropolitan (Dallas, Miami, and Boston) as well as rural (East Texas) settings. As a college town, I find that Auburn falls somewhere between those extremes of the continuum. One of the things I have enjoyed so far about this type of setting is a sense of community that you can "feel" even at the city-level, which is a new and positive experience compared to what I am used to living in larger cities. Also worth noting is that Auburn offers a very large amount of scenic nature and beautiful outdoor activities. Additionally, the cost of living is MUCH lower compared to larger cities like Miami/Boston, which means you can enjoy a higher standard of living as a graduate student. You can also get between almost any two locations in Auburn/Opelika with a 10-15 minute drive, which spares you the absolute misery of gridlock traffic. Despite the relatively small size of Auburn, you can also still find things like craft breweries and cool coffeeshops that you might find in a larger city. Of course, every location has its upsides and its downsides. To be transparent with you, Auburn does not have the night life of a city like Miami, the deep historical culture of city like Boston, or a populous art scene. Although you can take a day trip/weekend trip to a larger city like Atlanta for a bigger city experience (~1.5 hour drive), you will not find that type of experience in Auburn. If those types of experiences are important to you during the next 4-5 years of your life (and it is completely valid if they are) then living in Auburn may not be the ideal living environment for you. Additionally, Auburn is less diverse than metropolitan areas and the South more generally has a unique culture that is quite different from living in a larger area (for better and for worse), which is also an important factor to consider when deciding to live here. All that being said, your mileage may vary in terms of how important each of these factors are to your decision making process, so ultimately there is no "one size fits all" answer as to how much you would enjoy living in Auburn. Of course, this is something I would be more than happy to discuss further with you if it is a point of concern/curiosity and I certainly appreciate that it is an important factor when deciding where to attend graduate school.