93rd Penn Biomedical Postdoctoral Council Minutes, February 04, 2008

Ninety-third Meeting February 4, 2008, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104) 1. Welcome / Attendance: BPC: Stacy Gelhaus, Mikolaj Pawlak, Meda Higa, Lingli Zhang, Dave Hokey, Koichi Matsumura BPP: Yvonne Paterson, Kryste Ferguson Absent: Laurence Wood, Matt Seavy, LaShauna Meyers, Katie Edmondson, Arindam Basu, Laurence Jacquot, , Hedi Schelleman, Jennifer Bachorik, Ginny Cruz, Prema Sundaram 2. Update from Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs: Dr. Yvonne Paterson, Associate Dean for Postdoctoral Research Training, Director, BPP a. Penn-Policy—The policy came out in the Almanac last month. Some calls to complain about the policy itself; however, the policy did not change only the wording changed for clarification purposes. b. Nurisng Postdocs—Nursing has ~20 postdocs who may be joining BPP c. Professionalism—Alan Wasserstein wants to have professionalism small group (8-10) workshops for postdocs and faculty. This would not be mandatory and BPP/BPC feel that attendance would be very low. Somehow we need to configure this type of setup for Bioethics training and that is what the BPP/BPC should focus on at the moment. d. Penn-Port Associates—Yvonne has sent out emails to local schools asking if they would like to participate in the mentoring program for the Penn-Port associates. She has had several positive responses so far. 3. Major BPC and BPP projects: Kryste and Subcommittees a. Graduate Student Center—The center is looking for postdocs from the council to sit on a panel and discuss how they obtained their postdoc and also to take graduate students through this process and answer questions. b. Symposium—Robert Sapolsky is coming to speak in 2008. Stacy received biosketch submissions of potential speakers for the next symposium in 2009. Speakers we will rank include Elizabeth Blackburn, Peter Doherty, Craig Venter, Randy Hampton, and Joan Steitz. After those who did not attend this month’s council meeting vote, the results will be tallied and report to the council via email. Stacy will then start addressing a letter to the top choice for the 2009 BPS. c. FNC—Did not meet in January. Arindam is back from India (Hooray!!!) and he will host orientations in February and March. d. Seminar Series— The “How Not to be De-Natured” seminar was a huge success with a 100+ turnout. The dinner theme was Indian. Each seminar will have a different dinner theme. It seems that the “eating while listening” method is working rather well and we will continue with this. Hugo from UCKIZ will be speaking on February 20th and will send his title and biosketch by February 6th to the BPC. Matt will make a flyer and post it around the campus. Laurence will organize the seminar logistics/food again. As for talks in the fall sponsored by UCKIZ: Hugo said that they had found someone to talk, he didn't mention the company name, but it was a NJ-Based Medical Device company, the speaker is the current CEO and they are actively

recruiting for several positions. It would be an entrepreneurship talk, building a company, how to recruit scientists, what to look for, etc. He said as soon as he had more he would pass it on. I speak with him several times a week, I'll keep asking. Also - Hugo mentioned that the UCKIZ certificate course for biotechnology is almost finished and will most likely launch in late summer, he mentioned this at the first meeting we had with him at the Science Center, Miko was particularly interested. Hugo said it would be sponsored by the UCKIZ but the training would be conducted by several companies already signed up for this training - JNJ, Sanofi, Merck. Hugo wasn't sure if they wanted to do a webinar based training or full certificate, I suggested a full certificate course would be better.

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Also - the Ourcloud.com site is almost finished, the PBG has finished our first digitizing of entrepreneurship seminars and plan to upload these to the UCKIZ networking site for all to see, Hugo would like us to try and do the same for the BPC seminars if possible. Diversity—Meda and LaShauna held a diversity meeting on January 30 th. Aside from the two of them, four other postdocs attended and three others expressed interest over email, but were not able to attend the meeting. Meda and LaShauna defined several areas on which they would like to focus: having postdocs from Penn attend ABRCMS and SACNAS. Meda is a member of the SACNAS postdoc council and says that this conference is an excellent opportunity for postdocs to network with other postdocs and biotech companies. They will be adding a poster session for postdocs at the next meeting. They also thought about some seminar/workshop ideas—such as grant writing (lots of minority grants, will create a list), and IDP workshop for all postdocs, a diversity faculty panel. Also some of the postdocs attending the meeting brought up some issues— a representative from the GLBT feels there isn’t enough support on campus. Stacy pointed out that the NPA has just formed a partnership with GLBT on a national level. Also, one postdoc is concerned because the BA of the departments are filling out statistical information on race when they enter new postdocs into the computer and this is a violation of rights. This information is not collected on postdocs because we are trainees and is not reported to the department of labor; therefore, there is no reason for the BA’s to “guess” what race a postdoc is when entering them into payroll. Yvonne and Kryste will look into this matter. ERA-Link—Miku is coordinating with ERA to set up a seminar here at Penn. ERA will pay for all expenses, but they wish Penn to provide a faculty member who currently has a trans-Atlantic collaboration. Miku will contact Neal Nathanson to find out if he knows of any faculty. Housing—Miku has also been trying to negotiate a contract with local housing companies to make it easier for postdocs to sign a lease and get out of the lease early if necessary. NPA Annual Meeting—Stacy, Miku, Kryste, Yvonne, and LaShauna will be attending in April. The meeting is in Boston and is sponsored by Harvard and some of the surrounding hospitals and institutes.

4. Next meeting: March 3, 2008, 5pm Stellar Chance Room 104