I am a postdoc and recently I received two offers for R1 tenure-track positions in biology in the US. I am having a very difficult time deciding between them, partially because I have different personal connections to each. I have discussed the matter at length with my PhD and postdoc advisors and others (faculty in other departments, other universities, etc.), and I get mixed opinions on it. I am hoping to get some input from others on things I may not have thought about or tips for making the decision (throwaway account to avoid identification). I have completed negotiations and here are some of the relevant points as they stand (I have only another day or two left to decide):

University A:
+Public university, high ranking/prestigious
+Family and a friend live nearby
+Faculty seemed friendly and supportive during interview stages
+Higher salary offered, which is higher even accounting for cost of living differences
+Brings in very good students
+New building
~A few people do work related to my research area, but not most
-Has a somewhat higher bar for tenure (would likely need a few more papers, which worries me but I would probably be ok)
-Have to start over again in terms of social & professional network, which I am very reluctant to do (I am a creature of habit and am not looking forward to uprooting myself for the 4th time in my career from a place where I am currently happy)
-Have to move far away & don't know the people there very well yet (though they seem good so far)

University B (also my current department as a postdoc):
+Public university, mid-ranked
+I really like the town and the people in the department & am comfortable living here
+Many of the faculty are closer to my research area than University A, with possibly a bit more potential for collaboration
+More grad student support in the form of abundant TAships
+Bar for tenure very reasonable
+Lower cost of living
+I have an established professional network & professional activities here, with many faculty who are friendly/supportive
~This is my current department with my postdoc advisor (who I like a lot and would like to have around as an informal advisor and friendly colleague, but I know the conventional wisdom is to move to a new place and am worried about the impact on future grant funding and optics. My advisor has also said they personally would like me around as they see me as a good colleague. My lab would be significantly different, so we would not be working on the same projects, but would still have thematic connections. We would not formally collaborate at least until I'd get tenure.)
-Can have a harder time recruiting personnel here (faculty, staff, & students)
-Significantly lower salary, even compared to similar universities (when accounting for cost of living differences with A, it is still lower)
-General discontent in the university with top-level leadership, even compared to similar universities
-Have had some issues with faculty retention, partially due to above points

Both:
-Offering about the same startup (after negotiations)
-Offering all of the space and other resources that I would need/want for my lab
-College towns with similar population sizes, within 1 hour of a bigger city
-Departments are good overall fits in terms of research, but B has more overlap (not just my advisor)
-Similar teaching and service expectations
-Recent and future recruitment of several other new faculty, so I would have a cohort

If anyone has experience or thoughts on a situation like this, I'd appreciate any tips or input on making the decision. I can also try to reply if additional info is needed.

I've been following this sub because I'm starting my PhD in September. Recently I've seen a LOT of posts here, in r/labrats and in r/gradschool about getting "fired" from their PhD. How common is this? When I've had jobs, I've generally performed well, but I'm worried I won't do as well in a PhD because in my experience, the deliverables in research aren't always clear. All my projects in undergrad had a specific intended deliverable but as I worked on it, things ended up being more complicated than anticipated, and I had to pivot. It seems like people get fired for not being productive enough or not getting enough data, and I'm not sure how fair it is given the unpredictable nature of research. Essentially, I'm curious just how unproductive someone needs to be. Is it dependent on the PI?

I'm trying to better understand how to efficiently use both text words and MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms for searches on PubMed. Based on a tutorial video from PubMed's official page (check link on bottom), it seems that PubMed automatically searches for synonyms and relevant MeSH terms when you input a query. For instance, if I want to locate all relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing rehabilitation vs. surgery following an ACL rupture, would it be sufficient to simply use the RCT filter and search for: ACL AND rehabilitation AND surgery? According to the video linked below, this should automatically incorporate synonyms and appropriate MeSH terms into the search. Is my understanding correct, or am I missing any nuances of how PubMed's search functionality integrates MeSH terms and synonyms into these queries?

Any insights or corrections would be greatly appreciated!

