International Students

Having grown up in a very a small country (Denmark), having studied abroad (Portugal), and having taught at multiple universities in different countries – I am fully aware of most of the aspects and challenges with being an international student. I also wish to emphasize that I would strongly encourage all students to spend time abroad at some point of their career – either working or studying. Living abroad and successfully embedding yourself in a foreign culture is, in my view, one of the strongest and most convincing ways to show a future employer that you are a problem-solver, out-going, have cultural experience, that you can handle adverse situations – and a whole lot of other critically important skill sets. So, I strongly promote international students to pursue opportunities at UC Davis or other foreign universities.

It is also important for international students to understand the “other side of the coin” – I receive many requests for PhD positions, and most of them strongly suggest to me that you students are not quite aware of how the system works. Firstly, I may not have access to funds for PhD students – and tuition and living costs at UC Davis are quite high. This means that accepting a foreign student often means that we would have to apply for a scholarship from a funding body in your home country, and you should be the one identifying the most suitable one and finding out how your project can be effectively matched to their funding priorities. 

Irrespectively of which funding body you intend to approach and apply for a scholarship from, I can only accept to be your supervisor, if you can successfully demonstrate to me that you:

1) have identified an interesting and important research topic,

2) and I can communicate (English, French, Portuguese, Danish, German) sufficiently to fully develop a strong scholarship application,

3) can think critically and possess the basic understanding of a logic and sound experimental design (replication, controls, logic treatments, etc),

4) have a clear idea of my capabilities (read my papers and reviewed my website) so that we both understand how I may be able to supervise you (for instance, I have no experience in molecular techniques, so students requesting projects with that emphasis should approach other potential supervisors).

Your initial emails have to convince me about your capabilities in ALL four categories listed above for me to accept you as a student and work with you regarding your scholarship application. Finally, it is extremely important that you understand, that my role as your supervisor is NOT to tell you what to do. It will be YOUR project, and my role is to advise you and help you make the best possible decisions. In other words, don’t expect me to make the decisions for you – you come to me with options, and then we can discuss which of the options you should chose. The main reason for me having this philosophy is that I want my students to learn how to manage and feel ownership of their projects.