UCSF Shares Postdoc Insights at NPA Conference

Christine Des Jarlais, UCSF’s assistant dean for postdocs and career development, recently took Postdoc Slam “on the road,” so to speak, when she presented her poster “UCSF Postdoc Slam: A Celebration of Postdoctoral Research” at the annual National Postdoctoral Association Conference in Orlando, Florida, in April.

The National Postdoctoral Association is the leading organization advocating for postdocs nationwide, and the NPA Conference is the largest national conference and networking event dedicated to the postdoctoral community.

“Since we started Postdoc Slam at UCSF in 2016, we’ve had many inquiries from other institutions about how we do it and how they could get it started at their own universities. So I decided, let’s do a poster and share our experience more formally at the NPA Conference,” remarked Des Jarlais. “We made a colorful poster with Slam photos and some key points and suggestions. I was really pleased by the interest it generated. I hope more institutions will be inspired to try their own postdoc research communication competitions!”

Also representing UCSF with a poster at the conference were two postdocs, Leila Mohammadi, MD, PhD, and Anas Alkhani, MD. Their poster “Did you know I’m not from here? Now what?” highlighted the experience of international postdocs by reporting results of a survey developed and distributed with help from the Office for Postdoctoral Scholars and the International Students and Scholars Office.

Alkhani and Mohammadi noted, "We've received very valuable feedback and input from the postdoc community at the NPA 2019 conference, and we're working closely with UCSF's Office for Postdoctoral Scholars to discuss the future directions that we need to consider to address all the challenges that we've identified through the survey."

UCSF’s 4th annual Postdoc Slam will take place on September 19, 2019 in Genentech Hall at Mission Bay, with a live stream to Parnassus.