Life after the PhD: How to become a successful postdoctoral researcher

How to be(come) a successful postdoc

Practical advice and guidelines
Based on my personal experience
• As a postdoc researcher (1999-2003)
• As a postdoc employer (2012-2017)

1993-1999
PhD @VUB
1999-2000
Project
Researcher
2000-2003
FWO Postdoc
Fellow
2003-now
Assistant/Associate/Full
Professor

Guidelines for a Postdoc career
• Get involved
• Organise
• Be mobile
• Publish or perish
• Collaborate
• Increase your
visibility
• Network
• Teach
• Apply for funding
• Prepare your future

Get involved
Contribute to the research community
by taking on active role in
• scientific conferences
– Become part of PC
– Publicity chair
– Student volunteer
– Local co-organiser
– …

Get involved
Contribute to the research community
by taking on active role in
• scientific journals
– Become reviewer
– Guest edit journal special issue
– Member of editorial committee

Journal Special Issue
IEEE Software solicits theme issue proposals by guest editors (GEs).
• A proposal can be submitted
– At any time
– Or in response to a call for proposals
• Once submitted, a proposal will undergo a review process
Contact information
• Editor in Chief: Diomidis Spinellis, dds@computer.org
• Theme Issue Associate Editor: Henry Muccini, henry.muccini@univaq.it

Organise
• Scientific workshops
– related to your research interests
– Avoid too narrow focus
• Tutorials
• Hackathons
– (e.g. SATTOSE)
• …

Be mobile
Carry out research stays abroad
• Long stays (> 3 months) look good on your CV!
• Short stays can be useful too
– to forge new collaborations
– to write joint publications

• Publish the results of your PhD in conferences
and journals
• Be ambitious!
– Focus on high quality conferences and journals
• A or A* rated
• High impact factor
• Not to high acceptance rate

High impact journals in software engineering

CORE conference ranking (2017 update)
http://portal.core.edu.au/conf-ranks/

• Write up a survey, taxonomy or research
challenges about your research area
(if they do not already exist)
Try, e.g., ACM Computing Surveys (A* journal)

… it will boost your citation count

Specialise …
Publish high-quality research in your domain of
expertise

… and diversify
• Expand your research horizon by exploring
other research domains
• Preferably by collaborating with other experts
(see next point)

Respond to calls for special issues
Check for call for papers
for thematic issues in your
journals of interest
• Empirical Software
Engineering
• Software and Systems
Modeling
• JSS
• …
Hope that your
conference paper gets
invited for a special issue

Collaborate
• Work together with other researchers
on research topics of mutual interest
– Write papers
– Develop tools
– Create and share benchmarks and datasets
– …

Collaborate
• Work together on research topics of
mutual interest
• Co-organise events
• Supervise PhD and master students

Increase your visibility
Become active in social media

Increase your scientific visibility
Use researcher-specific social media to share
your publications, slides, projects, …

• Present your research at university labs
• Make your papers openly accessible to
everyone
– Be careful of copyright
• Share your results early (preprints!)

• Create a blog (if you like to)
• Become active on

Make your research reproducible!
• Share not only your papers, but also your data
and tools.
• Create reproducibility packages for all your
research

Make your research reproducible!

Network
Scientific Network RELEASE
“Research links to explore and
advance software evolution”
(2002-2004)
Working Group on Software Evolution
(2004-2012)

Get Involved in Teaching
Having course experience is good
– For your CV, if you want to get tenure
– For attracting master students
• That want to do a PhD
• That would like to carry out research tasks

Apply for funding
Postdoc funding
– EU Marie Slodowska-Curie Fellowships
ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions
– ERCIM Fellowship Programme
fellowship.ercim.eu
– National postdoctoral fellowships
– AXA Research Fund
– Check calls on SEWorld
– …

Apply for funding
Write/propose research projects yourself
– If your postdoc status allows you to
– Preferably inter*
(interuniversity, international, interdisciplinary)
Fondsde la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS/ Fund for Scientific Research - FNRS
Appel "Créditset Projets" 2014 / Call "Creditsand Projects" 2014
1) Manque d'un planning concernant l'évaluation desrésultats.
2) L'intégration d'autresmodalitésque le geste et le son n'est pasassez clairement traitée.
3) L'utilisation de la plateforme dansau moinsun domaine d'application n'est pasenvisagée.
4) Dansquel langage, l'utilisateur de la plateforme travaillera ?
Lesdiscussionsen c ommission ont permisde rassurer sur une partie despointsci-dessus.
Fondsde la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS/ Fund for Scientific Research - FNRS
Appel "Créditset Projets" 2014 / Call "Creditsand Projects" 2014
1) Manque d'un planning concernant l'évaluation desrésultats.
2) L'intégration d'autresmodalitésque le geste et le son n'est pasassez clairement traitée.
3) L'utilisation de la plateforme dansau moinsun domaine d'application n'est pasenvisagée.
4) Dansquel langage, l'utilisateur de la plateforme travaillera ?
Lesdiscussionsen c ommission ont permisde rassurer sur une partie despointsci-dessus.
Note finale / Final grading
A : Excellent
Décision du Conseil d'administration / Decision of the Board of Trustees
Rejection of the proposal due to a lack of financial means / Rejet de la proposition faute de
moyensfinanciers

Plan your future
Solicit for tenure track positions (abroad?)

Conclusion
Get involved
Organise
Be mobile
Publish
or perish
Collaborate
Increase visibility
Network
Teach
Apply for
funding
Prepare
your future

Life after the PhD: How to become a successful postdoctoral researcher

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Life after the PhD: How to become a successful postdoctoral researcher

Editor's Notes