STEFANO BERTUZZI US
American Society for Cell Biology
Sunday, 22 September, 19:00-20:00, G102-103
Replumbing the scientific workforce pipeline
What is a postdoc? A time of life, a person, a training opportunity, or just cheap labor? And who is really suitable for a postdoctoral experience? What are the career options for graduate students? Several respectable reports have recently analyzed these issues in depth, all coming to roughly the same conclusion: there is a severe imbalance between supply and demand in the academic job pipeline. Postdoctoral positions have become a large holding tank of trainees with a narrow spigot measuring out a small flow to academic tenure positions. So what can we do to ensure a robust innovation pipeline to the world while securing the future of young generations of scientists? This presentation will deal with these thorny issues, propose some solutions, and describe a few pilot experiments that the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is embarking on.
Biography
Dr. Stefano Bertuzzi is the Executive Director of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), the largest cell biology society in the world. ASCB counts around 9,000 members. Dr. Bertuzzi writes a blog on the ASCB website called “Activation Energy” where he regularly discusses key scientific and science policy issues http://ascb.org/activationenergy/
Before joining ASCB, Bertuzzi was a scientific executive at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, where he was the Director of the Office of Science Policy, Planning, and Communications. In this capacity, Dr. Bertuzzi was responsible for planning and implementing a comprehensive agenda for national mental health research. Dr. Bertuzzi was deeply involved in NIH efforts to revise the peer review system for NIH grant application. He was also active in the design and implementation of a broad public access policy for access to all publications supported by NIH-funding.
Bertuzzi received a Master’s degree in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biotechnology at the Catholic University of Milan, in Italy. After a postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology at the Salk Institute in San Diego, CA., he became an Associate Professor at the Dulbecco Telethon Institute in Milan, Italy.
He was the recipient of several NIH Director’s awards, and other national and international awards.