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Join Dr. Carolina Tropini and Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 for an hour-long information session designed to provide information about the upcoming Professors in Training Program.
The Professors in Training Program is a week-long, intensive professional development program designed to demystify the academic job market and support Postdoctoral Fellows in transitioning to independent investigator positions. The 2026 program will be held in person from Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19, 2026, on the UBC Point Grey Campus in Vancouver.
The Professors in Training Program aims to:
- Support postdocs in assessing whether an academic career aligns with their goals and values
- Help participants define the type of research program, lab structure, and research culture they wish to build
- Guide the development of core academic application materials, including research, teaching, and diversity statements
- Build foundational skills in hiring, mentoring, budgeting, and planning for lab sustainability
- Foster a supportive, cross-disciplinary peer network
- Encourage reflection, iteration, and alignment between personal values and professional goals
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
The Professors in Training Program runs from 9 AM–4:30 PM daily, and all sessions will be held in-person on the UBC Point Grey Campus in Vancouver.
- Day 1 - Monday, June 15: Launch your job search with purpose – values, CVs, and pitching your research
- "Job Search Basics" with Dr. Carolina Tropini
- "Pitching Your Research: Fitting In with Your Institution" with Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes
- "CVs" with Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes and Dr. Carolina Tropini
- Day 2 - Tuesday, June 16: Hone your research narrative & job talk
- "Research Statements" with Dr. Chris Moraes
- "Job Talks and Chalk Talks" with Dr. Anna Blakney
- Day 3 - Wednesday, June 17: Write compelling diversity and teaching philosophy statements and hear from past program participants about their experience on the academic job market
- "EDI in the Job Search and Diversity Statements" with Dr. Ninan Abraham
- "Teaching Statements" with Dr. Marcia Graves
- Alumni Panel with past Professors in Training Program alumni
- Day 4 - Thursday, June 18: Get behind-the-scenes insight on the interview and hiring committee process and learn how to decode job ads & cover letters
- "Interviews: Tactics and Preparation" with Dr. Carl de Boer and Dr. Yanpu He
- "Job Ads & Cover Letters" with Dr. Calvin Kuo
- Hiring Committee Panel
- Day 5 - Friday, June 19: Learn to negotiate effectively, manage stress, and clarify next steps
- "Negotiation" with Dr. Martin Hirst
- "Stress Reduction" with Dr. Maria Tokuyama
The goal is for participants to finish the week with a strong draft portfolio, a clearer sense of direction, and a supportive academic community.
FACILITATORS
Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes
Associate Professor, Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy and the School of Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes is an Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Occupational Sciences and Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia. She leads the Biosignal Interaction and Personhood Technology (BIAPT) Lab, which aims to develop technologies to assess consciousness and sustain relationships with minimally communicative persons. Broadly, her research focuses on: 1) developing tools to detect levels of and capacity for consciousness across altered states of consciousness (e.g., anesthesia, disorders of consciousness); and 2) creating technologies to support arts-based interactions (e.g., music, dance, therapeutic clowning) that build relationship and connection with minimally communitive persons. Her research program has involved persons in disorders of consciousness and palliative care; adults with dementia, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; and children with autism and severe and multiple disabilities. Her work has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Principal's Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researcher and membership in the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada, and has been featured in National Geographic, STAT news, the New Scientist and CTV National News. Dr. Blain-Moraes is also a dedicated teacher and mentor. Her students have received national and international recognition for their research and contributions to academia. The excellence of Dr. Blain-Moraes’ teaching and training was recognized with the 2020 Faculty of Medicine Teaching Innovation Award from McGill University and by the 2023 Carrie M. Derrick Award for Graduate Teaching and Supervision.
Dr. Carolina Tropini
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology and the School of Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Carolina Tropini is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the School of Biomedical Engineering, and a Canada Tier 2 Research Chair in Quantitative Microbiota Biology for Health Applications. In 2020 she was nominated a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator, and she was the first Canadian to be awarded the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Scholar, which was granted in the field of Engineering. She is the inaugural Alan Bernstein Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Fellow in the Humans & the Microbiome Program and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar. In 2019, she was nominated as a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar. The Tropini lab is investigating how a disrupted physical environment due to altered nutrition or concurrent with intestinal diseases affects the microbiota and host at a multi-scale level. They are a cross-disciplinary group that incorporates techniques from microbiology, bioengineering and biophysics to create highly parallel assays and study how bacteria and microbial communities function, with the goal of translating the knowledge gained to improve human health. Dr. Tropini conducted her Ph.D. in Biophysics at Stanford University. Her studies in the laboratory of Dr. KC Huang combined computational and experimental techniques to investigate bacterial mechanics and morphogenesis. In 2014 she received the James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, and she joined the laboratory of Dr. Justin Sonnenburg at Stanford. During her post-doc, Dr. Tropini applied her background in biophysics to study the impact of physical perturbations on host-associated microbial communities living in the gut.
Registration
Registration in this session is required and is now open. Those successfully registered will receive a confirmation email within a week of the workshop date.
If you register and do not attend or cancel after 3pm on the day before the event, it may affect your eligibility to join future events. To avoid this no-show penalty, please cancel by at least 3pm the day before the event by e-mailing postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca.
Accessibility
If you have a disability or medical condition that may affect your full participation in the event, please email postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca in advance of the event.