Laura Lewis and Jing Kong receive postdoctoral mentoring award

MIT professors Laura Lewis and Jing Kong have been recognized with the MIT Postdoctoral Association’s Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring. The award is given annually to faculty or other principal investigators (PIs) whose current and former postdoctoral scholars say they stand out in their efforts to create a supportive work environment for postdocs and support…

VPR Meeting September 2024

Last week, the executive board of the postdoctoral association met withthe Vice President for Research, Ian Waitz, to discuss ways of improvingthe living and working conditions of postdocs at MIT. As a first step, theVPR and PDA agreed on a closer collaboration to effectively improvepostdoc life at MIT. To maintain continuity, the PDA and VPR…

First PDA general meeting and coffee hour of this term

Today we kicked off the first PDA General Meeting and Coffee Hour of this term! Thanks everyone for joining and sharing your great ideas for the postdoc community! You can download the meeting slides here. We look forward to seeing you at the next meeting on Oct 29th, 12 pm in E25-140 or via Zoom! Want…

Introducing the MIT PDA elected cohort for the 2024/25 academic year

Dear MIT postdocs Thank you all for voting during the 2024/2025 MIT PDA officer elections!  We are happy to announce the new cohort of elected PDA officers for the coming year who will be taking over on September 1st, 2024.  Election results: We look forward to the initiatives, connections, and events this new cohort will…

It is time to vote! PDA-Elections are open

PDA-officer elections are open! Exercise your rights as an MIT postdoc and vote to elect your fellow postdocs into the MIT Postdoctoral Association (PDA) leadership positions. All nominees have shown interest in the PDA and have elected to run for one or two official positions. Go to the election portal, read their statements to know more…

LUNCH WITH POSTDOC CAREER ADVISING CANDIDATES

Please join us to meet the final candidates for the Postdoc Career Advising position in Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD). This role serves the postdoc community with seminars, workshops and individual advising to advance your career. Candidate visits will take place next Tuesday (July 16) and Thursday (July 18), and each day there will be a lunch organized…

PDA Election

PDA elections are here! If you are interested in taking on a leadership positions, relating with institute administration and making changes happen for all postdocs, then this is an opportunity for you. Please use the form below to self-nominate yourself for a position you are interested in. PDA 2024/25 Elections: Self-nomination form The MIT Postdoctoral…

What Does It Take to Successfully Advocate for Postdoctoral Scholars?

Jonathan Cottet, Lukas Schmid, and Shen Wang co-authored an article in the Postdocket (the Journal of the National Postdoc Association). The article discusses the challenges faced by postdoctoral leaders in advocating for postdoctoral scholars and presents the RIPEN framework, consisting of five criteria for successful advocacy: Recognizing allies, Identifying opportunities, Presenting data-backed solutions, Encouraging involvement…

New PDA website

In December 2023, we migrated the PDA website to an MIT server and took this opportunity to restructure the content. We hope that these changes will make it easier to navigate our website and find the relevant information. If you have any suggestions for further improving the website, please contact pda-www@mit.edu….

Elections of the 2023-2024 PDA officers

We will hold elections for all officer positions during July 2023! For the PDA to function and provide great events and seminars for the postdoctoral community and advocate on behalf of you, we need motivated candidates! To learn more about the PDA and different roles, we will host a series of information events on Zoom prior to the self-nomination…