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/oet/ed/pubmed/quicktours/topic_how_it_works/index.html?_gl=1*xm45er*_ga*MTcwNzIzNjYwMS4xNTAzNzYzNDk5*_ga_7147EPK006*MTcxNDA3MTUyNC4xLjEuMTcxNDA3MTU3MS4wLjAuMA..*_ga_P1FPTH9PL4*MTcxNDA3MTUyNC4xLjEuMTcxNDA3MTU3MS4wLjAuMA..

This whole semester has been pretty rough for me, but this past week has been hell. I switched dosage for my antidepressant and long story short i've been suicidal and absolutely hopeless. I can barely get out of bed and do basic things like eat, shower, etc. Anyways this has caused me to miss classes. I missed my lab yesterday and got an email from my professor today that since I've missed 3 labs, I will be dropped from the course.
I contacted my university's DRC about my psychiatrist writing a letter to excuse my absences, but I'm worried they won't get back to me in time. I'm freaking out, I'm angry, I'm depressed. I feel like absolute shit and I feel like my professors just think I'm lazy when in reality I want to die. In the mean time, how should I respond to my professor's email?

Hi all! I currently have a paper out for review and the editor just reached out informing me that they’re having difficulty finding reviewers.

They were only able to secure 1/3 reviewers and thus requested that I send forward 5 scholars who could potentially review my article.

This is my first time ever even submitting an article and I’m a bit lost on the etiquette on finding reviewers.

Besides looking in my bibliography for potential reviewers, what are some other places/criteria I can consider to maximize my chances of a scholar agreeing to review? Also, should I only be considering professors or can I put down PhD students/post-docs as well?

Thank you so much!

This is a "does anyone else experience this?" and a "how can I teach students to do this better?" sort of question.

I'm (PhD student/teaching associate) currently marking undergraduate student essays (second year, public history), and time and again I'm finding references to sources that are either poor quality or aren't really suitable for the concept/idea being referenced. The majority of these references fall into one of the following categories:

1. An article/essay etc which is vaguely connected with the topic in question, but not actually discussing the same idea.

2. A source which does include a sentence directly relating to the topic in question, but the remainder of the article/essay has very little to do with the topic in question (as if someone has searched for a key word in a PDF and not actually read the article).

3. Not an academic source (e.g. a blog post, newspaper opinion piece, online encyclopaedia [Wiki etc], other self-published website) - I know that some non-academic sources can be very well-written and insightful, and depending on context can be valid sources to reference, but the ones I find cited often aren't, and for this assignment students are required to cite a certain number of academic sources (peer-reviewed articles etc).

Is this something that other people find in undergraduate students' work?

I'm a PhD student teaching for one module, so have limited influence over what the students are taught in each seminar (and the seminars are all site visits, not class-room based, so I can't put things up on a smart board and do a presentation). I would love to spend a whole seminar just talking about how to research a topic, but I can't. There's only two assignments, one of which doesn't require much independent research/referencing, so I don't have many opportunities to provide feedback there. I have explained that this assignment requires you to use academic sources, this means peer-reviewed articles/published work not wikipedia and blog posts etc, please don't just Google it but look at the reading lists and look at the references and bibliographies in the key readings, use a library catalogue etc. Does anyone have any ideas for how to explain to students how to research a topic and judge the quality of the sources they are using (preferably in a concise enough way that I can fit it into an already full seminar!)?

So I graduated with my BS last year in history with an archaeology minor. Original intent was to shoot for being a historical researcher and ultimately aim for a tenured track position as a history professor. Well since that job market is saturated I've transitioned and pivoted into archaeology which has a lot more job opportunities, promise, and more direct return of investment. I'm taking an off year this year while helping on digs here and there to add to my CV. My intention was to start on my Masters next spring. However, several people have recommended I take a year to work in the field doing CRM to get experience and more upfront if it's something I wanna do. Many have stated that in that regard, it's a mistake to jump into your Masters like that still being green. Thoughts?

*Marking as humanities since even though archaeology is a science, it's thoroughly tied to history.

I am a full prof at a UK Russell Group university.

For context, I did my PhD at a fairly prestigious and well-endowed private university in the US. My earlier degrees were done in my home country, which is neither the UK nor the US.

