Plan for postdoc union sparks backlash

Standards for postdoc training.

Postdoctoral (Postdoc) training has become virtually institutionalized in many parts of the world as a discrete stage in the career progression in most science and engineering fields. However, there is far too much variability in what such training involves, across institutions and among the laboratories within them. Given its importance and pervasiveness—there are over 50,000 postdocs in the U...

Postdoc Labor Love

I look back fondly on my years as a postdoctoral fellow (1993–1995) as a period of heightened intellectual growth, clarity and optimism. After 5 years as a PhD student, I was finally set free to explore ideas more of my own creation, to start from scratch a new research project but this time with greater wisdom, experience and vision than was possible as a dazed and confused first-year graduate...

The 2-A postdoc.

D a long discussion of our favorite enzyme mechanisms, Gene Sander advised me that the easiest way to obtain a true picture of the transitory steps of a reaction would be to ‘‘hire a 2-Å postdoc.’’ In the mid-’70s, when this whimsical conversation took place, molecular and structural biology was just beginning to exert an effect on mechanistic enzymology. Whereas the advances of the past 25 yea...

Postdoc Annual Report

Regional Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases Sparks Plan for Increased Collaboration

Since the mid-1980s, the epidemiology of invasive group A streptococcal (GAS) infections in the United States and worldwide has changed, and the incidence of invasive infections, streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (strep TSS), and necrotizing fasciitis has increased. These changes may be the result of a shift in GAS M-types and a corresponding increase in strains that produce certain pyrogenic ...