BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX There is more to cultivating grapevines than meets the eye. Each year winemakers and grape-growers struggle to grow the perfect grapes they need to produce high-quality wines. And at least one scientist has found his niche in the dirt in which the grapevines grow. Soil is teeming with beneficial bacteria and minerals. At the same time, numerous pests and diseases lurk be...
It is clear that the ways of yesterday's science don't jive with today's scientific culture. The inaugural National Postdoctoral meeting fueled the fire, which continued to burn bright at the third annual Postdoc Network (PDN) Meeting the next day. Speakers and attendees of the PDN meeting focused on ways to work with institutions, societies, and mentors to implement changes for postdoctoral scho...
At the first Postdoc Network meeting in the spring of 2001, a group of postdocs began discussing the National Academies COSEPUP recommendations for standardizing and enhancing the experience of postdoctoral fellows working in the United States. Several of the postdocs were members of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB); they started working with the ASCB education committee to create a v...
Add a pinch of nervous energy to a willingness to collaborate and the need to advocate and you'll have the recipe for the atmosphere at the inaugural National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) meeting, which was held on the University of California (UC), Berkeley, campus last weekend. As with many great ideas, this one began small, with a group of postdoctoral fellows brainstorming over water and ch...
Last March, a group of women leaders came together at the Cathedral Hotel in San Francisco to discuss issues surrounding professional women in university settings. The symposium, called Women Leaders 2002, was coordinated by the Center for Gender Equity at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and was the third leadership conference devoted solely to topics concerning working women ...
One definition of the word "change" is to make the form, nature, content, future course, and the like of (something) different from what it is or what it would be if left alone. Numerous surveys have shown that the current state of the postdoctoral experience cannot remain at status quo. To their credit, entities such as the University of California system, as well as private institutions, have r...
In 1994, after years of feeling like an outsider, Nancy Hopkins, a molecular biologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), began to investigate the satisfaction level of MIT's female faculty. ?After 15 years I came to realize that women were not treated like men. It made me so upset that I could not go on unless I did something,? she said. She pored through the liter...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX It's hardly news that faculty members are busy. John Gardner, who until early this year ran a flourishing laboratory in the physics department at Oregon State University in Corvallis, while simultaneously heading up an award-winning scientific innovations company, is no exception to that rule. In any given semester, Gardner oversaw graduate students and postdocs, taught ...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX Mark West was working as a postdoc in the department of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California (UC), Davis, when he realized that he just wasn't happy doing research any more. He started thinking of different ways that he could use his scientific skills. Because he had worked with baker's and brewer's yeast, winemaking--a profession that relies on...
