The policy plan

The foundation aims to:

1. Facilitate mentor-mentee relations in academia and industry by the following actions:

(a) Raising awareness about the importance of good mentoring in academia and industry, and about the fact that mentoring skills can be trained

(b) Disseminating information and advice on mentorship through academic press, and through publicly available channels (blogging / social media / online platforms)

(c) Organizing workshops for students and workers, aiming at teaching mentoring skills, both from mentor- and mentee- perspective

(d) Designing and testing new mentoring strategies

(e) Offering free consultancy on mentoring to both mentors and mentees, as well as offering free mediation to mentors and mentees, via online communication tools (e.g. Skype) and/or in person. Consultancy online and consultancy at the foundation’s headquarters will not be charged. If consultancy requires traveling, the other party will be obliged to cover travel and catering costs.

2. Promote open science by the following actions:

(a) Facilitating carrying out research projects using open access datasets. The essence of open science is to open doors to all science enthusiasts who would like to participate in research projects. Furthermore, all participants should have equal rights, including the right to propose new projects and take lead on projects.

(b) Team work using modern, collaborative tools: writing documents online in an interactive fashion, coding in a group (e.g. through Git / GitHub), openness to collaboration with researchers outside the group.

(c) Promoting fairness in science, so that the authorship in the projects is based on merit only, and not on academic title or financial contribution to the project;

(d) All projects carried out in this track are aimed at one of the following:

(i) producing new knowledge and publishing the results in a form of preprints and research publications;

(ii) producing functional new equipment, software or product design, for internal purposes

(e) Functional new equipment, software or product design created within the foundation, might be patented.

3. Mentor researchers while transitioning from academia to industry by:

(a) Consulting researchers in order to help them in improving their resumes

(b) Consulting researchers to help them in finding their strengths and key competences

(c) Sharing a database of contacts in industry; helping researchers in finding the best match between their personal aims and values, and the values represented by the target employer and performing all further actions, which are related to the aforementioned goals in the broadest sense or which may facilitate achieving these goals.

We are a green organization - we reduce steady costs, time costs and waste to the minimum! We mostly operate online. We arrange online meetings on request. We use no paper at all!

Multi-year plan

2019:

(a) Forming the Advisory Board, building a trusted network of external advisors

(b) Developing a comprehensive website collecting resources useful for early career researchers in the natural and life sciences

(c) Developing a set of materials, e.g. workshops dedicated to self-management and successfully transferring to industry

(d) Organizing 'Avengers for Better Science' sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation, a bootcamp for future leaders in science together with Veronika Cheplygina and Aidan Budd

2020:

(a) Releasing a free quarterly newsletter to all subscribents

(b) Partnering with external institutions and companies in the Netherlands

(c) Applying for funding from national and international grant programs

(d) Conducting a broad online study on post-PhD career tracks

2021:

(a) Conducting follow-up research projects (depending on the funding)

(b) Writing and publishing opinion pieces on the basis of our experiences while solving different cases

(c) Forming working groups responsible for different statutory purposes of the foundation

(d) Organizing a "Mentoring Day" at which early career researchers in the natural and life sciences in the Netherlands can meet for (peer-)mentoring sessions and meetings with employers interested in hiring PhDs

Please contact us when:

We are a foundation focused on creating solutions. Therefore, please contact us when:

(a) You have a personal problem with your PhD / career. We can offer free advice and consultancy to early career researchers.

If we can help you directly, we will consult you as soon as we are available. If we cannot help you directly (e.g. because your case requires some out-of-the-box solution, or your situation is complex given formal regulations in the Netherlands), we will ask you for permission to broadcast your case to our Advisory Board and to our trusted network of external advisors. We will then form an ad-hoc working group, and summon an online meeting of the working group supervised by one the the Directors, in order to solve your problem in a team (Fig. A). All the members of the working group will sign a confidentiality clause prohibiting them from sharing details of the case or store any documents related to the case. After solving your case (and/or making recommendation on how to best approach the problem), the data related to the case will be removed from our files.

(b) You have some resource useful for early career researchers which you would like to share. We will gladly put this resource on our websites.

(c) You are looking for career opportunities. We have a trusted network of recruiters whom we might contact you with. If you find your dream job, these recruiters will also book a small kickback fee on the foundation's account for the referral (Fig. B). We can than use these fees to organize mentoring events and trainings for researchers.

