Meetings Committee - National Postdoctoral Association

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Meetings Committee

The Meetings Committee plans and coordinates all NPA-sponsored meetings and seminars.

This committee interacts with all NPA committees, officers, and staff to develop programmatic content for all NPA-sponsored meetings and works with the Outreach and Resource Development Committees to help advertise the meetings. This committee offers an opportunity to network with postdocs and administrators from institutions across the country. It also provides a great way to develop management and organizational skills. There are many small tasks on this committee if your availability is limited. The Annual Meeting is the showcase event of the NPA. Join us to help keep the meetings vibrant!

Charges

Identify and announce venues for NPA-sponsored meetings, including Annual and Regional Meetings and seminars.
Develop agendas and programmatic content for meetings.
Convene a fundraising team to secure sponsors, exhibitors, and advertisers for meetings.
Convene teams to solicit and recommend travel and service awards.
Consult with staff and the Finance Committee to establish budgets for meetings.
Consult with Outreach Committee to market/advertise meetings.
Complete post-meeting functions, including evaluation and debriefing activities.
Consult with other committees and Officers to avoid project duplication and promote coordination.

Meet Our Meetings Committee Leader

Mahadeo Sukhai, Ph.D.
Meetings Committee Chair
(Contact)

Mahadeo Sukhai, PhD, is a post-doctoral fellow at the University Health Network in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and an associate researcher at the Centre for the Study of Students in Post-Secondary Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto. He was a founding member of the University of Toronto Post-Doctoral Association in 2007, helping to design the Association's constitution, and serving as its inaugural Secretary. Under his leadership, the UTPDA designed and ran a post-doctoral experience survey for the more than 1600 postdocs at the University of Toronto, the first of its kind in Canada. He was also the lead on the analysis of the PDES 2008 data. He has substantial leadership and governance experience from his days as a student leader at the University of Toronto, and has served in several executive capacities, including President, with the National Educational Association of Disabled Students, a Canadian NGO that supports the access and participation of students with disabilities in post-secondary education. His primary academic interests are hematopoiesis, leukemia biology and drug development, and he is secondarily interested in the quality of the student and trainee experience, particularly as it relates to mentorship and professional development. His post-doctoral research is funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Ministry of Research and Innovation in the province of Ontario and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

Uzma Alam, Ph.D
Meetings Committee Vice Chair
(Contact)

Uzma Alam grew up in Kenya witnessing first hand the affects of the infectious diseases she now studies. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Cardiff, Wales in Biochemistry. Upon completion of her BS she worked as a research scientist with the Center of Disease Control and the United States Army Medical Research Unit in Kenya. During this time she was involved in establishing a field laboratory in a remote town in Western Kenya on the shores of Lake Victoria, where malaria was endemic, to examine if plasmodium infections impacted vertical transmission of HIV-1. She then moved to the University of Maryland, Baltimore to pursue a PhD. Focusing on understanding the role of the integrin, CD103 (αE/β7) in protection with the irradiated sporozoite malaria vaccine, Alam received her Ph.D. in 2007. Currently, she is pursuing a Postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University deciphering Wolbachia - tsetse interactions in multiple tsetse species collected across Africa. Alam is also a founding member of the Yale Postdoctoral Advisory Committee and a mentor to undergraduates through the Women in Science at Yale program (WISAY). Additionally she is a reviewer for The Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics. Out side of Yale, Alam serves on the National Association for Women in Science (AWIS), Connecticut Executive Board. Alam is passionate about advancing scientific knowledge globally which she believes is inseparable from advancing diversity, equal opportunity and improving conditions amongst postdoctoral scholars.