postdoctoral fellows

When I was a postdoc at NIH, I was one of thousands of research fellows, all of us in the rather interesting nether world that is neither quite student nor independent investigator. When my lab chief would explain my role to one of his colleagues as “something like an assistant professor” I would be happy for a week! But in truth of course, no postdoc is like an assistant professor–because assistant professors are independent investigators.

From an institutional perspective, postdocs are indicative (actually they are in fact a bio-marker for) research activity. The larger the cadre of postdocs at an institution, the greater the level of sponsored research, particularly in the biomedical research areas, but also in other areas of science. Thus, from an institute’s point of view, having lots of postdocs is a good thing.

Unfortunately, for many individual postdocs, it ain’t such a good deal. Salaries are low. Prestige is hard to come by, unless one is lucky enough to be the “anointed one” for a boss who is at the top of their field. And of course, the future is anything but certain.

Thus, one of the great unsolved challenges in science administration is to improve the lot of the postdoc, while at the same time producing lots of the same. One of my colleagues here at Mason, created an office of postdoctoral affairs at his last institution. And certainly there are some postdoctoral fellow associations and organizations which can subserve a somewhat similar role to that of graduate student governments and the like.

But ultimately the problem lies in the fact that a postdoc is a trainee, but often treated as an employee. These are often mutually contradictory.

Jim