The role of Directors

Directors of Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling are appointed in order to execute the statutory purposes of the foundation. Their duties are as follows:

(a) Summon the meetings (Chairperson's duty), decide on the directions the foundation is taking, and on the strategic partnerships

(b) Keep record of all the meetings and associated stipulations (Secretary's duty)

(c) Collect resources for early career researchers and post them on the Stichting Solaris websites, maintain the website

(d) Invite new Advisory Boar members, communicate with the Advisory Board, delegate cases to the Advisory Baord

(e) Propagate information about the foundation through the social media

(f) Keep the books (Treasurer's duty)

Remuneration policy for the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is not financially rewarded for their work in the Board on behalf of Stichting Solaris. The Directors can only be rewarded financially in a form of a Vacancy payment (Vacatiegeld): if they accept to take on an additional work as a presenter on behalf of the Foundation (which is not a part of their daily duties specified above). For instance, this situation can happen if the Foundation is invited by a public institution to delegate a speaker who will represent the Foundation by preparing materials and giving a public workshop related to the statutory purposes of the Foundation. In that case, the foundation will invoice the inviting institution, and the presenting Director will receive the honorarium. This income should then undergo income personal tax regulations as specified by the Belastingdienst.

Remuneration policy for Staff

At the moment, Stichting Solaris has no staff. In case an employee is recruited, they will be offered an employment contract (either 1.0 FTE or 0.8 FTE) with a pensionary fund. No Collective Labor Agreement applies in this case.

Managing funds

All funds are deployed on the bank account of the Foundation. No expenditure can be made without the approval of the Board of Directors (with an exception of the monthly banking services fee). All Directors have access to the books. All the funds are spent on the statutory purposes of the Foundation: paying honorariums for representing the Foundation in a form of public workshops and talks, as well as covering the logistic costs associated with the free consultancy offered by the Foundation (e.g. reimbursing travel costs for face-to-face meetings).

Jobs dedicated to PhDs

PhD graduates are self-motivated, driven people with high ability for critical thinking and solving complex problems. They are both capable of successfully completing individual, highly specialistic projects as well as of working in multicultural, often geographically spread teams. PhDs are naturally curious, keen on constant learning and empathic. In order to graduate from a PhD, you need to stay at the forefront of your research field; propose novel solutions, be fast and accurate at implementing them, closely watch the competition, be persuasive and demonstrate your selling skills.

PhDs might be a game changer to you as they might transform your company into a leader of innovation in your market sector. Big players in IT and pharma industries such as Google and Roche have already realized this and they have high affinity to hiring PhDs.

Therefore, if you are seeking for PhDs as employees, please let us know. We will feature your job offer on our websites, and broadcast it to thousands of PhDs within our network through social media and our newsletter. We will also contact a few public institutions we are in touch with and spread information through their Postdoc associations. We might also suggest some candidates to you straight away.

Post-PhD trajectories

Our first research project concerns investigating post-PhD trajectories. A typical PhD programme gives a very broad range of skills, from hard analytic skills to soft skills such as an ability to self-manage, or an ability to communicate with professionals with different backgrounds. Yet, little is known about the post-PhD trajectories for PhDs transferring from academia towards free job market. It is no secret that in certain areas of the free marketplace, having a PhD is not attractive to employers as PhDs might miss practical experience or meet difficulties adapting to a lifestyle in which daily deadlines are a norm. Hence, the question: is PhD an advantage? In a long time perspective, do PhDs in industry find themselves happy about their lives in general, wealthy and satisfied with their professional career? Do they ever ask themselves ‘what if’? In this project, we will aim to find out and to create a comprehensive report summarising our findings.

If you would like to find out more or actively join the project (either as a researcher or as an interviewed subject in the study), please subscribe to our monthly newsletter and we will provide you with all the details about the project soon:

Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling Privacy Policy

aligned with the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR)

Introduction

This Privacy Policy sets out the ways in which Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling collects and uses your personal data (personal information). It also explains what rights you have to access or change your personal data.

Any initiatives by Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling are not intended for children. We do not knowingly collect or maintain the personal information of children under the age of 18. If you are under the age of 18, please do not access Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling at any time or in any manner.

About us

We are a non-profit organisation located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. You may find more information about the goals of the foundation in the deed of formation.

When do we collect information about you?

We will collect any information that you provide to us only when you

(a) fill in application forms / questionnaires released by Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling, or when you subscribe to an event hosted by us

(b) contact us with the intention of becoming an active member of Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling

We do not collect any information about you on the basis of personal correspondence through emails, or your activity on social media related to the events organized by Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling.

How do we store your data

We keep your data in offline documents (as Excel sheets and/or MS Word documents). In both cases, the data is physically located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and access rights are restricted to the the current active members of Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling.

What type of information do we collect?

