CONFESSIONS OF AN INDUSTRIAL POSTDOC: MY LIFE AS A POSTDOC WITH COMPANY ABO SOME REAL-WORLD OBSERVATIONS ON INDUSTRIAL POSTDOCS To do or not to do the industrial postdoc. That's a question faced by many young scientists when they complete their Ph.D.s. Is doing an industrial postdoc a good career move, or will it hurt your chances for a job in industry. As each of the writers in this feature will...
All working parents struggle to balance their work and family lives, but for many postdocs, the issues are further burdened by a lack of resources and support. In the Postdoc Network this week, Karen Spratt describes the efforts at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to create a child care subsidy program for postdocs. However, a subsidy program may not be the answer for all institutions. ...
As John Marburger stated in his keynote address at the 2002 Postdoc Network meeting, "bringing data on postdoc issues to the attention of institutional and government officials will inevitably lead to improvements." A credible, quantitative database will serve as the foundation supporting necessary reform initiatives and a baseline from which to track progress. Several articles on postdoc surveys...
You have probably seen the cartoon of the fish--holding a baseball bat in his fin--looking longingly at a ball sitting on the sandy beach. Just like that "great moment in evolution," we hope that the launch of the Postdoc Network's newest feature will be a great moment in the evolution of postdoc organizations. This week, we unveil postdocnet@aaas.org--a moderated listserv to connect far-flung po...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX CHOOSING AN INDUSTRIAL POSTDOC TO FINALLY GET A LIFE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDUSTRIAL AND ACADEMIC POSITIONS IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY THE PROS AND CONS OF DOING AN INDUSTRIAL POSTDOC You've just finished your Ph.D. Your dreams of an academic appointment fade proportionally to the number of postdocs in direct competition in your field of expertise. Yo...
Reprinted, with the permission of the American Society for Cell Biology, from the ASCB Newsletter Volume 25, Number 11, November 2002. In 2000, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP), a joint unit of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, published a report on enhancing the postdoctoral experience for scientist...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDUSTRIAL AND ACADEMIC POSITIONS IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY THE PROS AND CONS OF DOING AN INDUSTRIAL POSTDOC THE WAVE OF THE PRESENT All Ph.D. candidates face the same stressful question during the last stretch of the already-stressful-enough writing of their thesis: Should I do a postdoc or move on into the job market? Some choo...
(The author is currently a third-year postdoc in industry. His name and that of his company, which is based in the Northeast United States, are pseudonyms.) I always envisioned myself as a stellar scientist. When I was an undergrad, I spent long summers in labs streaking out yeast and bacteria, feeding flies, making reagents, and finally doing experiments in crystallography. When I was in grad sc...
Bringing together postdocs on a single campus is no easy task. Imagine organizing a postdoctoral council with representatives from the nine University of California (UC) campuses! Considering estimates that there are 5000 postdocs in the UC system, about 10% of the national postdoc population, we believe that UC postdoctoral policies and practices have a significant impact far beyond the UC campu...
Last week, we began our discussion of postdoc status with a primer on two categories of American academic postdocs. This week, we'll cover the status issues of foreign national postdocs, "student" postdocs, and postdocs working in government labs. Foreign Nationals as Postdocs According to the National Academy of Sciences' COSEPUP guide, over 50% of postdocs in the U.S. are foreign nationals. The...
In its first year of existence, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Postdoc Association (UNC PDA) saw many remarkable successes. The benefits committee designed and conducted a campus-wide survey of postdocs to help the PDA set priorities for discussion with the UNC administration. The information committee began work on a Web site to link postdocs to relevant administrative and career...
I have a lot of colleagues in academia who ask me if they should do a postdoc in industry. Vaguely familiar friends of friends who I haven't spoke with in a while will also e-mail and ask me if they should do postdocs in industry. I guess that they view me as a source of reliable information, despite the fact that I didn't do my postdoc in industry. (I did mine at a large, research-oriented state...
If you had asked me near the end of graduate school what I would be doing as a postdoc, I might have answered, "Toiling away at the bench." This flippant answer could come from any postdoc wearing "publish or perish" blinders. At the time, much of what I thought was important to postdocs reflected my graduate student naïveté. Now, although I have toiled mightily at the bench, I have also taken th...
Editor's Note: John H. Marburger, III, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Policy Advisor to the President of the United States, presented the keynote address at the 2002 Postdoc Network meeting. We are encouraged by his willingness to work with postdocs, faculty, administrators, and funding agency officials to try to address the federal-level workforce issues faci...
A periodically administered survey of the postdoc population can provide accurate information that would help policy-makers establish priorities and also set a baseline against which changes in science postdocs' conditions can be measured. In many cases, postdocs have taken this task upon themselves, designing and administering surveys at the departmental and institutional levels. For local chang...
The Whitehead Institute undertook a major re-evaluation of its human resource policies in 2000. The institute initiated an internal compensation policy review for all Whitehead employees, including postdocs. This article and its companion piece, which is written from an administrator's point of view, assess the change process and the effect it has had on postdocs. These two articles are intended ...
"Your name's not in the computer," the woman in Human Resources (HR) said. "I'm a postdoc in the biology department," I said. "I started December 1." "A postdoc?" "Yeah, I'm a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow." "Well, you're not in the system." I went back the next day with NSF letterhead in hand. "Nope, you're not in the computer and there's really nothing I can do until you are."...
Last summer, the postdocs at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) voted narrowly to join a labor union. On 16 March they voted overwhelmingly--80 to 5--to ratify what is believed to be the nation's first collective bargaining agreement specifically for postdocs. Negotiated by UCHC and the union, University Health Professionals (UHP), also known as Local 3837 of the AFL-CIO-affiliate...
In our section, Evolution of Postdoc Organizations, we have focused on postdoc programs, offices, and associations--and in particular, on their beginnings and their futures. But the very nature of the postdoctoral experience is that each postdoc moves on, leaving the association behind. The postdocs who found and contribute to their associations obviously shape the organizations, but do the assoc...
"E ach institution should encourage and financially support a postdoctoral association that serves the social, informational, and logistical needs of postdocs and provides a mechanism for them to communicate with institutional leaders." A laudable and worthy goal, to be sure. And one of the 16 recommendations made to institutions by the National Academies' Committee on Science, Engineering, and P...
