This article is reposted here, with permission, from FASEB Newsletter, Vol 5, No. 6, December 2001 In order to have an informed discussion regarding best practices for training, mentoring, salary and other benefits for post-doctoral fellows, FASEB's Science Policy Committee (SPC) felt it important to first define who falls into this group. FASEB has now approved a definition of post-doctoral fell...
Like many other postdocs supported by an individual fellowship, I have struggled to determine whether I was supposed to pay U.S. income taxes and how. Every year around tax time, my fellowship sponsor sent me a photocopy of the same 1994 letter from an independent consulting firm, telling me in no uncertain terms that as a postdoc I was not "self-employed" for tax purposes. The 1099 form I receiv...
Interested in reading about the meeting? Click on a session title to read the associated article. The Postdoc Network invites you to attend the second national Postdoc Network meeting " Implementation 2002: Opportunities for Collaboration" on 20 April 2002 in Washington, D.C. Following the success of the first national Postdoc Network meeting and the National Academies' COSEPUP Convocation on Enh...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX Partnerships between the private sector and public institutions can be critical in helping translate high-quality biomedical research into products for the clinic. One foundation also sees them as a way to improve the postdoctoral experience. Research Corporation Technologies ( RCT) in Tucson, Arizona, makes it its business to identify and support technology-transfer opp...
Federal policies have a significant impact on the policies and practices of research institutions. So, might there be some kind of "magic bullet": one or two key policy changes that would significantly improve the postdoctoral experience? Maureen Fitch Bruhns, a member of the Stanford University Postdoc Advocacy Committee, suggests that "the most important changes in federal policy will be to cla...
Just where can one turn for advice when starting a new postdoctoral office? One natural place to look is other postdoc offices. Sharing of best practices is one of the goals of the Postdoc Network but, as comments made at the second annual Postdoc Network National Meeting made clear, publishing an online database of links to extant offices and articles highlighting successful offices is not enoug...
What is the definition of "postdoc"? How are your nation's research dollars allocated? Who decides on funding priorities for supercolliders and space shuttles? Who steers the debates on bioterrorism and stem cell research? If these kinds of questions interest you, you should think about a career in science policy. Over the past year, I have been pulled over any number of times by graduate student...
This is the first in a series of articles developed in anticipation of the Second National Postdoc Meeting. The Postdoc Network conducted an informal electronic poll using the Postdoc Network electronic mailing list and the Next Wave Forums. The majority of respondents were current or recent postdocs; their responses are the focus of this article. Subsequent articles will examine comments from po...
The old adage goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But, when a system is broken, as has been shown for postdocs in multiple independent studies, how should one go about fixing the "it"? This was the subject of a recent meeting convened by the Network on the Scientific Workforce of the National Bureau for Economic Research and the Labor and Workforce Program of Harvard Law School. In the meeti...
Beyond career development programming, a persisting concern of administrators--and postdocs--has been the need to equalize postdoc compensation and benefits across status categories and funding sources. Addressing compensation and benefits concerns requires both specialized knowledge and the commitment to seek workplace equity. As academic administrators and postdoc associations focus their atten...
Most postdocs ask themselves questions about their future goals only when forced to by the imminent end of their fellowship. Why is that? Many assume they are going on into research careers with known career trajectories. In academia, it is the tenure track. In industry, it is the climb from senior scientist to project manager. Why take time out from experiments that search for a cure for the com...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX Adapted from an article published in the April 2001 Women in Neuroscience newsletter . Serving as a reviewer and editor for a scholarly journal in your field is a key step in the career progression of a research scientist. It is a lot of work, and can take a toll on your lab and the time you can give to students and postdocs. The payoff comes not from financial compensat...
Welcome to the Postdoc Network electronic mailing list, an online community of nearly 1000 postdocs, faculty, administrators, professional society representatives, and funding agency officials. This is a moderated mailing list. Posted messages are archived by date, topic, and author. Messages with attachments will not be forwarded to the list, because attachments cannot be archived. Please includ...
In 1999, Stanford University initiated the I-RITE program. The idea was to help doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars produce brief written statements explaining their research in understandable and compelling ways to a nonspecialist audience. To date, 200 individuals, mainly from Stanford but also from institutions across the United States and Sweden, have participated in the program. Orig...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX The individuals and organizations whose job is to research, coordinate, influence, create, and disseminate science policy toil in a variety of settings: academia, think tanks, government agencies, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Their contributions make a difference in how we think about issues, society, and the world around us. Thinking abo...
One of the goals of the Postdoc Network is to bring together constituencies interested in improving the postdoctoral experience. In our ongoing effort to foster communication and a frank discussion of challenges faced in developing postdoc policies, we organized a discussion at the 2002 AAAS Annual Meeting, held in Boston over President's Day weekend. Panelists included Mildred Dresselhaus, a pro...
It has been an interesting summer. Over and over, I kept hearing that things were changing. Not only were new postdoc offices popping up all over the place-- the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New York University's Sackler Institute, the University of California, Irvine, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation?s Lerner Institute, to name but a few--but policies governing the postdoc ...
Postdoc job titles and classifications are commonly assigned by institutions based on the source of funding for the postdoc. This decision determines whether or not the postdoc qualifies for health benefits, retirement fund options, and even access to the institutional library. Sherry Queener, associate dean of the Indiana University Graduate School, explains the situation at her university as fo...
