What's a Postdoc For? (August 24, 2007)

    The US' National Science Foundation (NSF) and to a lesser extent the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have begun to place conditions on  principal investigators (PIs) when awarding research grants that they advance the prospects of their postdoctoral fellows: in short be good mentors.

Congress recently enacted the America COMPETES Act which requires researchers to include a mentoring plan in every grant application to the NSF, and the NIH are told to clarify that its grantees may use some of their time to mentor postdocs and students.

NSF grant applicants must document proposed mentoring activities, which may include "career counseling, training in preparing grant applications, guidance on ways to improve teaching skills, and training in research ethics."

The August 24 issue of Science reports: "The NIH statement (grants1.nih.gov/training/q&a.htm#mentor) says that grantees can count time spent training students and postdocs as grant-related activities provided the training is related to the research being funded. That would enable postdocs to attend workshops and seminars relevant to their project, says Walter Schaffer, senior scientific adviser for extramural research at NIH. But Schaffer says it would not allow PIs to dispatch their postdocs to teach graduate students.
    "The policy is a small step forward, says Keith Micoli, an NPA board member and a researcher at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. But more steps are needed. 'If postdocs can't do work on a project that's not funded by the grant,' he asks, 'how can they be expected to conduct preliminary experiments to apply for their own grants?'"