UC Davis is among the top-ranked institutions for postdoctoral opportunities, according to an influential science journal.

The campus is ranked eighth among those institutions that make postdocs feel especially welcomed, according to The Scientist's survey, "Best Places for Postdocs."

The postdoctoral experience provides scholars and researchers with doctoral degrees with the opportunity to broaden their areas of expertise while working closely with faculty and advising graduate students.

For those graduate students wanting a career in academia, the postdoc experience has almost become a necessary qualification among potential employers. Yet postdocs can get caught in an "academic limbo" somewhere between graduate student and faculty member, the journal notes.

The Scientist's Web-based survey was based on about 2,800 responses from postdocs in the United States, Canada and western Europe. In the survey, released last quarter, 76.4 percent of respondents indicated they felt comfortable talking to their peers about personal and professional problems; 65.3 percent credited their colleagues with teaching lab skills; and 60.8 percent reported that lab members help each other balance work and family responsibilities. However, only 41percent of the postdocs indicated that they received adequate salaries.

The journal notes that postdoctoral fellows crave collaboration, thrive on one-on-one relationships with principal investigators, and learn much from their peers.

"This is certainly the case on the Davis campus, which has excellent faculty mentors and very enterprising postdocs," said Cristina González, senior advisor to Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and former dean of graduate studies.

"Postdocs were one of my top priorities during my tenure as graduate dean, and I can tell you that articulating their needs and taking steps to address them was truly a collective effort involving many people for a period of several years," she said.

González said that Jerry Hedrick, former associate dean in the Office of Graduate Studies, was instrumental in reaching out to postdocs and putting them in touch with the Graduate Council, which had a central role in developing new policies.

She also noted the efforts of Charlie Duffy, assistant dean in the Office of Graduate Studies, in working with the postdocs on a survey, which turned out to be a very important step in the process of articulating their needs.

"The most remarkable thing, however, is the central role the postdocs themselves had in improving their situation," said González. "They created a Post-doctoral Scholars Association and became very active. The extraordinary leadership of postdoc advocate Tom Peavy on campus, in the system and nationally during those early stages was crucial, but many other postdocs made important contributions as well. This was, and continues to be, a real community effort."

Jeffrey Gibeling, dean of Graduate Studies, said UC Davis provides "a wonderful opportunity for postdoctoral scholars.

"We provide a combination of superior faculty mentors, a stimulating,interdisciplinary research environment and an outstanding quality of life in the Davis community," he said.

Carol Thornber, a postdoctoral researcher and the current chair of the Davis Postdoctoral Scholars Association, said campus leadership has been especially encouraging to the more than 600 post-docs on campus.

"The administration has worked with our Postdoctoral Scholars Associa-tion to establish a UC Davis-wide policy for postdoctoral hires, which includes minimum hiring salaries, full benefits and a variety of other factors to ensure that postdocs are treated with respect," she said.

The presence of an active postdoctoral association at UC Davis -- one of the first in the nation, Thornber notes -- "helps to ensure that any issues or questions that postdocs have are addressed in a prompt and informative manner."

For example, it's expected that the UC will soon enact a systemwide policy will include new title codes specifically for postdocs who have been hired in many cases as postgraduate researchers. That may include mandatory hiring at 100 percent time unless the postdoc initiates and negotiates a lower percentage.

By taking on additional training, postdocs -- who are already experts -- build and expand upon the specialized areas they researched as graduate students, as well as upon philosophies of research.

Although postdocs don't have to write dissertations like they did as graduate students, they use their post-graduate experience as an opportunity to develop additional research articles.

Hedrick, a biochemistry professor, said postdocs are attracted to institutions for a variety of reasons, including the quality of the faculty, the campus environment and the presence of policies and procedures that support the position of post-docs in the academy.

Since 1998, Hedrick said, UC Davis has made significant progress on all these fronts. "Davis looks very friendly to postdocs right now," he said. "It took many years of effort."

On many other campuses, he said, post-docs are treated like "non-entities." However, that's different at UC Davis.

"We recognize them as real people," Hedrick says, "and that's not true everywhere."

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The journal The Scientist recently ranked the following institutions among the top for offering the best post-doctoral opportunities.

1. Rutgers University

2. University of Miami

3. Princeton University

4. Dalhousie University

5. University of Nebraska

6. Medical College of Wisconsin

7. National Cancer Institute

8. UC Davis

9. University of Iowa

10. University of Kentucky

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More results and complete survey methodology are available at www.the-scientist.com/postdoc/postdoc.htm.