Genomics Aotearoa is a substantial contributor to the development of postdoctoral fellows and early career researchers in Aotearoa.
Since 2017, 56 early career researchers have contributed their expertise to Genomics Aotearoa projects, making it one of the most significant funders of early career researchers across research organisations in Aotearoa. Many of those have worked on key primary production and conservation initiatives within Genomics Aotearoa's High Quality Genomes and Population Genomics projects.
The organisation also supports PhD students across its partner organisations. Bioinformatics lead Mik Black said the beauty of Genomics Aotearoa is its collaborative environment.
“We are a partnership of 10 universities and Crown Research Institutes, which gives us a natural collaborative advantage. And while institutional connectivity is an issue for early career development in Aotearoa, the cross disciplinary nature of our projects means that our researchers are working with different research institutes, iwi, government organisations and private sector groups.”
Genomics Aotearoa makes a point of bringing all the postdoctoral fellows from their different research institutions together at least once a year to upskill, share and collaborate.
Mik said Genomics Aotearoa recognises the importance of early career researchers to the future of science in Aotearoa and relies on the postdoctoral fellows to innovate and to pass on their expertise. “Genomics Aotearoa postdoctoral fellows and other early career researchers have been leading the development of bioinformatic pipelines – processes to gather and analyse genomic information – resulting in outcomes that are of international standard.”
“The ECRs also play a key role in training programmes – something Genomics Aotearoa has invested heavily in – to the point that some of the programme attendees have become trainers themselves. Our training participants appreciate taking their skills back into their workplace, both to use on their research and to pass on to their teams.”