The information we collect about you:

(a) identity and contact data: name, email address, affiliation, academic title, years of experience in research and/or industry

(b) survey data

(c) personal details relevant for events, such as dietary requirements

Sensitive personal data

“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information (“Sensitive Personal Data”) require higher levels of protection. Such Sensitive Personal Data includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. In addition, details about criminal convictions and offences are also subject to higher levels of protection.

At the moment, we do not collect any Sensitive Personal Data.

Information we receive from third parties

We do not reach out to any third parties with respect to your personal data. If your application form is incomplete, we contact you personally in order to fill in the gaps.

How we use information about you

(a) If you fill in open questions in the surveys / questionnairies in order to give us personal feedback, we might further contact you in order to get more information. This information may then be used with a purpose of improving the quality of the Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling initiatives, or to invite you to events organized by Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling

(b) The summary, anonymized statistics can also potentially be used to create open-access materials, to be shared at our websites. This is a non-commercial activity, for the informative purposes only, and aims at improving visibility of the Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling activities

(c) If you deliver a specific personal information such as dietary requirements while assigning for events, this can be used to better serve you at our events

Who we might share your information with

We do not share your information with any third parties. In case we would like to this in the future, we will ask for personal consent.

Cookies

We do not collect Cookies.

How do we look after your information and how long we keep it for

We will retain your information for as long as is necessary to provide you with the services that you have requested from us. For instance, if you assign for a particular event, your information will be erased after the event - unless you clearly state that you wish to be informed about the next edition of the event during the registration process. If you request to become a member of our startup database, we will hold your contact information permanently, until you request to remove the data from the database, or until the startup dissolves. In case of Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling’s dissolution, all the contact data will be erased.

Your rights to the information we hold about you

You have rights in respect of the information that we hold about you, including:

(a) the right to be informed of the ways in which we use your information, as we seek to do in this Privacy Policy;

(b) the right to ask us not to process your personal data for usage to produce summary statistics;

(c) the right to request access to the information that we hold about you at any moment;

(d) the right to request that we correct or rectify any information that we hold about you which is out of date or incorrect;

(e) in certain circumstances, the right to ask us to stop processing information about you

Changes to this privacy policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post any changes to our site, or notify you of any material changes by email. Any changes will come into effect the next time you engage with us after the changes have been notified.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us by updating your profile account information or contacting us via the contact details at the top of this Privacy Notice.

Financial statement

The Team

The Board of Directors

Natalia Bielczyk

Founder, Director & Chairperson

Dr. Natalia Bielczyk has a background in Physics, Mathematics and Psychology (3 x MSc), obtained at the College of Interfaculty Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Warsaw. She obtained her PhD at the Donders Graduate School, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research concerns developing new methods for connectomics in the domain of cognitive neuroimaging, i.e., for functional and effective connectivity research. Natalia also currently holds a position of a Career Development and Mentoring Manager within the Organization for Human Brain Mapping Student and Postdoc Special Interest Group, and serves as an eLife Associate within the eLife Ambassadors community.  In private, she is also a dedicated blogger, and a speaker, giving workshops and talks about self-development in academia and transitions to industry. In November 2018, she founded Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling in a response to lack of assistance for early career researchers in career development in academia and beyond.

Stephan Heunis

Director & Treasurer

Stephan Heunis graduated with an M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, 2012. He worked as an engineer for four years in two industries (Industrial Automation and Enterprise Mobility) before moving to Europe with the goal of studying neuroscience. Currently, Stephan is a researcher and Phd candidate at the Electrical Engineering department of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. His research focuses on developing new acquisition and signal processing methods for functional neuroimaging that allow the tracking and visualisation of distributed brain activity patterns in real-time, i.e. while someone is inside an MRI scanner, and applying this in clinical practice. Stephan is passionate about making research and scientific practice more transparent, rigorous and inclusive. He started the Open Science Community Eindhoven, which is part of a wide Dutch network of researchers and university employees, that focuses on improving scientific practice. He is also the founder of OpenMR Benelux, a community working on wider adoption of open science principles in MRI research through talks, discussions, workshops and hackathons.

Stephan and Natalia first met on the Slack channel of Brainhack, an international organisation dedicated to organising hackathons in neuroscience. Natalia gave him few words of advice for the organisation of the first edition of Stephan’s OpenMR Benelux event, and they are friends ever since.

Alicja Łuszczak

Director

Since an early age, Alicja Łuszczak was fascinated by mathematics, science and technology. She studied at the University of Warsaw and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, graduating with MSc in Computer Science and BSc in Mathematics. She quickly fell in love with the Netherlands after moving here in 2010. Alicja specializes in high-performance distributed data processing systems. She is currently employed as a software engineer at Databricks in Amsterdam, where she works on improving the performance of core components of Apache Spark. Alicja is curious about the situation of researchers in the IT industry. She is also interested in methods for achieving integrity and synergy in working teams, and in how the management and global dynamics within large companies influences efficiency and work satisfaction of their workers.

