postdoc

1 of 2

noun

post·​doc ˈpōs(t)-ˌdäk How to pronounce postdoc (audio)
: one engaged in postdoctoral study or research

postdoc

2 of 2

adjective

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
Luckily for Josselyn, another postdoc who worked across the hallway, Bill Carlezon (now conducting neuroscience research at Harvard University), had developed a neat strategy for doping neurons with extra CREB. Dan Hurley, Discover Magazine, 6 June 2012 Pasterski is currently earning her postdoc from Princeton. Monica Cull, Discover Magazine, 22 Sep. 2022 Oxford postdoc Jack Matthews, the youngest member of Liu’s research group, explained that this was because, this far in the past, the lines between the kingdoms grow fuzzy. Robert Moor, Discover Magazine, 5 Oct. 2016 Gómez-Maldonado, who recently moved to Oak Square from Auburn, Ala., is a postdoc at Northeastern. BostonGlobe.com, 21 Dec. 2022 Sands contacted Brent Christner, a postdoc at Montana State who had cut his teeth searching for traces of life in 100,000-year-old Antarctic ice, and invited him to expand his search for life into the clouds. Douglas Fox, Discover Magazine, 5 June 2012 But Taro Nakamura, then a postdoc in Dr. Extavour’s lab, now a developmental biologist at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Japan, had engineered a special strain of crickets with nuclei that glowed fluorescent green. Siobhan Roberts, New York Times, 5 Aug. 2022 As a postdoc, Rijo-Ferreira’s experiments became more elaborate, her models expanding to include the animals playing host to the parasites. Allessandra Dicorato, STAT, 21 Nov. 2022 Räsänen and Till Sawala, also at the University of Helsinki, were part of a campaign aimed at overturning the University of Turku’s decision nearly 5 years ago to hire astrophysicist Christian Ott as a postdoc. Byjeffrey Mervis, science.org, 17 Nov. 2022
Adjective
In the hierarchy of memory science, Karim Nader hardly ranked — a lowly postdoc, only 33 years old, and not even a memory researcher. Kat Mcgowan, Discover Magazine, 31 July 2010 Weifeng Chen, a postdoc working elsewhere in the lab, raced over. Beryl Lieff Benderly, Discover Magazine, 30 Apr. 2015 Within House’s group, postdoc researchers are studying sediments left by ancient organisms in Western Australia. Sarah Scoles, Scientific American, 13 Jan. 2023 In October of 2017, a postdoc researcher named Robert Weryk, working with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii, detected a peculiar object moving away from the Sun at high speed. Corey S. Powell, Discover Magazine, 28 Feb. 2021 Most postdoc workers will receive salary increases of 20% to 23% by October 2023. Bynadine El-bawab, ABC News, 29 Nov. 2022 Surapong Thammabuht / EyeEm Just as the pandemic hit, Christina Islas Lynggaard—a postdoc researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Globe Institute—sat in her apartment surrounded by vacuums and filters. Doug Johnson, Ars Technica, 6 Jan. 2022 Meanwhile, to rescue the 2D attractor framework, Fiete, her postdoc Mirko Klukas and their colleagues have proposed a novel model — one for which Fiete sees evidence in some of Ulanovsky’s and Jeffery’s findings. Quanta Magazine, 14 Oct. 2021 Ocampo-Peñuela would go on to pursue a PhD at Duke University in North Carolina with a Fulbright-Colciencias fellowship, then postdoc fellowships at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the Humboldt Institute in Colombia. Andrew Wight, Forbes, 29 Aug. 2021 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'postdoc.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

Noun

1964, in the meaning defined above

Adjective

1942, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of postdoc was in 1942

Dictionary Entries Near postdoc

Cite this Entry

“Postdoc.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postdoc. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

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