87th Penn Biomedical Postdoctoral Council Minutes, August 06, 2007

Eighty-seventh Meeting August 6, 2007, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104) 1. Welcome / Attendance: BPC: Stacy Gelhaus, Arindam Basu, Ying, Laurence Wood, Chris Whittle, Yuko Kimura, Xinjiang Wu BPP: Yvonne Paterson, Kryste Ferguson Absent:: Janice Young, Fiona McGillicuddy, Dave Chimento, Dave Hokey, Miku Pawlak. Hedi Schelleman 2. Update from Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs: Dr. Yvonne Paterson, Associate Dean for Postdoctoral Research Training, Director, BPP a. IRACDA—Funded for 5 postdocs/year. Waiting on money to come in for program to start. Also, Yvonne and Mary Anne will begin reviewing applications for this year’s program. Ivonne Vidal Pizzaro has left the BPP. A new full-time position as Recruitment and Diversity Coordinator is open, which is being funded in part (50%) by the IRACDA grant. Yvonne and Mary Anne will be reviewing applications for this position as well. 3. Major BPC and BPP projects: Kryste Ferguson and Subcommittees a. Penn Editor’s Club: Update from Dave Chimento—have reviewed several papers and one grant. Would like to make a flyer for Kryste to send out to the postdoc body in efforts to recruit more people to PEC. Not sure what the status is regarding the internship with JCI. PEC will be helping with the abstract sorting for the upcoming symposium. b. Diversity—Africa is no longer at Penn. Yvonne has supplied us with the name of a postdoc who may be interested in heading the diversity committee, Meda Higa in Bob Dom’s lab. She is going to SACNAS this year. c. Recruitment—The next BPP/BPC orientation is Tuesday, September 18th from 2:30 to 4:30. We should really try to recruit at this function. d. Seminar Series—Debbie Gilead may come and talk—possible to incorporate this into a HH/reception type deal, maybe the week of September 10 th or the 24th. Also Victoria McGovern will come and speak in the spring about grant applications for Burroughs Wellcome. e. Social Activities—Happy hour on July 12th at 4pm on the top floor of BRB went well. Eileen from Millipore is interested in hosting an entire happy hour herself. Typically we get money from at least two sponsors. Also Allison from Qiagen and possibly Ron from Invitrogen will be at the symposium. We are looking to organize another happy hour in November and would really like to tie it in to a talk, possibly with Debbie Gilead. Arindam will ask Miku about this.

f. Sports—Ying brought two members of the soccer team with her to the meeting. They told us about their games with the University of Delaware and their desire for funding for the intramural league. I only got one of their names—Xinjiang Wu. They will be in touch about the cost of the application to be in the intramural league. g. Foreign National Committee—Had a meeting on July 26th. The next meeting is scheduled for the 23rd of August. Arindam said it went well, lots of good discussion. Also, it was discovered that there is a building on Sansom—Sansom East/West, which provides temporary housing at a fairly cheap rate ($100 something/week) for postdocs looking for permanent housing. The BPP will look into this further. h. Insurance: No update i. Monell Center: Chris Whittle came to represent the Monell Center. They have ~15 postdocs. It sounds like they will be taking part in many of our upcoming activities. j. National Postdoc Assoc. 2010 Proposal—Penn, CHOP, TJ, Drexel, and Temple will be the hosting institutions working together to submit the proposal, due August 24, 2007. The next teleconference is scheduled for tomorrow morning (9am, August 7, 2007). Meeting space at Penn has been secured thanks to Kryste and Yvonne. This includes BRB auditorium and lobby, the 14th floor, rooms 251253, and Dunlop auditorium. Wendy is looking in to space at CHOP. k. Symposium—After the abstracts are turned in by August 24 th the committee will meet again to go through abstracts and choose oral presentations. This will also give Mary enough time to put the abstract booklet together. l. Upcoming Fall Events—Orientation on Tuesday, September 18th, Etiquette Course with Mary Mitchell on September 6th from 9 to 4pm. There is a $20 cost associated with this, but it includes a book and lunch at the Inn at Penn. October 3rd is the biomedical career fair presented by Career Services. In November, Judith Swan will return to continue her scientific writing workshops, and a second orientation will be scheduled for December. 5. Next meeting: September 10, 2007, 5pm Stellar Chance Room 104