Ahead of 2025 Postdoctoral Research Symposium, BGE Associate Dean Caleb McKinney Talks Postdoc Challenges and Resources

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Georgetown postdoctoral fellows are preparing to share their discoveries with the university community at the annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.

Six postdocs are scheduled to give oral presentations on their research in Proctor Harvey Amphitheater, while about 20 will present posters in Pre-Clinical Hallway C, representing fields from biology and oncology, to pharmacology and neuroscience, to environmental justice and physics.

Students, faculty, postdocs and staff are invited to attend. Faculty, graduate students, staff and postdocs may sign up as volunteer judges to help pick this year’s prize-winning presentations. The symposium is hosted by the Georgetown University Postdoctoral Association (GUPDA) and BGE’s Office of Postdoctoral Development, and cosponsored by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

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Q&A with Keynote Speaker Caleb McKinney

This year’s keynote speaker is Associate Professor Caleb McKinney, Ph.D., MPS. McKinney is Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC)’s assistant vice president of master’s program administration and development, and the associate dean of graduate and postdoctoral training and development for Biomedical Graduate Education (BGE). A doctoral graduate of New York University, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) before coming to Georgetown, where he helped to launch the Georgetown University Postdoctoral Association in 2017 and organize the first Postdoctoral Research Symposium the following year. Outside of Georgetown, he is a former chair and current member of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) board of directors.

McKinney spoke with BGE about his experiences with the Georgetown postdoctoral community, and the opportunities and challenges facing postdocs today.

BGE: What will you be talking about in your keynote?

Caleb McKinney: These are very precarious times, and so I want to center my talk around navigating uncertainty. I’ve got a couple of stories from my past. … I’ll be speaking to the resilience of of your skills, and upskilling in certain ways that can enhance your career mobility.

Along with that, I’ll talk about just being there for each other. I think that’s really important. [Postdocs have] a local community here that’s really robust. … And then I’ll go into some national community and resources through the National Postdoc Association and opportunities there. This is not a time to go it alone.

BGE: What is your advice for postdocs preparing for uncertainty?

CMK: As I’ve been developing as an academic administrator, one thing that I’ve always kept in mind is having a growth mindset and being open to learning new skills and applying those skills to what I’m doing in order to enhance the likelihood that I’ll be able to move up, or move into something new career-wise. Just to have that agility and mobility – you never know when you’ll need it.

BGE: How have you been involved with the Georgetown postdoctoral community since you arrived at the university?

CMK: When I first got here in 2016, I was initially hired to build out career strategy and professional development offerings for the BGE graduate students. When I was at one of the outdoor events in the summer with the students, a postdoc had come up to me and said, I’m really glad you’re here – as you’re building out things for the students, could you keep us in mind as well? We got to talking, and I realized that there were very limited resources and community built out for postdocs. There were some grassroots efforts here and there, some of the T32 programs had postdocs on them and initiated some activities localized to their programs, but nothing really functioned at scale for such an important population in the Georgetown research community.

I was fresh from a very strong community for postdocs [at NIAID], to come to a community that had very little going on for postdocs. There were a few Georgetown postdocs at the time who were true change agents and really wanted to get together to move the needle on this, but didn’t really have a consistent administrative anchor to push these things through. So I started working with them within that next year after I got here to really develop a focal point for postdoctoral support and community and professional development. And that spearheaded the development of the Georgetown University Postdoctoral Association.

GUPDA did their first symposium in the spring of 2018, and that also dovetailed with a change in my position at the time, from assistant director for career strategy and professional development to assistant dean of graduate and postdoctoral training and development. … That at least formalized some workflows to cultivate continuous support of the postdoc community, and they’ve been doing their symposium ever since. I am grateful to Dr. Edward Healton, former EVP of GUMC, and Dr. Barbara Bayer, former Senior Associate Dean for BGE, for their support during the time that we launched this new structure for supporting postdocs.

I know Liz [Salm, BGE director of graduate and postdoctoral training and development] works with [postdocs] now, in the role that I had, and she has taken this important work to new heights. Being able to hand that off to her has been really great for the sustainability of the work, and seeing the longevity of the GU Postdoc Association, and seeing it become truly cross-campus has been very fulfilling. The fact that they invited me to keynote this year’s symposium is incredibly special for me and a full-circle moment.

BGE: How does the Postdoctoral Research Symposium help build community among Georgetown postdocs?

CMK: [The postdoctoral population at Georgetown reflects national proportions] and leans heavily toward the life and biomedical sciences. But we have postdocs studying pertinent topics across the university, including computer science, physics, the humanities, the social sciences and policy, among many others. … It’s really great for the symposium to bring everybody together and lift the voices of postdocs across research areas, because you get postdocs talking to each other from disciplines that wouldn’t otherwise see each other unless they were anchored by association activities.

BGE: What other resources should Georgetown postdocs be aware of?

CMK: We have the International Student & Scholar Services in the Office of Global Services (OGS). … I encourage postdocs to continue to engage with OGS’ resources and town halls, just to stay abreast and help interpret the current circumstances.

And then, continue to just stay engaged with the Postdoc Association locally here at Georgetown. There’s lots of activities to bring people together and share information. News is coming down the pike rapid-fire, and different people have different responses and resources … and so it’s good to just stay engaged with the community and not try to navigate this on your own.

We also have a National Postdoctoral Association institutional membership, so our postdocs are eligible to sign up for affiliate memberships through that and engage the NPA’s resources. There’s a lot of opportunities to engage in national committee work such as the advocacy efforts through the Advocacy Committee, to learn how to advocate for your research. [And] there’s lots of opportunities to engage in professional development through the NPA. So I encourage postdocs to think about national-level engagement, for themselves and for the impact they want to have on their communities as well.

Get the Symposium Schedule and RSVP

Postdoctoral Resources from BGE

Ahead of 2025 Postdoctoral Research Symposium, BGE Associate Dean Caleb McKinney Talks Postdoc Challenges and Resources

Q&A with Keynote Speaker Caleb McKinney

Read More About Georgetown Postdocs