The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) held its inaugural meeting at the University of California (UC) at Berkeley on Saturday, full of optimism but struggling to define itself and its goals.

Carol Manahan, a postdoc at Johns Hopkins University and one of seven founding members of the NPA, opened the meeting, saying, "I really hope that this is a moment in history." From the audience of nearly 100 came spontaneous applause, and even a few "woo-hoos." Enthusiasm dominated the day-long forum, as speakers expressed hope that the NPA would give a voice to one of the most underappreciated groups in science.

But a strong note of uncertainty tempered the enthusiasm. The meeting's main sessions were devoted to addressing a single question, "What is a Postdoc?" By the end of the day, few clear answers had emerged and little had been done toward establishing goals and strategies for the new association.

Changing the lot of the postdoc is no small task. The position has been evolving for decades into the awkward situation in which modern postdocs now find themselves: underpaid, funded by a patchwork of programs, and often accorded little status by their institutions.

Many postdocs complain, "I was just held there to generate data for my advisor for seven or eight years," said keynote speaker Keith Yamamoto, vice dean for research at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine. Indeed, a recent survey by The Scientist provoked numerous complaints about the treatment of postdocs, with negative comments outnumbering positive four-to-one.

The morning speakers presented several suggestions for how the group should aim to reshape their identity.

Yamamoto proposed that the postdoc position should no longer be a "hub," from which researchers branch off into other professions like spokes on a wheel. Instead, recent PhD recipients would branch off into education, law, communication, or business. This would reduce the number of people entering the postdoc "holding pattern," he said.

The next speaker, Frank Solomon, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, went further, arguing that the PhD should be restricted to the few students capable of becoming independent researchers. The postdoc would be a shorter, optional position aimed at building independence. Institutions should therefore let postdocs to pursue their own grants, he said, something few currently allow.

The final morning speaker, Walter Schaffer, research training officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supported many of those goals, but warned they would not come easily. Political resistance is one of the major obstacles to changing the current system, which is efficient in part because of the low salaries paid to postdocs. For example, Schaffer said that when NIH began its push to raise National Research Service Award stipend levels, a prominent senator called his office to complain about the resulting reduction in the number of clinical researchers.

Postdocs in the audience identified further obstacles to change. One suggested that many universities would be loathe to allow postdocs to apply for independent grants, or that agencies would rarely fund researchers without permanent positions. Another postdoc said many faculty members would also oppose greater independence for postdocs because it would reduce recognition and funding for faculty.

Despite bold proposals and sobering warnings, no clarion call for action came out of the meeting. The meeting's nebulous feeling was at least partly intentional, according to Karen Christopherson, a postdoc at Stanford and NPA policy chair. "We're hesitant now to even state any policy positions," she said. To help formulate such positions, meeting participants were asked to fill out a survey and send feedback to the NPA Web site. That process will help the steering committee write a white paper on the needs of postdocs, which they plan to present to NIH in time for a summer budget meeting.

One postdoc called the NPA's mission a "David and Goliath" fight. Even if the meeting did not lead to a clear agenda, or even a clear definition of a postdoc, it did achieve its main goal of giving a new, unified voice to the underdog in that fight.

Said Schaffer, "In the past, people have been so seduced by the science that they haven't paid attention to the fact that they are stuck inside these postdoctoral training positions, and I think that is going to change with this organization."