The genesis of the event
This event was co-organized by SLUPA and UPS. Six months ago, we had this idea of providing the most essential information to the postdocs in Umeå. We were interested in raising awareness about the permit/visa processes, benefits of becoming a member of unions, ideal work environment and others. We thought that this day should also be used to bring postdocs from different disciplines together and give us an opportunity to socialize with each other. After a lot of meetings and brainstorming sessions, the Postdoc Day became a reality.
We were ready to welcome everyone on the 15th of February at the Skogis Kårhus (The SLU forestry student union house near SLU Umeå campus).

Information for postdocs in Umeå
Participants were welcomed at the registration desk with the amazing help of one of the UPS Advisory Board members, Prof. Teresa Frisan. They were then invited to join the welcome fika.

The first session of the day started with the presentation of the postdoc associations. UPS president Kerstin presented the society and its activities. Then Kishore, Chair of SLUPA, presented their work on the different SLU campuses. Finally Dario, Chair of SNPA (Swedish Network of Postdoc Associations), presented how they represent postdocs in Sweden at the national and European level. Moreover, Dario mentioned that Eurodoc (European council of doctorate candidates and junior researchers) conference is happening this year at Uppsala on June 7-8, and everyone is welcome to participate in the event.
Our first invited speaker was Prof. Lars Östlund (SLU), who spoke about the postdoc model existing at the Department of Forest Ecology and Management, SLU. He shared with us his vision on how postdocs should be supported in their workplace. In many ways, UPS and SLUPA share the same vision, that happy postdocs are productive postdocs and they need to be supported more, especially in career development and personal well-being.
The next presentation was given by Ms. Daniela Håkansson, the representative of Migrationsverket related to researcher permits and visas. She highlighted the difference between work and researcher permits and also spoke about the requirements for getting permanent residence status in Sweden. Being a very important topic for postdocs, there were a lot of questions from the audience about the new rules for permanent residency and about the long waiting time for processing cases.
We then listened to the Union A-kassan presentation by Ms. Caroline Eriksson. She spoke about the benefits of becoming a member of their organization, unemployment benefits and how does this vary between postdocs on contracts and stipends. From her talk, it was evident that stipend holders cannot expect a benefit by enrolling for the union. She also mentioned some general rules and the criteria for applying unemployment benefits and the monetary support that can be received.
The morning session ended with the presentation by Johan Nordlund from the Innovations office at Umeå University. He explained to us about IPR, teacher exemption and how their office can support in developing an idea into a product. Questions were raised about ownerships and consequent discussions were made about ownerships in collaborative projects, especially with researchers from different universities and how ownership rules differ between them and also between countries. If you want more insight about using your data to create a company, do not hesitate to contact them. (Innovation office email: info@umuholding.se)
The morning session was very important as there are disparities between postdocs on a contract and on a stipend and it can be tricky to understand the Swedish system when coming from outside EU. This session was also aimed at providing information to the new postdocs in Umeå.






The lunch was provided by Real Poké & Sushi (IKSU), an Indian food buffet. The lunch session also gave sufficient time for the participants to enjoy the sun outside before continuing with the afternoon sessions.
The Science stand-up comedy
The second session of the day was our first Science stand-up comedy. The participants had to give a 5 min presentation, talking about their research project in a different way than we are used to. The objective was simple: “Make the audience laugh!”. During the contest, a lot of bacterial work was presented, except one fierce representant of the plant/forestry science talking about feather mosses. We want to thank all the 6 participants: Wei-Sheng, Anaïs, Atin, Pallabi, Josephine and Kishore for their effort and their great presentations. Every talk gave its share of laughter! The selection of the winner was put to a vote and everyone was invited to support his/her/their favorite presenter. In the audience were UPS advisory Board members Prof. Oliver Billker, Prof. Hjlamar Laudon and Prof. Olivier Keech as well as Johan Nordlund showing their support to the event.
The audience was unanimous in judging Atin as the winner and Pallabi as the runner-up. But for us, everyone was a winner!






Building a community
After the fika break, the team building workshop was initiated by Forsknäckarna (https://forsknackarna.se/). 40 postdocs participated and they were divided into 4 teams of 10 people to solve puzzles and go through circuits. Everyone got eccentrically involved in the competition, but the workshop overall showed the importance of good communication between team members to move forward in life/career.



Evening festivities
The evening started with dinner. The food was from Karlavagnen Catering and we got help from few Skogis Kårhus board members to set up everything. A big thanks to Henrik, Saga and others for their help and friendliness.
Right after dinner, we had a music quiz concocted by Leslie. The quiz session gave us plenty to think about music from the 60’s to the present day. There was a tie between 3 teams and the winner, Tone Decay, was selected by a singing competition!
We also had the chance to listen to live music performance by the SLU forestry student council band. They played some rock classics and some other music with a “Finnish touch” (their saying!).
The evening continued with some extroverted postdocs, who stayed at the venue to show their best dance moves or play pool/billiard.



Conclusion of the day
We had around 70 participants for the event and we were very pleased that a lot a newly arrived postdocs were also able to join the event. The high participation numbers and the fact that the above-mentioned speakers accepted our invitation show that these topics are important not only for postdocs, but also other PIs and entities.
Overall, the feedbacks of the day were positive and most of you appreciated the talks and different activities. We would like to thanks the postdocs who took the time to answer our feedback form, this is a precious help for us to improve and create event that a large majority will enjoy.
We hope to organize many more postdoc day events in the coming years.
Event and text by the Organization committee: Kishore, Anaïs, Madhusree, Krishna, Ondrej and Wei-Sheng with the precious help of Leslie and Atin during the event.
