Ninety-second Meeting

January 7, 2008, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104)

1. Welcome / Attendance:

BPC: Stacy Gelhaus, , Laurence Wood, Meda Higa, Matt Seavey, , Lingli Zhang, Jennifer Bachorik, Ginny
Cruz, Prema Sundaram

BPP: Yvonne Paterson, Kryste Ferguson

Absent:: Mikolaj Pawlak, LaShauna Meyers, Dave Chimento, , Arindam Basu, Laurence Jacquot, Dave Hokey,
Hedi Schelleman, Koichi Matsumura

2. Update from Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs: Dr. Yvonne Paterson,

Associate Dean for Postdoctoral Research Training, Director, BPP
a. Penn-Port Program—The Penn-Port program education class will start on Thursday, January 17th.
Penn-Port postdocs are currently meeting with their mentors at Rutgers Camden, Lincoln
University, and DCCC.
b. Postdoc Policy—the new postdoc policy should be out in the January almanac.
c. SACNAS/ABRCMS—Yvonne is looking for faculty volunteers to represent Penn at these
meetings.

3. Major BPC and BPP projects: Kryste and Subcommittees

a. Spring Programming—This spring, BPP will put on the career workshop series, every Tuesday in
March. Topics include—1. the basic job search, 2. academic job search, 3. industry job search
(including biotech, big pharma, startups, and someone from HR, Matt will give Kryste contacts), 4.
alternative careers, 5. Lisa Marshall—public speaking and presentations. Lisa Marshall will come
back in April with a new program on networking. Also the K-awards workshop and negotiation
seminars are being scheduled for the spring. Also at the end of January (31st) Ameriprise
representatives will be here to speak to postdocs about retirement and how to save for retirement
when you are not eligible for a 403b or 401K. *Regional NPA Meeting will be June 16 th at the Penn
Museum. Twenty people from different careers will be present during lunch and postdocs will have
an opportunity to eat with them at small tables. Postdocs will switch halfway through lunch to talk
with another speaker of interest.
b. Symposium—Robert Sapolsky is coming to speak in 2008. They symposium date is the 24th of
October, which happens to be a Friday. Stacy also requested name and biosketch submissions of
potential speakers for the next symposium in 2009. So far we have Elizabeth Blackburn, Peter
Doherty, Craig Ventner. We will vote at the next meeting in February.
c. Seminar Series— The next seminar speaker will be Nature Editor, Chris Guenther (sp?), talk
entitled “How not to be Denatured”. This will be on the 22nd of January. Laurence is still making
arrangements for food. Kryste will send him a list of allowed caterers, those in Ben Financial
system. The dinner/talk should start at 4:30 pm and allow 30 minutes for people to get food and
settle in and the speaker will start at 5pm. Alan Wasserstein and Tony Rostain will most likely give
the professionalism seminar on May 20th. Case studies from ULAR will be used to portray the
postdocs as the abuser and a case study submitted by the council will be used to show the PI as the
abuser. Victoria McGovern will be schedule to speak in September.
 d. UCKIZ—Matt will tell Hugo we would like two seminars in the fall, which can be schedule from
October through December. One will be R&D focused and the topic will be vaccine design. The
second seminar will focus on business plan development. Hugo will be giving an overview of
UCKIZ to postdocs in February.
e. Diversity—Meda has scheduled a diversity meeting, open to all postdocs for Wednesday, January
30th from 4-5pm. An email will go out to all postdocs. Another email will go out regarding MLK
day with information provided by LaShauna. Also, Meda brought up the iPRAXIS meeting, which
is being held on January 8th at 1pm in BRB 252.

4. Next meeting: January 7, 2008, 5pm Stellar Chance Room 104