ROCKVILLE, Md.
Postdoctoral students conducting research in science and technology were treated like kings and queens for the day at an inaugural post-doc conference and career fair held this week on the campus of the University of Maryland at Shady Grove.
“We dreamed about you, thought about you for the past six months, and we are here to help you move along in your careers,” Sally Sternbach, executive director of the Rockville Economic Development Inc., told a group of more than 300 newly-minted Ph.D.’s who are now doing research at federal laboratories in Maryland and the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
“You represent the future of the global economy,” said Larry Giammo, Rockville’s mayor. “That’s our motivation, but we are a little bit selfish.”
More than 4,000 postdoctorates conduct research in Maryland each year, and the state would like to retain at least 10 percent of them, Montgomery County councilmember Michael Knapp told the group.
“We want to figure out who you are and where you are,” he said.
“I really appreciate what they are doing, trying to get us to stay here,” said M. Crina Frincu, who came to Maryland from Romania in 1999 to begin work on her doctorate in infectious diseases at Georgetown University. “It is the first time in seven years that I have felt welcome, and gosh it felt good!”
