Postdoc Career Development and You! PCD-You is a project where postdocs just like yourself are interviewed about things besides their scientific research. It is focussed on their career, what have they learned so far? It can be very useful for the PCDI community. In a story that can be read in under 5 minutes, we give you an idea of how other postdocs are doing, what key-decisions they have made during their career, what they value most and for what reason. This way you learn more about the person behind their articles and learn some interesting new things in the mean time that are not in the book. We aim to interview a new postdoc every 2 months, providing you with a steady flow of stories and tips & trics.
This section is written by Naomi van Vlies and Maikel Jongsma, two future-aware PhDs.
PCD-You: Meet Johan...
As a student, Johan de Vogel experienced a Star Trek-like phenomenon in Lausanne that he will never forget. Since that trip to the Nestlé factory nothing in food science can surprise him anymore! How is he shaping his research career outside academia?
It is 06:55 AM when I meet Stephan Kemp, PI at the AMC, who is in possession of several grants among which a VENI and a VIDI. He runs a research group of 6 people, is married tot Barbra and the proud father of 2 daughters, Anne (4) and Merle (1.5). He lives in Delft and therefore spends 3 hrs of every working day commuting by train. How does he manage to balance all this?
Meet Selina Khan. She’s a postdoc in the Leiden University Medical Centre, where she studies the possible role for Toll-like receptors in vaccine immunotherapy. One of her passions is cooking and if she wouldn’t be working in science she would probably do something with her kitchen skills.
During the week Liz works as a postdoc at the Department of Pharmacology and Pathophysiology at the University of Utrecht. She spends her weekends pursuing her other passion: art. She enjoys her science career but still has some doubts about it too. Science demands 110% of one's time, which is a big commitment to make...
