Pursuing a Postdoc Proactively 2025
This fall’s series—held in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Graduate School—is open to graduate students at UNC, the University of Virginia, Norfolk State University, and Virginia State University. The four-part series is designed for Ph.D. students who want to better understand the pros and cons of pursuing a postdoctoral position, including what to look for in a postdoc and tips for effective networking.
Sessions will be held weekly on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m., beginning Oct. 1. The Oct. 22 session will run until 1:30 p.m.
This session will cover the objectives of a postdoctoral position and why an individual may consider pursuing one.
As part of the session, participants will engage in self reflection around their current training and career goals and work to articulate whether postdoctoral training serves these goals.
Oct. 1 | 12-1 p.m.
ONLINE-ONLY
This session will be grounded in work by Virginia Tech Engineering Education Professor David Knight's PLoS One paper: U.S. postdoctoral careers in life sciences, physical sciences and engineering: Government, industry, and academia.
The workshop will begin with an overview of data on career trajectories and earnings for both life sciences and physical sciences and engineering graduates pursuing postdocs in academia, industry, and government.
The second half of the session will provide an overview of common options for postdocs outside academia including at the National Laboratories, via government agencies, and industry.
Oct. 8 | 12-1 p.m.
ONLINE-ONLY
In this session, we will discuss the importance of the training aspect of the postdoctoral position and cover specific components of the environment one should consider before accepting a postdoc position.
In addition, we will discuss practical tips you can use to expand your network not only to learn of postdoctoral opportunities but to also assess the fit and relevance of potential opportunities to your needs.
Oct. 15 | 12-1 p.m.
ONLINE-ONLY
Join us online for this panel featuring postdocs working at a variety of institutions and supported by distinct programs that provide a snapshot of the diversity of postdoctoral experiences available in the United States.
Our panelists will include:
- Robert Fofrich, University of California (UC) President's Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Fofrich is an earth system scientist based at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. He is supported via the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. His research focuses on identifying sustainable pathways to mitigate the drivers of climate change and the risks it poses to human and natural systems. He has published on the energy transition, natural climate solutions, and climate change attribution. In addition to his research, he serves as Chair of the Engagement Committee for the National Postdoctoral Association. He holds a Ph.D. in earth system science from the University of California, Irvine. Prior to UCLA he was a postdoc at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
- Olivia Mendivil Ramos, Cornell Tech Runway Start Up Postdoc
Mendivil Ramos is a computational biologist who recently began in Cornell Tech's Runway Start Up Postdoc Program which seeks to support Ph.D. talent as they launch start up companies based on their research interests and expertise. Mendivil Ramos's start up, Néa Fertility, is a next-generation health platform for reproductive medicine that ingests multimodal patient data — omics, clinical history, and lifestyle — to train foundational AI models tailored to reproductive biology and personalized fertility care. Mendivil Ramos holds a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Prior to beginning in the Runway Start Up Postdoc Program, she was a postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, director of operations at the company Climate Change AI, and a senior computational biologist at OneThree Biotech.
- Francielly (Elly) Rodrigues, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Virginia Tech
Rodrigues works in the Department of Computer Science. Her research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. Her interests center on context-aware and intelligent extended reality (iXR) systems, particularly how immersive interfaces can sense contextual information about the user, task, and environment, reason over it, and adapt accordingly. The broader impact of her work is to create XR solutions that enhance productivity, communication, well-being, and accessibility across a wide range of applications, from education and medicine to everyday tasks. She holds a Ph.D. in computational modeling from the National Laboratory of Scientific Computing in Brazil. She began in the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at Virginia Tech in April 2025.
- Yunkai Sun, Postdoctoral Associate at Argonne National Laboratory
Sun is a postdoc researcher working at Argonne National Lab to deepen the understanding of electrodeposition mechanisms for steel production with emerging tools (C-STEEL). He is the current President of the Postdoctoral Society of Argonne. Originally from China, Sun received his master’s degree from the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Virginia (UVA). Additionally, he has served as International Student Liaison and then Chair of the Graduate Engineering Student Council from 2020-2023 in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UVA and was a member of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society of UVA.
Oct. 22 | 12-1:30 p.m.
ONLINE-ONLY