Community, Collaboration and Careers!

In this guest blog, Lorraine Jackson, CMVM Research Support Officer, gives an overview of the College’s inaugural Postdoctoral Symposium.

The College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (CMVM) held their inaugural Postdoctoral Symposium on Thursday 14th November 2024 at the John McIntyre Conference Centre.  The organising committee was largely made up of CMVM postdoctoral researchers to ensure the event was run by postdocs for postdocs.  The focus themes of the symposium were community, collaboration, and careers!

The day kicked off with a warm welcome from the Head of College, David Argyle, then straight into scientific technique flash-talks by ten postdocs in the College demonstrating the breadth of expertise and range of techniques used and available within the community.  Next up was Sara Shinton, Director of the FLF Development Network and Institutional Lead of the Wellcome InFrame programme, who talked about how her early postdoc years provided her with a springboard to career success.  Sara’s has written a blog about her talk.  I would highly recommend taking a few minutes to read her honest and highly insightful article.

During the lunch break, as well as refuelling and hydrating delegates took part in a game of “academic bingo”, intended to encourage the forging of connections between postdocs and also to facilitate engagement with the symposium’s partners, sponsors, and our fabulous CMVM facilities staff.

The afternoon session commenced with a careers panel of CMVM postdoc and PhD alumni who have since progressed in academia and teaching as tenure track fellows, or who have moved into other sectors such as Scottish government, scientific publications, public engagement, and industry.  Many questions were asked of the panel which highlighted the career avenues that postdocs can take that they may not realise, and the wide range of discussions really supported the fact that postdocs have a wide range of transferable and sought-after skills that they need to bring out more when considering their next career move and when applying for jobs, either within or out with academia.

The final session of the day was the careers fair, or speed networking if you like, with fifteen tables each hosted by someone who represented a career option typical for a postdoc from CMVM. A wide range of sectors were represented, and delegates had ten minutes at each table to speak to the hosts and then could move on, or just continue their conversations.  Zebrafish workshops ran in parallel to the careers fair for those interested in this type of biomedical research or to just find out more about the range of research possible in these remarkable fishes, including a zebrafish virtual reality platform, which ran throughout the day and was visually amazing as well as scientifically fascinating.

At the close of the meeting, cash prizes were awarded to the best three techniques talks (voted for by all the postdoc delegates) and the first three of the fully completed bingo cards.  Helen Cambrook from our sponsor Rouken Bio, then pulled random completed bingo cards out of the hat, aka our big red postbox, to give out the much sought after fluffy alpacas! We are very grateful to our main sponsors Rouken Bio and BBSRC and also to Zeiss and Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) Catapult whose financial support made this event possible.  Thanks also to our other symposium partners who gave up time to attend on the day – Edinburgh Innovations, the Institute for Academic Development and all our amazing staff from the CMVM facilities.  Thanks as well to the fabulous postdocs on the organising committee who put masses of time and effort into this project and delivered a fun and successful event – well done!

Our feedback so far has been very positive, with all the sessions being rated highly and ninety percent of returns stated they would attend if we ran the event again.

‘Fantastic Symposium’, ‘Nice format’, ‘A unique opportunity for postdocs with all the various career aspirations’, ‘Well organised with a strong sense of welcoming and togetherness’

Until next year…!

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