Submitted by Jennifer Hayward on Fri, 21/01/2022 - 11:54
We are excited to welcome our new cohort of Borysiewicz Interdisciplinary Fellows for 2021-2022.
The 12 exceptional postdocs started their Fellowship journey on 14 January with the Postdoc Academy and Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz.
In his welcome to the new cohort, Sir Leszek said:
“At Cambridge we have very high aspirations, we select the very best postdocs, and you are the crème de le crème having been selected for this programme.
“Our goal is to give you that rare opportunity in professional life at this stage in your career to just hit the pause button for a year and think about yourselves rather than just the research that you are pursuing in your specific domain. To ask yourself ‘what can I do to leave this world a better place?’”
“So it’s about continuing to do great work in the fields that you are really passionate about. But it’s also about removing the sharp focus, which as a postdoc you very often have to have, and opening the camera aperture a little.
“Throughout the programme you will work together in groups to tackle a problem, with people with very different perspectives. This is about the practicality of using your skills, engaging with others, and being able to find solutions that are exciting and can take you on trajectories you might never have thought of.”
The Fellowship was created in honour of Sir Leszek, who as Vice-Chancellor of the University led and shaped the development of key provisions for Cambridge’s postdoc community.
It was developed to provide career enhancement to support outstanding researchers seeking to shape the future for the betterment of society. It enables these researchers to focus on a range of global challenges in addition to their primary research, as well as undertaking a programme of leadership and entrepreneurship training.
The 2021-2022 cohort will now embark on their programme of training as they also develop their teams and proposals for their global challenge projects.
Addressing the Fellows, Karina Prasad, Head of the Postdoc Academy, said:
“This year is going to challenge you and bring you all sorts of exciting new opportunities. My only advice is that you stay open to anything and anyone you come across in the next 12 months because you never know what you’re going to discover about yourself or your work.
“Many of our previous Fellows have reminisced often about their ‘concrete plans’ when they came into this Fellowship, and how at the end of their time they were in a completely different situation with unrecognisable career objectives.”
Find out more about the 2021-2022 Borysiewicz Interdisciplinary Fellows