Where I work, there seems to be huge amount of bureaucracy. Multiple middle managers, "heads" or "deans" of this or that. Committees and "leads" with overlapping responsibilities (I once counted five authorities who were authorized to make rules regarding research ethics applications). Central services (HR, procurement) that are hard / impossible to get hold of and disinterested when you do.

Is this a normal experience as faculty / academic staff at universities these days? Just a UK thing? Or maybe just my institution?

I note that many UK universities, including where I work, use a "school" system to administer departments: academic departments, such as English, sociology, and physics, are grouped into schools, which then are grouped into some higher level structure, such as a "college" or "faculty". This is one more layer of bureaucracy than my PhD institution, which seems to be part of the problem.

Is there anyone who has worked across different institutions and different countries who might have insights into this?

I’ve recently been approached by 2 friends on separate occasions to help them automate their research process for systematic reviews. They wanted me to run the studies they were examining through the openai api and extract meaningful information (such as population characteristics, exclusion criteria and statistical results). This worked surprisingly well and I was able to do it quickly in bulk.

Now if just one person had asked me to do this I wouldn’t think anything of it. Since it happened twice now I‘m wondering: would there actually be some value in providing a service that does this? For those of you who have worked on systematic reviews, how accurate and complete would the outputs have to be for you to consider incorporating this into your research process?

Hey there,

I'll be upfront and say I'm sorta losing it. A few months ago now, I was given the chance to publish in one of these multi-author works which bring in experts in a certain field around a specific topic. In my case, that topic happens to relate to my essential professional goals, and the experts in the field are none other than those I am likely to meet and network with on my way there. The final edition turned out great. High-quality print, some renown considering who the contributors were, and excellent research everywhere.

Everywhere outside of my piece. I was given 10 days to write the draft and send it. I hounded the editor for a couple more weeks just to get more edits in. I couldn't catch everything. I cited from memory, proofread poorly, and wind up with a series of formal issues I had simply neglected. The moment I was given the paperback edition and I laid eyes upon it I was fucking done. I've never had a nervous breakdown - but this probably came close.

The issues are these:

1. One footnote cites page X while it should be page X+7. Although it's not a direct quote, the phrasing should also reflect more closely the words of the author, but it sort of doesn't.

2. One phrase appears to imply a certain author held a certain opinion between a certain year and another, while it was my point that their opinion was only so and so up to a certain point before that.

3. Another phrase was intended to say a certain institution has a disclaimer concerning data compiled after a specific year. Instead, the way it reads, one could think the institution itself has been warning about said data since that year.

4. This one's the worst: at one point, I cite a certain author as claiming X% of this goes here, Y% of this goes there; it turns out they had qualified this statement further, and those percentages are not general, but more area-specific. The estimate is also five years older than the year I state!

That's roughly it. I'm losing it. I had a shot and I botched it. I got sloppy. If anyone ever reads this, the real discussion will be whether I'm a fraud or a clown. The only takeaways that sort of console me are these:

1. Surprisingly, none of these things undermine the text's thrust and argument.

2. I have persuaded the editors to let in some corrigenda. The paperback edition is there to torment me forever, though.

3. These are four citation errors. There are many more, and they're are alright and exact.

4. I'm a graduate student. Perhaps it's alright to make these mistakes, perhaps it isn't. All I can say is, if failure was inevitable, I would have preferred to fail privately and ephemerally.

I recently obtained my PhD and managed to stay affiliated to my University as “visiting researcher”. For me is obviously not a big deal, I am just collaborating still with the group. However a lot of people have been congratulating with me, saying that is an “honorable” position. I am absolutely ignorant on this.. how does academia perceive such a position? I am just curious as I didn’t even know it was a thing before it was offered to me..

Thanks for the answers!

Grateful for advice from German/Austrian academics!

Is it possible/accepted to habilitate in a different (but adjacent) discipline from the one you completed your PhD in?

In my case, I have a PhD in History of Art but have been publishing mostly in History and would prefer a professorship in that discipline. I'm from a country that doesn't have a Habilitation system and I do not know if this is either out of the question/frowned upon, or relatively normal.

Thanks!

Current grad student w/ an interest in developmental biology. My mentor is big in my field and he is kicking me out of his lab because I am not productive enough.

