76th Penn Biomedical Postdoctoral Council Minutes, August 07, 2006

Seventy-Sixth Meeting August 7, 2006, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104)

1. Welcome / Attendance: BPC: Frank Wilkinson, Stacy Gelhaus, Mikolaj Pawlak, David Hokey Luana Atherly, Hedi Schelleman, Tiangang Zhuang, Yuko Kimura (new member), Arindam Basu (new member). BPP: Yvonne Paterson, Kryste Ferguson Absent: Sam Murphy, Annie Curtis, Janice Young, Ying Xu, Africa Wallace, Mark Lee, and Fiona McGillicuddy 2. Update from Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs: Dr. Yvonne Paterson, Associate Dean for Postdoctoral Research Training, Director, BPP a. Advisory Committee Meeting Update: Two new members were introduced to the advisory committee at the meeting on August 1, 2006. Wendy Williams, Director of Research and Education at CHOP, has joined the committee. Recently the CHOP postdocs, from year two on, joined the BPP. This adds ~ 62 new postdocs to the program. The other new member introduced to the committee is Jorge Santana, who will be taking over as BPP Business Coordinator for Tara. Topics covered at the meeting included the Global Health Program, postdoc survey on BPP, diversity, and the RICDA grant, which Yvonne talked about at the previous BPC meeting in July. a. The Global Health Program is a placement program for international postdocs who wish to come to the States for training. This program benefits Penn by providing pre-screened candidates from top international universities. Questions tabled by Nancy Billings—such as whether or not this program was a value to investigators at Penn and should it be continued were discussed. It was agreed upon that for now, the program would continue. Unfortunately, most of the postdocs that have come to the States for this program have been placed at other research institutions besides Penn. b. The Postdoctoral Survey—Just to summarize, postdocs who responded are happy with the programs that the BPP offers and feel that career oriented seminars are the most important. Postdocs approve of the time of day/week that the seminars are held and would consider spending a nominal fee, if needed, to attend these programs. c. Ivonne Vidal Pizzaro is heading up the diversity program. She is currently working with campus offices to identify minorities on campus. Several

conferences are coming up in the fall, which she, Yvonne Patterson, and Wendy Williams will attend. d. Negotiations with local minority universities are still underway for partnering in the RICDA grant. So far Lincoln University has agreed to partner with Penn. Other universities being considered include the Community College of Philadelphia, and Rutgers Camden and Newark campuses. b. A new BPP website is under construction and nearing completion. This website will be an improvement upon the current one, but will still contain all of the links and information that are available currently. c. Ongoing talks concerning the incorporation of additional postdocs into the BPP are underway with the heads of other schools/departments at Penn. This should be an attractive offer for those not currently involved in the BPP because NIH ruled that T32 training grants must include some type of extra training (career/research) program setup for postdocs on these grants. Aside from engineering, the BPP is the only institution on campus that has these programs already in place. 3. Major BPC and BPP projects: Kryste Ferguson and Subcommittees a. Symposium: Wednesday, October 11, 2006, the call for abstracts has been sent out and the current deadline is August 18th; however, this deadline has been typically extended by a week in past years without affecting the timetable for symposium setup. Currently, there are about nine abstracts already submitted. There was a symposium meeting on Friday, August 4th to discuss the timeline of events as well as other points such as vendor donations for Lisa Marshall’s services (Frank and Stacy to write a letter to her requesting her services), the email to faculty for volunteer judges, contacting the speaker Bonnie Bassler, dinner with the speaker, how lunch will be served this year at the symposium, what time sign-in and setup will start the day of the symposium, symposium logo, inviting the NPA to sit at a table or send literature, inviting the AAAS, and planning some type of standard procedure for symposium/event planning. The next scheduled meeting of the symposium committee will be on August 17th at 1pm. Other topics discussed at the meeting at this council meeting included the speaker for next year and other ideas for getting more postdocs to help out with the symposium organization. Bio’s of the suggested speakers for next year’s symposium was handed out and the council voted on speakers, ranking them from 1 to 5. Miku will send out an email with the ranked results. Suggested speakers included Prusiner, Kenyon, Sapolsky, Mullis, and Germain. b. Budget—At this time it is unclear as to whether Sam has left the BPC. If so, a new treasurer will have to be designated to look over the budget for the council. This involves being a line of communication from the BPP to the BPC, reporting periodically at BPC meetings on spending, becoming familiar with yearly expenses, and making sure we maximize our spending capabilities for the year without going over budget. c. Editor’s Club—one paper was submitted as a result of the BPP/CHOP mixer. Luana also reported that an email was sent out to PI’s at Penn who edit for journals. They would like these PI’s to work with them so they can gain more

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experience with editing articles. There are also two new editors on the committee for a total of four editors. Diversity—the next meeting is on the 14th Seminar Series—Janice sent an email to Miku discussing the ongoing collaboration of the BPC and the Weiner lab to setup the Kumar Memorial Postdoc Lecture. Best dates for this lecture are late October or November due to the heavy load of seminars ongoing in the month of September and the writing workshop, immigration seminar, and symposium in early to mid-October. It was also suggested that after March, there are not a lot of seminars/programs in the spring, perhaps we could have one lecture this fall and one in the spring and keep the lecture from there on out in the spring of each year. Dave also suggested pairing the seminar with the symposium since it was already a postdoctoral event. Social Activities—Tiangang has procured money from Invitrogen and Qiagen for the symposium, a total of $1000. This money is being set aside to defray the costs Lisa Marshall, if she is able to provide her services critiquing the oral presentations as the symposium. Upcoming Services/Events: New programming will include a teaching workshop in November, career services sponsored events the first Thursday of every month, a business etiquette course on Saturday, September 9th with Mary Mitchell, the career fair on September 27th, and orientations on September 19th. Sign-in help is needed for the orientation and a co-chair must be present to speak on behalf of the BPC.

4. Other Updates/Topics BPC Restructuring: Miku discussed his current views on the restructuring of the council. It seems that the council is shrinking in numbers and it is no longer necessary to have everyone divided up into subcommittees. Instead, there will be two functions of the council—social and professional. Members of the council can decide which of these two areas best serve their interest. Instead of having to stick with one subcommittee members can choose different projects they may enjoy working on for the time being. Also, we discussed other ways to entice BPP postdocs into working with us. We need to enforce that they do not have to join the council, many people may feel this is a burden and while they may be interested in helping out sometimes or on certain projects, they will not be compelled to do so because of the pressure they feel having to join the council or attend all of the meetings. Instead, we may start sending out emails requesting “volunteers” to help with said project. It was also suggested that Wendy Williams designate one CHOP postdoc to represent them at the council meetings. Medical/Dental Insurance: Dave reported that the BPP is waiting for a quote on the new medical package plan. The next enrollment session for the United Concordia dental insurance will be Monday and Wednesday from 11-1, August 21 and 23 rd. Postdocs need to be aware that they no longer carry even the minimal dental insurance through Keystone. 5. Next meeting: September 11, 2006