Alicja and Natalia first met during their teenage years, when they both earned their spurs in mathematical contests.

Advisory board

AmanPreet Badhwar

Expert in multiomics investigations of age-related dementias and interested in promoting diversity and reducing microaggression in academia

Dr. AmanPreet Badhwar holds a PhD from McGill University, where she integrated brain imaging, quantitative proteomics and measures of neurovascular coupling to study the interaction of neuronal and neurovascular damage in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease, and the impact of therapeutics on these two components. Dr. Badhwar is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM). She has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Montreal (Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology) and CRIUGM, which will be starting her new position in a few months. Her overall research focus has been to determine how brain imaging measures combined with molecular “omics” (e.g. genomics, proteomics) of biofluids could be developed as biomarkers of progression in Alzheimer’s disease, which have applications in clinical trial enrichment and efficacy assessment. Her scientific vision is to cut across intellectual silos and integrate multiple streams of data to answer big questions in Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related dementias.

Aman is a member of the Biomarker team of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) and Chair of the CCNA Trainee Society. She is also Chair-Elect of the Organization of Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and being a woman of Indian origin in academia, has always been a strong promoter of equity, diversity and inclusion in the sciences. Aman also chairs the OHBM Brain-Art SIG, and is heavily engaged in public outreach through her many artistic works and interviews, where the topics of brain organization, plasticity, and memory are recurrent. She has held a number of expositions of her work integrating science and art, and has been a winner in The Neuro Bureau Brain-Art Competition in multiple years.

Daniel Borek

Expert in Open Science

Daniel Borek graduated from Physics at the University of Warsaw, Poland. He is now a PhD candidate at the Department of Data-analysis, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium. His research concerns oscillatory brain dynamics underlying human cognitive flexibility (with a bit of focus on attention and cognitive control). He co-organised two editions of Brainhack Warsaw. He is interested in the topic of productivity and time management for ECRs. His current side-project is about how ideas and influence spread between networks of scientists on Twitter (where he is active too).

Daniel and Natalia have met during Master studies in Warsaw, Poland and successfully organised two editions of Brainhack Warsaw during their PhD programs together.

Patrick Britz

Expert in transfers between academia and industry

Dr. Patrick Britz holds a Ph.D. degree in Biopsychology and worked on combining EEG and fMRI as well as on the interaction of emotion and attention. During his Ph.D., he started working for Brain Products GmbH as a scientific consultant and was offered to go to North America to work for Brain Vision LLC. From beginning as a Scientific Consultant, Patrick soon took over more responsibilities and is since 2013 is the President of Brain Vision LLC and since 2017 is the President of Brain Vision Solutions Inc. in Canada.

Brain Vision LLC is the distribution partner for companies of all sizes from academic startup companies to multinational concerns. The partners include Brain Products, NIRx, CGX (Cognionics), EasyCap and CREmedical to name a few. Brain Vision LLC provides solutions to the leading institutes, minds, and companies in North America to drive the most innovative research. Dr. Patrick Britz’s role is also to drive innovation so Brain Vision can offer the solutions you as a customer want to use in the future. Dr Britz perfected the art of predicting where the science will go next.

Dr Britz is a committed supporter of the OHBM International Online Mentoring Program and is aware of the great career options outside academia. Dr. Patrick Britz sees on average 200 applications a year from scientists that want to switch to the industry. He is looking forward to giving insights, tips, and tricks on how to succeed at landing a great job outside academia. As an employer, he is also aware of what PhDs value in their workplace, and how to give them opportunities for self growth.

Carsten Bundt

Expert in Open Science and self-management

Dr. Carsten Bundt studied Psychology at the University of Twente (BSc) and Cognitive Neuroscience at the Radboud University (MSc). He completed his PhD studies in Psychology in 2017 and is currently a postdoc in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium. His research focusses on reward processing during action preparation using transcranial magnetic stimulation.

He is interested in topics such as open science, time management, productivity, personal development/growth, and (work) efficiency.

Indranath Chatterjee

Expert in Open Science and self-management in academia

Dr. Indranath Chatterjee recently obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Delhi, India, with the thesis entitled “Automated Diagnosis of Schizophrenia and Identification of Affected Brain Regions". He is currently a Professor at the Department of Computer Engineering, Tongmyong University, Busan, South Korea. He is a dedicated mentor serving within the OHBM International Online Mentoring Programme.

