Our Climate and Inclusion Committee started the Film Series this spring, a new initiative which aims to brings short films to our community at PNI on diversity themes. This has fostered a film club environment where folks can come together to enjoy and discuss art produced by filmmakers from around the world. We strive to include films that allow artists to tell stories from their cultures on their own terms. We feature 3-4 short films each time, and have included monthly themes such as feminism, LGBTQ+ pride, Climate Change, and contemporary impacts of colonialism on indigenous populations.

This workshop from Princeton University focuses on appropriate boundaries in professional relationships and best practices related to meetings, communications, socializing, and general interpersonal interactions (60 minutes). It is facilitated by Randy Hubert, the new Director of Gender Equity and Title IX Administration in Princeton's Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity. PNI hosted it again at the 2023 Summer Bootcamp for our incoming graduate students.

With the “Growing up in science” (GUIS) seminar series, we invite successful neuroscientists or psychologists to talk with our grad students and postdocs about their "unofficial stories." We features one story at a time, with a focus on doubts, struggles, detours, and failures throughout all stages of their career. The primary goal is not to offer boilerplate career advice, but to examine in some depth and in the context of a broader narrative the hidden human factors of working in academia. GUIS started at NYU and is now a global effort, which PNI is proud to be part of.

Learn more about GUIS 

In 2019, we established the Princeton BRinging Active Inclusion to Neuroscience Seminars series (Princeton BRAINS Series). This effort, spearheaded by Assistant Professor Catherine Peña, aims to promote continual discussion and engagement among PNI’s faculty, trainees, and staff on topics of diversity and inclusion relevant to neuroscientists both as humans and in research practices. The Princeton BRAINS Series hosts 1-2 speakers per year to bring ongoing attention to these topics. Speakers have included Dr. Marguerite Matthews from NINDS in the office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Diversity, Bas Hofstra and Daniel McFarland speaking on “the diversity-innovation paradox,” Dr. Daniel Colon-Ramon on his science and path as a Puerto Rican scientist, Dr. Nathaniel Harnett on the impact of racism within the brain, and Dr. Liz Phelps on the neuroscience of implicit bias. These topics encourage continued introspection and learning and discussion — within the context of neuroscience — to promote diversity and a healthy climate more broadly.

Originally developed by Yael Niv a PNI faculty member, and now taught by the McGraw Teaching Center at Princeton, PNI offers a course in mentoring for senior graduate students and postdocs. From the course description, “A major component of many careers is mentoring trainees. Mentoring practices profoundly affect the well-being of a team, and consequently, its productivity and success. While there is no magic formula, there are best practices for mentoring and for developing a reflective personal style. In this course, we discuss these and practice them weekly. Small groups meet for weekly facilitated discussions of what worked and what did not, and to help each other solve dilemmas encountered.” The course includes topics such as Mentoring Equitably (week 9) and Mentoring to Different Needs & Promoting Wellbeing (week 10). Trainees also have the opportunity to mentor undergraduates through PNI’s Summer Internship Program as well as Princeton undergraduates conducting research for their junior and senior theses. Princeton offers the ReMatch program to facilitate these mentoring relationships and PNI graduate students and postdocs are active in this program. Finally, Yael Niv also leads an Inclusive Teaching initiative with PNI and Psychology faculty, staff, and trainees, that covers many topics on mentoring as well.

This NSF-funded REU program invites 10+ historically underrepresented students per year from smaller colleges and universities without strong research programs to complete a 9-week research and professional development experience at PNI. In addition to their research experience in PNI labs, these summer interns attend weekly summer faculty lecture series, participate in workshops aimed at making them more competitive for graduate school in neuroscience and related fields, as well as in coding classes in Matlab, R and Python. They also have the opportunity to present their work at an end of summer poster session at PNI, as well as at the annual Leadership Alliance National Symposium (LANS) in Connecticut. Approximately 92% of our former students are now in graduate programs or working in research assistant positions intending to apply to graduate school in the future. PNI welcomes and encourages applications from all undergraduate students including those who identify themselves as belonging to groups that have been historically underrepresented among researchers in the sciences. For the official federal designations of these groups, please see the definitions on the Internship Program Page.

PNI started TigerBrain - the PNI Postdoc Scholars Symposium this year, hosted on Friday, May 12, 2023. We invited 5 diverse postdocs thinking about entering the academic job market and interested in faculty positions at Princeton to present their work at TigerBrain. In addition to a speaking spot, we also offered the opportunity to meet 1:1 with our faculty members and trainees as well as tour ouf facilities.

For our NIH T32 grant's training component, we offer several professional development activities for QNTP postdoctoral trainees (other trainees at PNI and Psychology were also invited to attend); these professional development activities are led by Professors Yael Niv and Annegret Falkner. Professors Falkner and Buschman also created several new activities for postdocs. First, they organized a “Growing Up In Science” (GUIS) seminar series, in which PNI faculty members (last year: Jonathan Pillow and Jon Cohen) participate in casual, but frank conversations about their pathway to becoming a professor at PNI. Second, every year in the fall we run a workshop on applying to academic jobs. This walks trainees through the application process: how to find job openings, crafting the application, giving a job talk, and how to do a chalk talk, and how to negotiate. In 2016, we started to supplement this workshop with a (separate) panel discussion featuring PNI postdocs who recently obtained faculty positions, so they could speak to other trainees directly about their experiences of navigating the academic hiring process. In addition to these activities, we have begun monthly Beyond the Lab discussions featuring neuroscientists who are currently working in non-academic positions (e.g., Facebook, Google DeepMind, Intel, Simons Foundation, Nature), as well as individuals working in academia but at non-research intensive institutions.