Under normal times, many postdocs struggle with honing their own professional identities and identifying career paths right for them. In the current times, these challenges are magnified by the multitude of uncertainties in the scientific and higher education landscape. This webinar will introduce frameworks from the literature related to professional identity formation, self-efficacy, and career resiliency, and tie these to strategies for training programs and mentors to better support postdocs in their career planning and use of individual development plans. The webinar will include practical examples of evidence-based approaches being used in educational models that are part of the NIH-funded Professional Development Hub pd|hub Collection: Foundations of Career Exploration for PhD Scientists.

Speaker: Cynthia Fuhrmann, Ph.D., associate professor, RNA Therapeutics Institute, UMass Chan Medical School and Principal Investigator, Professional Development Hub (pd|hub)

Fuhrmann is associate professor, RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School and principal investigator for Professional Development Hub, a national initiative to advance evidence-based practices in STEM doctorates' professional development. Fuhrmann has 20 years’ experience founding professional development programs for graduate students, postdocs, and faculty, with innovations funded by the NIH, NSF, and Burroughs Wellcome Fund and honored by two awards from the Association of American Medical Colleges. She is a pioneer of Individual Development Plans, including co-developing myIDP, integrating career planning into curricula, and co-developing survey instruments for studying IDP use. Fuhrmann’s national service includes serving on the National Academies’ Roundtable on Mentorship, Well-being, and Professional Development, advising the NSF Innovations in Graduate Education Hub, and serving on NIH/NSF training grant review boards.