Dr. Chatterjee’s objective is to be a lifelong learner and strive to be a successful teacher and researcher using his knowledge and skills with honesty, dedication, and hard work.

Chris Hartgerink

Expert in Open Science

Chris Hartgerink is a meta-researcher with a broad interest in how the systems we operate in affect the decisions we are able to make, shifting the balance responsibility from the individual to the system they're in. Integrating meta-research, sociology, and economics, he's building an organization that tries to liberate (research) workers. He has received funding from non-academic sources to do this work, such as the Mozilla Foundation and the Shuttleworth Foundation. He has actively chosen to leave academic institutions behind, because from his perspective, fundamentally changing the system can only truly happen from the outside (more about why he thinks that, here).

Ali Khatibi

Expert in building resilience and interested in minimizing bullying in academia

Dr. Ali Khatibi holds a PhD degree in psychology obtained in 2014 from KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. He started his academic journey by studying Biology at the University of Guilan, Iran, and then he moved to Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran to study Psychology. After his PhD, he moved to Montreal and was a postdoc at the University of Montreal and McGill University (2014-2015; 2017-2019). He is currently a Senior Research Fellow in Pain and neuroplasticity at the Centre of Precision Rehabilitation for Spinal Pain at the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Birmingham. His research interest is the study of chronic diseases and cognitive bias in patients, and he has expertise in simultaneous functional imaging of the brain and the spinal cord in human.

Ali likes to contribute to the improvement of the quality of life in trainees and early career researchers. He also tries to increase awareness about bullying at work and in academic environments (like against those decided to leave academia) and wishes to see more diversity and real equality in academia. His experiences of being involved in several teams and working in different environments help him to provide support for others.

Xenia Kobeleva

Expert in Open Science

Dr. Xenia Kobeleva works as a clinical neurologist at the University Hospital Bonn, Germany, and is an affiliated research associate at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases. Prior to her current employment she completed her studies in medicine at the RWTH Aachen University and then moved to Medical School Hannover for a postdoctoral position and the first part of her clinical specialization as a neurologist. She has also completed several stays in laboratories abroad, including the Computational Neuroscience Group at UPF Barcelona, Spain, and the Institute of Ageing and Health in Newcastle, United Kingdom.

Xenia is active in the Open Science movement. She is dedicated to bringing principles of open science to the clinical research community - to make it more reproducible, robust and inclusive. She is also interested in the digital transformation of healthcare and how to use medical informatics tools that is beneficial for patients and health-care workers.

Daniele Marinazzo

Expert in Open Science

Dr. Daniele Marinazzo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Data Analysis of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University. His team focuses on methodological and computational aspects of neuroscience research, and on the dynamical networks subserving function, as well as thorough statistical validation of the results. They develop new techniques for inferring connectivity architectures from the dynamics of the recorded data, in challenging cases of short, noisy and redundant time series, as those encountered in neuroimaging.

Daniele cares about open science and ways to improve the review/editorial process. He is an editor at several journals in his field, including PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS One, NeuroImage, Brain Topography, Network Neuroscience.

Adeel Razi

Expert in transferrable skills

Dr. Adeel Razi and his lab develop data science techniques for brain mapping in health and disease. His research interest is in modelling complex, multi-scale, network dynamics of brain structure and function using neuroimaging. He, with Professor Karl Friston, introduced a new dynamic causal model (DCM) for resting state functional MRI which is now in wide use. Dr. Razi is a Senior Research Fellow, ARC DECRA Fellow and Principal Investigator of recently established Computational and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory at the Monash Institute of Cognitive & Clinical Neuroscience and Monash Biomedical Imaging at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging of University College London (UCL) where he also worked from 2012 to 2018. He received the B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the N.E.D. University of Engineering & Technology, Pakistan, the M.Sc. degree in Communications Engineering from the University of Technology Aachen (RWTH), Germany, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Australia in 2012.

Adeel is also mentoring early career researchers is the OHBM International Online Mentoring Programme, and he participated in the 2019 edition of the Lunch with Mentors at the OHBM Annual Meeting in Rome as a mentor.

Mozhan Soltani

Expert in Equality and Diversity

Mozhan Soltani is a PhD candidate at Leiden University. She has previously worked on the application of genetic algorithms for software crash reproduction. Currently she works on software debugging. She is interested in a wide range of topics including: sports, psychology, and teaching. She also has private interest in facilitating equality and diversity in academia. During the course of her PhD studies at TU Delft, she worked in a competitive masculine research group where most of her values, as a female member, were often violated. She has gained invaluable experience regarding reflection, communication and coping strategies. She intends to transfer her experience to junior PhD students.