I work with zebrafish, struggled to get data as a first year student, and reading papers. He is aware is my ADHD and got in medication in the tail end of my rotation. He said he wasn’t happy with the progress I made in his lab during my rotation. He said that I should possibly look into other labs. I had asked him if I could keep working in the lab as I was doing my other rotations because I love the project and I wanted to continue.

He agreed and I was stretching myself thin with trying to get the line established while working in two other labs.

He keeps saying that I need to focus on injections and keep reading papers, which I have been trying to do. I have been skipping classes, coming in on weekends, and pushing myself. I had to take last month off from the work because I was burned out and very depressed. But, I went back to work a couple of weeks later.

I recently rejoined the lab under the assumption that he would sign the paper as my thesis advisor. However, he doesn’t want to because I was not being productive enough for the months I was rotating in other labs.

I wanna stay in this lab but I am tired of struggling. It’s causing me to feel bad and kinda made my depression worse. Is it better to find another lab? Or was his expectations too high? He said before that it would be an accomplishment for a first year student to get a transgenic line but is now going back on what he said.

Hi community!

I was recently accepted at PoliMi for the MSc in Computer Science degree (BSc in Robotics, from Mexico). My guess is that I got accepted for my background in autonomous vehicles, good SOP, and RLs. I already have a somewhat clear idea of my master thesis. This is an excerpt of my letter stating my research interests, and labs/projects/faculty I would like to work with/at:

Following my undergraduate experience, I became interested in developing motion planning schemes for autonomous vehicles. Specifically, I want to explore learning-based trajectory optimization schemes for applications where having an accurate dynamic model is crucial, such as in aggressive maneuvering, present in racing cars. Model Predictive Control (MPC) based methods offer a generic and promising framework in which the environment and vehicle dynamic constraints can be incorporated properly; there exist several papers that propose MPC-based trajectory planning algorithms with different setups, which vary in complexity of vehicle models. Moreover, optimization methods require an accurate dynamic model of the system. Traditional modeling approaches either rely on simplified models and/or invest immense engineering effort in selecting relevant features for system identification. Recently, data-driven methods, in particular neural networks, have risen in popularity as they have demonstrated their capability to accurately model highly nonlinear dynamical effects, which are present when operating vehicles at high speeds in the racing scenario. Nevertheless, due to their large computational complexity, their integration in real time optimization schemes has been limited, typically by reducing models to Gaussian Processes or small neural networks. The integration of powerful data-driven methods into already demanding MPC schemes is an active research topic, which has shown promising results recently.

... I would be keen to join the mOve team because of their focus in the design of control systems and data-based identification of black-box models, as well for their Polimove Autonomous Racing division and platform, in which I could develop a data-driven model for planning and control (thesis pre-proposal attached at the end). From the mOve research team, I would be honored to collaborate with Dr. Simone Formentin or Dr. Sergio Savaresi, for their work on data-driven system identification and MPC techniques applied to electric cars. Additionally, I would appreciate working with Dr. Andrea Manzoni or Dr. Paolo Zunino, from the MOX laboratory, for their advances on computational learning methods that capture complex system dynamics.

Note: I even made a thesis pre-proposal as part of my application.

I am wondering if someone has views on whether Polimi represents a strong election to pursue a MSc degree (Computer Science / Robotics) oriented to build a career path around autonomous vehicles. Besides the contents of each MSc program, I am aware that there exists the mOve research group, under Dr. Sergio Savaresi. I became interested in their autonomous racing focus, and would like to join the group to carry out my master thesis. My main concern is, could I expect a better project outcome by studying at Polimi, or at other institutions such as EPFL (Predictive Control Lab under Dr. Colin Jones or Dr. Giancarlo Ferrari), ETH Zurich (under guidance of Dr. Melanie Zeilinger or Dr. Alexander Liniger), TU Delft, Stanford, etc.?

Besides, I am still unsure on whether to continue with a PhD or entering the industry in companies such as Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, etc., but do you think that Polimi is a strong election for that matter? I am aware that studying at X or Y institution does not guarantee job offers, but how do you think that Polimi is viewed in this applications? Would there be better options such as ETH Zurich, EPFL, CMU, etc.? Or do you think that projects carried out in the mOve research group are very competent worlwide?

