April Announcements

Save the Date: Postbac Poster Day in May

The annual poster day for our postbac fellows will take place on Thursday, May 1, at Natcher from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. NICHD will hold a competition to recognize the best three posters from our institute. Posters will be judged by some of our very own postdoc fellows. Don’t forget to mark your calendar for this excellent opportunity to see our postbacs showcase their work. 

The 10^th Annual Fellows Retreat Is Near

The Annual Meeting of Postdoctoral, Clinical and Visiting Fellows, and Graduate Students will take place on Monday, April 21, at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. 

Keynote speakers include Dr. Eric Wieschaus of Princeton University, a Nobel Prize winner, and Dr. Sherri Bale, co-founder and managing director of GeneDx, a local company that specializes in testing for hereditary genetic disease.

Mentor of the Year Awards: Time to Nominate!

Intramural NICHD has two annual mentoring awards to recognize individuals who have served as outstanding mentors to trainees in the institute. 

Awardees in both the investigator (tenured, tenure-track, staff clinician, staff scientist) and fellow categories (postdoctoral, clinical, visiting, or research fellows) will be announced at the PI retreat in June. The deadline for receipt of nomination submissions is Monday, April 28.

For forms and more information on the nomination process, please visit: https://science.nichd.nih.gov/confluence/display/fellows/Mentor+of+the+Year+Awards+2014

Want to Be a FelCom Representative for NICHD?

Each institute has two representatives on the intramural-wide Fellows Committee, known as FelCom—one clinical and another for basic science. We are looking for nominations and expressions of interest for the Basic Science rep for 2014-2015. The rep also works with the Office of Education to identify academic and career programs of benefit to NICHD fellows. FelCom meets once a month. You will have a chance to network with other fellow leaders across the campus and contribute to planning and delivery of intramural-wide training programs. In fact, each rep is asked to serve on one subcommittee, like Mentoring or FARE.

For more information, contact Dr. Stephanie Cologna (stephanie.cologna@nih.gov), our current NICHD basic representative. To apply, send Dr. Yvette Pittman an email, together with a few sentences about why you’d like to be the NICHD rep, by Friday, May 2, and we will meet with our Scientific Director, Dr. Stratakis, who will make the final selection.

Save the Date: Interviewing for Academic Jobs

Are you going on the job market for a faculty position soon and would like to know what the interview is really like and how to prepare for it?

On Friday, May 16, 12–1 PM, The Office of Education is offering a brown bag lunch session with two of our senior fellows who recently completed several interviews for faculty positions at both research-intensive and teaching colleges and universities.

This is a great opportunity, in a small-group, informal forum, for you to hear firsthand what to expect during the interview process. We want you to walk away from the discussion with a sense of what search committees are interested in, the type of questions that are asked, tips for both phone and in-person interviews, what skills are most needed to be successful, and what you can do throughout your NIH training to be more prepared. 

If you would like to attend, please send Yvette Pittman (yvette.pittman@nih.gov) an email. Space is limited to 25 fellows.