National Postdoc Appreciation Week 2024: Praise for Georgetown’s Postdocs

Sponsored by the National Postdoctoral Association, the annual National Postdoc Appreciation Week is a time to “recognize the significant contributions that postdoctoral scholars make to U.S. research and discovery.”

BGE has collected praise for postdocs from several professors from across the Georgetown community. Please join us in thanking our postdocs for their hard work and their contributions to education and research at Georgetown!

BGE also offers Postdoctoral Development resources to support our postdocs in their careers.

Wishing the postdocs in my lab – and around Georgetown – a happy Postdoc Appreciation Week! They are hardworking, smart, resourceful and play an essential role in my research team. Postdocs are not only the backbone of today’s research, they are its future….

Sonia de Assis
Associate Professor, Department of Oncology

On this NPAW, I want to celebrate the dedication, hard work, and significant contributions of the postdoctoral researchers in my lab. Your passion, energy, and commitment have a profound impact on our work, and each of you is helping to shatter the glass ceiling in academia. I’m deeply grateful for all that you do!

Shweta Bansal
Professor, Department of Biology

Our research would not be possible without the incredible energy, intellect, and hard work of our postdocs! My current postdoc in linguistics is working at the cutting edge of second language acquisition research. She is examining language learners’ processing of new vocabulary words using eye-tracking technology. I’m so lucky to get to work and learn alongside such a fantastic emerging scholar in applied linguistics. Thanks for all you do Danni!

Lara Bryfonski
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics

Congratulations to all of our Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Population Science postdoctoral fellows. We are so proud of all of your accomplishments. Working with you is a pleasure and a privilege. All the best in the year ahead.

Cancer Population Science Program
Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center

My postdoc Matt Hewett has brought so much positive energy to the department. He inspires the graduate students with his theoretically sophisticated teaching and his thoughtful and kind advising. He and I have developed multiple research collaborations and discuss our own individual research with each other all the time. He is very collegial and has made connections with department members from all different subdisciplines. We will miss him so much when he heads out to his tenure-track job at UPenn in January!

Ruth Kramer
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Linguistics

I really enjoy working with my postdoc. She is very eager to learn and to apply what we discuss in our meetings. She follows through on the things we discuss and shows excellent motivation to get the most out of her postdoc experience. I truly commend her for being a wonderful postdoc.

Carlos Mendes de Leon
Research Professor, Department of Oncology

For me, doing a postdoc was a tremendous opportunity for professional growth in the breathing room between a dissertation and a full-fledged faculty position. My advice to postdocs is to be omnivorous in seeking out as many opportunities as you can when it comes to research topics and collaborations, mentors, and developing new skills. Georgetown has so much to offer if you’re willing to venture beyond your specific project/lab and take initiative with new ideas.

Nathan Schneider
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and Department of Computer Science

We are thrilled to welcome our inaugural Africa China Initiative (ACI) Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Asma Amina Belem, to the African Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service! Dr. Belem brings a wealth of knowledge and experience on Chinese engagement in Mali and Burkina Faso in particular and we are excited to learn along with her!

Lahra Smith
Associate Professor and Director, African Studies Program