A document by Gary S. McDowell. Click on the document to view its contents.

Current issues surrounding research and funding, in particular questions about training and workforce stability, affect career development amongst graduate students and postdocs. The Future of Research Symposium, held in Boston, USA, in October 2014, was organized by early career researchers to facilitate discussions about the scientific enterprise and central to these discussions were a series of postdoc-led workshops aimed at discussing problems, and identifying solutions. On May 20th at the NatureJobs Career Expo 2015 in Boston, USA, postdocs from the Future of Research organization led a workshop using a similar format, inviting participants to identify barriers to career awareness and preparedness for early career researchers, and possible solutions to these problems. Here we present the data from this workshop and summarize the main points raised, for the use of the early career research community.

On 8th June 2015, Sir Tum Hunt made a comment in reference to women in science which has generated much debate. In response to this a group of 11 alumni of Clare College, Cambridge, at which Tim Hunt is a member of the Honorary Fellowship, sent this letter to the College on 23rd June 2015.

This document contains my comments to the National Institutes of Health Request for Information on “Sustaining the Biomedical Workforce and a Potential Emeritus Award for Senior Researchers”, as submitted on March 6th 2015. I also discuss some of the recent news surrounding the RFI, including the low rate of response to the RFI, and attempts to increase response and open discourse on the topics by publishing responses openly.

On Wednesday, April 8, 2015, the blog post “Eroding Benefits for UMD postdocs?” caused quite a stir (Benderley, 2015). Such a stir, in fact, that the post was soon taken down, and revised (you can read both the original and revised posts at the link above). The blog pointed to an article in The Diamondback (Dunn, 2015), discussing changes to benefits for postdocs at the University of Maryland, College Park. The articles caused something of a storm over social media (Collins, 2015), not least because of a fair amount of confusion generated over what is actually happening. However, what is really noteworthy is a letter, signed by 131 tenured and tenure-track professors in life sciences at UMD, principally Iqbal Hamza and Norma Andrews, and supported by Jonathan Dinman, Chair of the Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics Department, which opposes the administration’s proposed changes because they will “raise the cost of support of postdocs, adversely affecting research productivity and competitiveness at the University of Maryland.” After receiving clarification on the matter from Mark Arnold, Director of Faculty Initiatives at the Office of Faculty Affairs at UMD College Park, I’m going to try to explain what the changes actually are, and provide some commentary on the faculty letter.

Here we present various pieces of advice from startup founders, academic professors, research scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and industry executives to current and future PhD students.

One of the ways that early career researchers can effect change in the academic research system is to make their voices heard, particularly when their input is solicited. Two agencies are soliciting such input until early March 2015: a survey responding to the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Report “Sustaining Discovery in Biological and Medical Sciences: A Discussion Framework”; and a Request for Information on the “Emeritus Award for Senior Researchers” from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Here we present a call to the scientific community to contribute to the discussions; provide resources that can allow researchers to read further and make informed comments on the proposals; and discuss the proposals in the hope of provoking further debate.

Organizing this symposium was a tremendous learning process for all of us. Here, we record the process we used, and the guidelines we’d follow (or not!) if we were to do it all over again. We hope they’re helpful to junior scientists looking to organize meetings of any kind, but especially those dealing with systemic issues affecting the research enterprise.   The organizing tips are presented below in topical “chunks” arranged in the chronological order we found they first required attention. However, most chunks have tasks that need to be executed over a long time scale. To facilitate the management of this, we assigned individual people to coordinate many of them.   If you’d like to organize your own symposium on these topics, please feel free to use whatever assets we have that may be useful to you. We would be delighted to offer additional advice; please feel free to contact us at info@futureofresearch.org. We’d love to help spread the word about your meeting!

A document by Gary S. McDowell. Click on the document to view its contents.

A document by Erin C. McKiernan. Click on the document to view its contents.