The first Postdoc Research Day was a great success! All of the talks were interesting and engaging and the poster session was really enjoyable. Thanks to all of you who came out to the event, and a special thanks to all of the presenters.
Congratulations to the following presenters!
Talks:
1st prize – Julien Bergeron
2nd prize – Amber Southwell
3rd prize – Rana Sarfraz
Posters:
1st prize – Whitney Weikum
2nd prize – Stuart Cain
Registration is now open for our Postdoc Research Day. The event will take place on Friday, August 26, in the afternoon, in the Life Sciences Centre. Please register here, if you would like to present a poster, give a talk, or simply attend. You will be asked to provide an abstract for talks and posters, and the deadline for abstract submission is July 31st.
The PDA is planning on hosting the first annual Postdoc Research Day on Friday, August 26, 2011!! It will be an afternoon event (approx 1 pm – 6 pm) held in the atrium of the Life Sciences Centre. We will have poster presentations, speakers, and prizes, with a wine and cheese reception afterwards.
Nature News article on the challenges of producing too many PhD’s and not enough jobs, highlighting trends in specific countries.
From the article:
Education: The PhD factory
David Cyranoski Natasha Gilbert Heidi Ledford Anjali Nayar Mohammed Yahia
The world is producing more PhDs than ever before. Is it time to stop?
The first-ever PDA elections have wrapped up and we would like to thank everyone who voted! “Voter turnout” was better than expected, and it’s great to see that so many of you are interested in who will be guiding the PDA through the next year.
The outcome won’t come as too much of a shock, since we only had one candidate for most positions 🙂
We’re also still looking for someone to take over as VP Finance. It’s not a terribly time consuming job, but it does require that you be based at the LSI.
We’ll update in the next week or two with more information about the new executive members. Hope to see some of you at Subeez tonight to celebrate!
The UBC Postdoc Association is pleased to announce our first-ever election for executive officers! Following the recent ratification of our constitution in November, we held open nominations for officers.
Likely because this is our first election, most of the positions only have one candidate running. However, it’s still important that you support the PDA by taking just a few seconds to cast your votes. We hope this precedent will lead to more participation in future elections, and a stronger PDA to serve you.
We’ve looked at a few different methods for voting, and decided that for this year, we can simply do an online poll. In future years, we hope to implement a secure system in which you can login via your CWL account.
Please follow this link to the survey, which will tell you about who is running for each position and allow you to vote:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5QM79BR
The ballot will be available until Monday, January 17th, at which time we’ll tally the votes – new officers will begin their term on February 1st. With the new executive in place, the PDA will be able build on all that we’ve accomplished in the past few years, and make UBC an even better place for postdocs in 2011. Thanks in advance for your help and support!
Whether on vacation or working hard over the last several weeks, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and new year!
Nominations for the 2011 PDA executive officer positions are still open and will remain so until Monday – if you are interested in running for a position (or in simply joining the executive committee), please send an email to ubc.postdoc@gmail.com. You can nominate yourself, or anyone you feel would do a good job!
By being involved with the PDA-exec, you can help make positive things happen in the postdoc community, and it’s also a great experience to have in your CV. All the positions are described in more detail in our constitution, which you can read by clicking on the “Constitution” tab near the top of the page.
Throughout next week (January 10th-14th) we’ll circulate a ballot and hold the election by online poll, so keep an eye out for that and please take the time to vote! New officers will begin their term on February 1st, and most of the existing officers will continue to be involved throughout the year to ensure a smooth transition. Here’s looking forward to an exciting 2011 –
All the best,
Andy
Research Week 2011 is coming up in early March, and the PDA is looking for UBC postdocs to present their amazing work!
The PDA would like to showcase the quality and diversity of postdoc research at UBC, and will be putting together a 2-hour seminar session during Research Week 2011, to be held March 4-11th (the specific time and day that week to be determined). This session will likely consist of five or six 15-minute talks from a wide variety of disciplines, and will be a great opportunity to present your work to the UBC community at large. We are also hoping to run a concurrent session at CFRI to highlight clinical work being done by postdocs off-campus.
If you are interested in participating, please send an email to ubc.postdoc@gmail.com by Friday December 17th. Please include a brief description of your project and any other information that you feel would be useful. The PDA executive will selecting the final group and submitting the list to the VP Research office on Dec 23rd.
Let’s show the world that the really outstanding research is done by postdocs!
Our 2010 Annual General Meeting was a great success – many thanks to everyone who came out and made it possible. The PDA constitution was unanimously voted into being, and is now up on the site under the “constitution” tab. In it, we’ve outlined our mission statement, defined the roles of the PDA officer positions, and laid the framework for future meetings and amendments.
We also began taking nominations for next year’s officer positions – these will be open for the remainder of 2010, so if you are interested in running for a position (or in simply joining the executive committee), please send an email to ubc.postdoc@gmail.com. You can nominate yourself, or anyone you feel would do a good job! Remember, being involved with the PDA-exec isn’t a time-consuming commitment, so think about it… not only is it an opportunity to make good things happen in the postdoc community, it’s also a fantastic experience to have in your CV!
Early next year we’ll compile a ballot with the candidates and a brief statement of intent for each, and hold the election by online poll the week of January 10th-14th. New officers will begin their term on February 1st, and most of the existing officers will continue to be involved throughout the year to ensure a smooth transition.
This has been the culmination of a great year for UBC postdocs, and we’ll head into 2011 stronger than ever. Of course, we certainly could not have done it with out the considerable support we’ve received from the postdoc community – thank you!!!
Here is the NEW flyer for the Annual General Meeting: PDA AGM 2010. Let’s spread the word!