Ninety-first Meeting

December 3, 2007, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104)

1. Welcome / Attendance:

BPC: Stacy Gelhaus, Mikolaj Pawlak, Laurence Wood, David Hokey, Meda Higa, Matt Seavey, Koichi
Matsumura, Hedi Schelleman, Lingli Zhang, Jennifer Bachorik, Ginny Cruz

BPP: Yvonne Paterson, Lashauna Meyers

Absent:: Kryste Ferguson, Dave Chimento, , Arindam Basu, Laurence Jacquot, Prema Sundaram

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 has paired with Lincoln University and Rutgers
Camden. Postdocs and Penn Port administration visited these two campuses. Right now there are
more postdocs than places so Penn State Abington and Delaware Community College are being
looked at as a potential third school to pair with for the program. The teaching seminar, which is
part of this program will begin in January and will be a regular class, meeting once a week, with
assignments as well.
b. Postdoc Policy—the wording is being “cleaned up” for postdoc policies concerning leave—child,
sick, and vacation as well as the wording for postdocs being regarded as trainees. The University
faculty senate will meet to discuss and this should be seen in the January Almanac.
c. H1 Visa Policy—still working to amend this. H1 visas will not be allowed for postdocs since a
postdoc is a temporary training position. Several exceptions will be made—if you already have an
H1, if you have filed for permanent residence, if you are married to a US citizen or if you are on an
F1 and completed a PhD at an American university. Harvard is currently being audited for this very
thing because they list their postdocs as employees; however, they do not advertise the position or
collect affirmative action data as should be done when it is a permanent/employee position. There
is still opposition to this decision at Penn and it is taking awhile for this policy to pass.

3. Major BPC and BPP projects: Subcommittees

a. Symposium—We are having problems firming up a date with the speaker for next year. Stacy will
get all of the available dates from Kryste and then contact Robert Sapolsky by telephone if we can’t
get him for next year we will have to start contacting other researchers to come and speak at the
symposium next year. Other options may be Peter Doherty, Craig Ventner, Kary Mullis, and the rest
of the list from last year. We also need to start formulating a list of speakers for 2009/2010.
b. Seminar Series— The next seminar speaker will be the Nature Editor, Chris Guenther (sp?). For
this seminar, the dinner/talk format will be used on the 14th floor. Hopefully this will prevent
people from coming in to only get food and leaving. Food options for catering are local restaurants
such as the Greek Lady, Qdoba, Beijing, Indian food, and Gold Standard also caters. 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. This will take place the end of January. We also discussed the format of
Alan Wasserstein’s seminar on professionalism. Miku is requesting that the council send him case
study examples of when the rules of professionalism are ignored. It should be multi-faceted and
include if possible, relationships on the faculty-postdoc level as well as the postdoc-
student/technician level. Art Caplan will present on April 30th regarding stem cells/HIV. Meda also
 has a contact at Florida International Institute who may be willing to present on “how labs
function”.
c. UCKIZ—Kryste, Matt, Miku, and Stacy met with Hugo Fitzgerald from UCKIZ on Monday
November 26th to discuss the potential relationship between the BPC/BPP and UCKIZ. The
greatest thing Hugo has to offer us is an extended Rolodex of contacts in areas that we have and
have not explored for seminars. The format that we designed at the meeting included Hugo coming
to speak to the postdocs at more of a general seminar to talk about different areas/ways in which
postdocs at Penn and UCKIZ can interact. In this seminar he will highlight on topics for seminars
that we have chosen already. It is our job to come up with a list of 10 seminar topics so he can begin
to contact people and schedule these for us. We anticipate these seminars to be on very specific
subjects; therefore, we do not anticipate more that 25-30 postdocs at each talk. He felt that this was
a good number for him. He can also set up cocktail hours or networking hours, which may be
sponsored by local law firms in the area who have business based interest. The cocktail hour
invitations would be extended to postdocs and local businesses—law firm, consulting, big pharma,
etc. Areas for seminars that would be focused on (which we currently don’t emphasize) are 1.
Writing a formal business plan 2. Working with venture capitalist and to obtain funding 3. Setting
up clinical trials 4. How to work in GMP setting and what pharma expects you to know. We would
like to have Hugo’s general seminar the beginning of next year with more specific talks to follow in
the late summer and fall.
d. Diversity—Meda and Lashauna have paired up to discuss issues/challenges of increasing the
visibility of the diversity committee. Lashauna suggested volunteering at MLK day, January 21st.
The Penn community does all sorts of out reach at local Philadelphia schools, i.e. books on tape.
Typically a lot of staff is present, but the group wants to extend the outreach to graduate students
and postdocs. Lashauna should have Kryste send this out to the postdoc list serve.
e. Insurance: Enrollment was last month, went smoothly, seems to be little to no complaints this
year, which is a nice change.
f. ERA-Link—Miku has been in contact with the European Research Area. There are many
grants/funding sources in the EU that EU and non-EU members can apply to for conducting
research in the EU. There is a “re-integration” fund and also funding from the EU research council.
They are interested in setting up a oneday event, which would include presentations, panel
discussions on EU-US research collaboration in the Life Sciences, a presentation on ERA-link,
dissemination of targeted information on funding opportunities and current RFP, and a reception.
g. Recruitment: Two new postdocs at this meeting Jennifer Bachorik and Ginny Cruz, Welcome!

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