The Nikhef Postdoc Committee was created in November 2021, by Andrea García Alonso (ATLAS, aalonso@nikhef.nl) and Suzanne Klaver (LHCb, s.klaver@nikhef.nl), and motivated by Marcel Merk.
Motivation
As a community, postdoctoral researchers form a notoriously inhomogenous group. Each of them comes with a different background, are frequently associated with different projects, their contract lengths vary, and also their start and end dates display large fluctuations. Each postdoc also finds themself in different stages of their career.
For these reasons, historically the Nikhef postdoc group has displayed less cohesion as compared to e.g. the PhD candidates, who are well organized and represented by the Nikhef PhD Council. This problem is not exclusive to Nikhef, and is ubiquitous to most research organizations, where postdocs often are at the risk of falling between the cracks.
A Nikhef Postdoc Committee was installed 2021, chaired by Andrea García Alonso and Suzanne Klaver. Since then, Andrea and Suzanne have organised different events for all the Nikhef postdocs. Check a summary of the editions that have taken place so far in the Postdoc Jamborees section.
Formalisation of the Nikhef Postdoc Committee into the Nikhef Postdoc Council
In March 2024, despite many Nikhef wide announcements during the Spiegelmoments and the Nikhef Jamboree 2023, the existence of these postdoc initiatives did not percolate to the SEP research evaluation of Nikhef. This suggested the importance and timeliness of formalizing the representation of Nikhef postdocs within a Council, analogous to the PhD one, with well-defined mandate, organization, and leadership. With the help of Juan Rojo, Suzanne and Andrea (current chairs of the Nikhef Postdoc Committee) started the process of installing a new Nikhef Postdoc Council within Nikhef.
Nikhef Postdoc Committee announcement during the Nikhef Jamboree 2023,
In analogy with the existing PhD Council, the Nikhef Postdoc Council should represent the postdoc community, provide educational, training, and career-orientation resources, organize social events, and in general streamline the embedding of the postdoc community within the Nikhef fabric. The starting point of the proposed Nikhef Postdoc Council is provided by the ongoing organization and activities of this existing Nikhef Postdoc Committee.
The goals and responsibilities of the Nikhef Postdoc Council are the following:
- Represent the postdocs at Nikhef.
- Coordinate training and career-development activities aimed at the Nikhef postdoc community, such as supervision workshops, career orientation, workshops on grant and faculty job application, and likewise.
- Organize social activities aimed at the Nikhef postdoc community, perhaps aligned with some Nikhef-wide events like the Jamboree or the Christmas dinner, to increase the cohesion between the postdoc cohort.
- Interact with the Nikhef Education Committee to set up, implement, and monitor the new postdoc mentoring scheme across Nikhef, and based on the received feedback suggest possible improvements.
Some possible activities that may fall within the remit of the Nikhef Postdoc Committee would include:
- Career orientation activities e.g. a mini-workshop on grant writing or how to efficiently apply to faculty jobs, or a workshop with alumni about careers outside academia.
- Personal development activities, such as training for the mentoring of PhD candidates and of BSc/MSc project students which in many cases are part of the expected activities of postdocs.
- Social safety training e.g. active bystander, how to react in the case of inappropriate behavior etc.
The Nikhef management will allocate a budget to financially support these activities, as is the case with those from the PhD Council.