Thanks a lot! This is a concern I've been carrying for some time, but I hope this post helps someone else looking to decide which career/life path to follow.

NIH k99 submission. My ERA Commons status has been pending for the longest time and today changed to ‘award prepared.’ I thought this means that the NOA is coming. Has anyone gotten this status and NOT awarded?

I'm currently dealing with a huge amount of reports that I need to review (by adding some comments in pdf file to help the author improve its report).

I was wondering what was the best way to do it. I'm currently working on my laptop using a pdf reader to add comments but it's tiring and difficult to work when I'm out of the office or in the subway for example. Since I will be reviewing for at least three more years, I was considering if investing in an IPad could be the best solution for example. However the author should be able to read my comments without having to install any particular software or whatsoever.

Any advice will be helpful.

Thank you

Hey all,

I wanted to ask some advice for pursuing a phd. I have been heavily debating it as I don't feel I gained sufficient professional experience yet and I wanted to have more expertise before committing. On the other hand, I love academia and writing essays and was thinking I could pursue a phd part-time.

My other issue is because I don't have sufficient expertise professionally yet I am also struggling to think of one singular topic to concentrate on. On the other hand, I am also struggling to find a role in the fields I want. I studied both law and international relations and it's a struggle. I am one of those people that has an interest in so many different topics and fields, and it's hard to focus on just one (it can be both good and bad).

Guess I would like to hear feedback on pursuing a phd and pursuing a phd in these topics or whether I should wait first to get some more experience. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi everyone,

In March, I graduated (with a master's degree) in Computer Engineering at the age of 28 with a final grade of 110 cum laude.

I would be curious to read some advice or opinions from someone definitely more experienced than me on the possibilities that lie ahead for my short-term future.

The Professor who supervised my thesis suggested that I stay to do a Ph.D. with him, which would mean finishing at 32 years old. I expressed my doubts to the aforementioned Professor, and he told me not to worry about age and that he would be very happy to keep me with him and continue with some projects.

Do you think this is the right path considering the fact that during my thesis I became very passionate about the world of research?

I would like to hear how you handle feeling like a career failures all the time.

After finishing a 3-year PhD and a postdc I have taken up a position as technical academic staff at a decently prestogious university in a country with decent research level in STEM. My position is permanent (at least it is not a temporary contract, but the position itself could be terminted if the research center runs out of money or gets terminated by its main funding agency... Which lately has happened with regularity of a research center at my region being closed unexpectedly every 3-5 years).

What bothers me is that I feel like an underachiever more and more often. Around me there are some incredibly clever postdocs starting their own groups in world-class institutes, PIs getting prestigious research grants, publishing in Nature and getting amazing things done, PhD students that are making good progress i their thesis work, core facility leaders negotiating amazing prices for cutting edge equipment... Or just leaving academia to make decent money in Big Pharma.

Meanwhile I am just helping out with some experiment designs or data analyses here and there to postdocs and PhD students. I know for sure that i got my position due to sheer luck (there were people whom I know personally better qualified than me applying but left soon after being hired, leaving the position vacant and the center desparate to fill a position). I also hear PhD students occasionally mentioning that a 3-year PhD is not a real PhD, and yes it is just people talking but my self esteem as a researcher is already pretty low at the moment and this doesn't help.

I want to do something challenging, to prove myself but now I feel stuck - academically there is nowhere to grow from the staff position I am in but the longer I stay in academia, the harder it will be to convince someone in the industry to hire me, at the same time I feel like I need the flexibility of academia to stay afloat with small kids and no family support in childcare.

From what I see from people around me I have max 10 years to achieve as much as I can, after which most reach some form of career stagnation due to burnout or lack of motivation to put their energy into their workife. This leaves me stressed that I am not doing enough to explore alternative careers, the fear that I am too nerdy for working in private companies and too tired as a parent to start anything new. This feels rather hopeless.

Have you been in that position? What did you change and how did that work out for you?

I am sorry for the long text in advance, but I could do with some advice.

