I am writing to on behalf of the CDB division to solicit your interest in participating in a regular CDB postdoctoral lunch meeting (once a month), supported by the CDB division. The rationale for this regular meeting is that in our department, graduate students are well organized through classes and can turn to the GAO office with their issues and concerns, but postdoctoral fellows do not have an organized system to exchange information and ideas and to communicate their concerns. The goal of this regular lunch meeting is to provide an opportunity for postdoctoral fellows in the CDB division to get to know each other both scientifically and personally and to provide a venue for all the postdoctoral fellows to discuss job and family-related issues, exchange information, practice job talks and discuss any topics that are interested to all of you.
It is a postdoc-run meeting. You will have the chance to set your own schedule and agenda for the meetings. As a faculty liaison, I would like to help with setting up the initial meeting and identifying a couple of postdoc fellows who are willing to organize the meeting schedules. I can also help to communicate your issues and concerns to the faculty and division.
The initial organization meeting (lunch) will be:
Time: 12 noon, Friday Feb. 4.Location: 434 Barker Hall
In this first meeting, we will discuss scheduling issues, meeting format, potential discussion topics for subsequent meetings and set a schedule for scientific presentations for the next few meetings.
Please send a brief reply to me if you will participate in the first meeting so that I can have a head count for lunch order. Also I would like to have a couple of volunteers who can take over organizing the next 3 meetings for this semester. If you are interested, please let me know. Kunxin