98th Penn Biomedical Postdoctoral Council Minutes, November 05, 2007

Ninetieth Meeting November 5, 2007, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104) 1. Welcome / Attendance: BPC: Stacy Gelhaus, Mikolaj Pawlak, Arindam Basu, Laurence Wood, Yuko Kimura, David Hokey, Meda Higa, Matt Seavey, Koichi Matsumura, Laurence Jacquot, Prema Sundaram BPP: Kryste Ferguson Absent:: Yvonne Paterson, Dave Chimento, Hedi Schelleman 2. Major BPC and BPP projects: Kryste Ferguson and Subcommittees a. Symposium—Recapped the symposium and addressed issues regarding attendance during the day and how many people were late to hang their posters. Also, there was a symposium “pre-meeting” where we discussed the value of a symposium manual. We will start working on this sometime in the near future. This will outline all the steps necessary to planning a good symposium from when to choose the speaker to the necessary requirements for the day of the symposium. We also have the foundation for a symposium committee including Kryste Ferguson, Stacy Gelhaus, Miku Pawlak, Dave Hokey, Laurence, Arindam, and Meda. We need to pick a Lisa Marshall winner from the oral presentations and this will be done within the next week or so. Also, we are going to start thinking of a list of speakers for 2009 since Robert Sapolsky is going to speak next year. Stacy will contact Robert Sapolsky to finalize a date for the symposium so Kryste can reserve BRB auditorium/lobby. b. Seminar Series— The new seminar series kicked off on November 1 st with a talk from Debbie Gilead and then refreshments. The problem seems to be that many people still came after her talk just for the food so we are trying to figure out a way to solve this problem without taking away from the social/networking atmosphere of having some sort of reception afterwards. Venue changes were also discussed as well as which speakers are lined up for the coming year. Laurence has a list of people lined up to speak in the spring/summer. c. UCKIZ—Matt Seavey was at the meeting to represent PBG and discuss two topics, first UCKIZ which stands for University City Keystone Inovation Zone. Ultimately this group can act as a liason between academia and industry. Hugo Fitzgerald will come next meeting to discuss the possibilities of this consortium interacting with the BPP/BPC. This will include speakers, adding to our “working in industry” section of the career program, etc. The second idea Matt brought to the table was the “Philly Healthcare Trek”. He was able to go and visit three companies on one day, learn about their labs, human resources, company attitudes and atmosphere, etc. This was organized by Wharton/PBG and he thinks it will be good for the BPs. However, we need someone like Matt to take this projet head-on and find out how much work it will be to organize. We would have to do a pre-registration for $20 to make sure people showed up and it would be first come first serve as only a limited number of postdocs could attend. d. Insurance: Enrollment will be in mid November. Changes to the insurance include the addition of medical and dental PPOs, repatriation of remains, occupational health. Overall there is a 12.2% increase in premiums. Also, we negotiated with Aetna to bring the copay down for prescriptions. If we can get postdocs to use generics more often, this copay will decrease further. e. Recruitment: New postdocs came to the council meeting. One from the Monell Center—Koichi Matsumura and one from Vet—Prema Sundaram 3. Next meeting: December 3, 2007, 5pm Stellar Chance Room 104