I want to tell here about my experience of getting fired from a PhD position. I was doing my PhD in Cognitive Psychology and during my 1 year evaluation period, my supervisors put me in a “Maybe" evaluation as the project was going slow, which means if I complete all the goals they set for me in 3 months, I get to continue the PhD or else I get fired. They had never warned me about something like “speed up or we won’t be able to pass your evaluation”, so it came as a bit of a rude shock to me. My goals were to complete data collection for 10 participants, write half of my paper and write an analysis script for the 10 participants.

During those 3 months, I was terrified, as I am not from the EU and I was afraid about being homeless and being harassed by the immigration police, as non-EU students get rights to renting properties only when they have a full 1 year employment contract. I was also severely overworked beyond my contract hours due to inhuman workload, overcrowded lab, unrealistic demands and Christmas holidays and exam weeks taking a huge chunk of that time from the 3 months. Due to this, I canceled my only holiday in the year to see my friends and families. My supervisors have taken 3 long holidays in the same year, asked me to not disturb them on weekends, even during the difficult evaluation period because they want to “spend time with family”, even though they went home to their family every evening unlike me.

They would constantly mock, scream and taunt me in a discouraging tone. They would keep comparing my progress with other students, even though I did not have the same peer support, technical assistance, mentorship from seniors or post docs and content expertise by supervisors themselves, as I worked on an isolated topic and equipment. They would lie about me, keep shifting goalposts and changing expectations, and then get mad at me for not keeping up, even though they could never make up their minds. There were moments when I wanted to sternly say that you can’t treat me like this, but decided against it due to my temporary contract.

Ultimately, they fired me despite me completing all my goals with complete accuracy. One of them explained to me that he does not think I could complete this PhD in 4 years according to that country’s standards. In the same conversation, he mentioned a PhD student from my country who took 10 years to complete her PhD. This “work according to this country’s standards/quality” had been a constant racist remark by him to me whenever I made a mistake, even though he’d never actually help me correct that mistake. What he meant was that standards are lower where I am from. He also said that he regrets the “personal stress” of homelessness and deportation and would ensure that they will conduct the checkpoints better next time.

After a while when I received my checkpoint feedback documents, the reasons they cited were “cultural incompatibility”, things like I took help of a colleague once in correcting an error for my script and hence I am not independent (why do we have a research group and colleagues then, if we can’t take their help) and several disprovable lies. I had also asked this supervisor for help with my script as at that time I was overburdened with data collection and writing deadlines, something that both of them never helped me with, and he flatly refused to help me and told me to be more “independent”. His other students constantly took help from each other and technical assistants, I do not know why he singled me out for it.

I collected evidence against the lies, showed them to the confidential advisor and the ombudsperson, I had a chat with an HR and they all parroted the same thing - that they have already taken the decision to fire me, they could have only helped me if I came to them before. But before, I had gone to the same confidential advisor to talk about the shouting, aggression and fears about homelessness and deportation, he had told me that he can’t help me without revealing my name. I went to a senior professor, and he also told me that he can’t help me. I went to the graduate school, and they told me that they can’t help it, as behaving like this is a personality problem, and you cannot change people so easily. They are also denying me references because they say that they have no confidence in my skills for a PhD at all, anywhere. I think they are just angry that I complained to the ombuds and confidential advisor.

I try to move on, actively shutting down their comments about my supposed “incompetence” from my head when I apply for other positions, but it has taken a severe toll on me mentally and physically. Please tell me if you have had any similar experiences, and how did you manage to move on. I still like research and want to look for better positions with better people, but I also feel extremely drained.

Hello, I am an international PhD student in the US (F1-Non STEM) and I have multiple offers for a 2 year postdoc from different US universities. I am told that universities generally provide a J1 to international postdocs so I should try and push for a H1B (leverage multiple offers) since J1 has the “return to home country” requirement and will not allow me to apply for a green card.

1. However, in case I am not able to secure a H1B, is it as bad to go in for a J1? Should I prioritize getting a H1B even if the position offered is not as interesting to me (compared to the others)? Are there any existing/prior J1s who can shed light on their experience?

2. How difficult is it to get a return to home country waiver?

3. How did you proceed with your green card process after J1? What challenges did you face?

Some more context: I am an Indian national and my long term goal is go into academia.

I know most universities want you to get a PhD at a different place if you want to go back and be faculty there. Is that the same for post docs?

Hi,

I am finishing my second year as a polisci student in university. One of my classes is called US Political \Parties/Opinions where we have discussed things such as political factions and coalitions, voting and election patterns, shifting political landscapes, and everything in between. My professor has been so patient and good to us despite having family issues of his own this semester. I want to gift him something, a book or something else he would enjoy, but I am not sure what. I want to surprise him on Monday. Any book recs for polisci professors tht they would like perhaps?? Or anything other ideas haha?

Thanks!!!

Anyone have insight as to why this might have happened? If it matters, this draft has already been through a revise & resubmit. TY for any thoughts!

I'm the current president of my university's postdoc association, and am in the process of negotiating some travel funding with our office of research to support our members. All of our current members are from STEM fields (primarily bioengineering and cog/neuro based on our university's focus), but we do have arts/humanities/business programs at our university, and would like to negotiate terms that would benefit future members from those programs as well. In absence of input from relevant local scholars, I'm turning to Reddit for some input.

So, postdocs (or people who have been posdocs) outside of STEM fields, what kind of events would you need travel funding for? We're panning to ask for some support for academic conferences and professional development workshops - are we missing anything that would be helpful?

On a broader note, what kind of support would non-STEMP posdocs be happy to have from their postoc association, that our current STEM-heavy administration might not be aware of?

I don't know what to choose in college. I like both English and computer but I think I need a computer+ commerce degree because I think it'll be useful for my career. but the problem is I don't study well and my marks are average so I don't know what to choose.. if I choose English, It'll be easy for me and I'll have a lots of free time but the job may not be good. And if I choose computer, I think it'll be difficult for me to study and remember them as I don't have a great memory and it's very time consuming but I can work in a good field. But I'm willing to study hard for my career. I'm just scared what if I can't do it. What if I'm not good with codes.

What's an appropriate present for my advisor and committee members? My doctoral defense comes up in a couple months and I want to give them something to show my appreciation for them, after my defense. I am not sure what is culturally acceptable in the academic world in the USA (I'm int'l student), and how this gesture might be looked upon. But I just really feel indebted to them and want to give them presents, after I have graduated. Please can you give me any suggestions? My discipline is Math. Thanks

I've been reading the news about the FTC banning noncompete agreements, and it got me wondering about how this translates to the academic sector -- and also about general concepts pertaining to intellectual property in academia.

In academia, it is fairly well established that professors move from one institution to another, taking their research programs with them.

Let's say, for example, Dr. Smith is working at University A with an externally-funded research program studying mitochondrial biogenesis in yeast; at some point, Dr. Smith receives a more attractive offer and takes up a faculty position at University B, seeking to continue the same research into yeast mitochondrial biogenesis.

This seems to be a widely-accepted "norm" in academia. But, is it, though?

What would happen if, instead, University A would choose to be draconian or vindictive, and somehow attempt to retain Dr. Smith's intellectual property? How much control could they retain over the research that Dr. Smith carried out while at University A, and how would they enforce that?

• Could they prevent Dr. Smith from continuing his work into yeast mitochondrial biogenesis at University B?
• Could they somehow block any unpublished research carried-out at University A from being published at a later time?
• Etc.

Obviously there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Dr. Smith is a specialist in yeast mitochondrial biogenesis, and so he has to make a living by using that too; he can't suddenly change to CAR-T development on a whim! So, who or what entity, or what legal precedent, decides how much of Dr. Smith's intellectual property he can retain from University A?

I am in my 2nd year of PhD. This year has been difficult. I am tired all the time and I am starting doubt the significamce of my own research. I don't know if I am burnt out or depressed. I have been feeling worn out. I applied for some funding and it got rejected as well. I think about people outside academia and feel like they are doing better in life though despite all of this I really want PhD. Within PhD, I aim to learn all the skills with it but right now, I don't know life seems hard. Have you had any burnout symptoms? If so, how did you deal with it?

I submitted a manuscript to a journal (Hellenic Journal of Cardiology - there is no reason to not disclose the journal name).

More than two weeks, the manuscript is still with editor, not board rejected, nor under review.

Am I an a-hole if I withdraw the manuscript for this reason? I already emailed two days ago and they gave a nonsensical answer saying that the paper will have its turn…