2019 Distinguished Service Award Recipient Announced

ROCKVILLE, Md. - March 11, 2019 - PRLog -- The recipient of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) 2019 Distinguished Service Award (DSA) is Mary Anne With, manager for the postdoctoral program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The DSA represents appreciation for an individual or entity that has demonstrated either a profound, sustained, or leadership contribution to improving the postdoctoral experience.

With is the manager for the postdoctoral program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Her passionate leadership and desire to continually enhance and improve the program has had an extremely positive impact on the lab's scientific visibility to the external community. The laboratory's postdoctoral program averages well over 400 participants year-round, representing a major pipeline to the laboratory's future science and engineering workforce.

Over her time managing the program, some of the enhancements she has made to the program, include the development and implementation of a number of distinguished and named postdoctoral fellowship appointments, a number of postdoc publication prizes, as well as the Postdoc Distinguished Performance and Mentor Awards.

She has created a variety of career development initiatives including but not limited to "Science in '3'," research symposiums, external career fair, programmatic capabilities awareness workshop, and internal career fair. She oversaw the creation of the LANL postdoc association, and was also instrumental in the development of a program database allowing for the reporting of extensive data. She also created a program exit questionnaire to be completed by postdocs as they exit their postdoc appointment.

On a national scale, other national laboratories have approached With for assistance as they launched their own directors and distinguished fellows programs, providing guidance and direction. She established the National Laboratory Postdoctoral Program Forum, bringing together the postdoc program coordinators from all of the Department of Energy laboratories, as an extension to the NPA.

During her Los Alamos career, she has had a positive impact on the professional development for thousands of postdoctoral researchers. Previous to working at Los Alamos National Lab, she was employed by Sandia National Laboratory and a subsidiary of Lockheed Corporation.

With was nominated by Ross Beattie, Ph.D., president, Los Alamos postdoc association, David L. Clark, Ph.D., program director, National Security Education Center, Christopher J. Fontes, Ph.D., technical staff member (scientist 5),Tanya L. Jackson, professional staff, National Security Education Center, and Blas Pedro Uberuaga, Ph.D., scientist 5.

In her nominations packet, her 28 years of service are highlighted, pointing out that With has influenced the careers of over 10,000 postdocs. One nominator states "Mary Anne's dedication, professionalism, and creativity have been instrumental in making the Laboratory's Postdoctoral Program a flagship professional development and pipeline success story, and for helping to maintain Los Alamos as a Marquee place for science, technology, and engineering careers." Another nominator says, "What stands out the most to me is Mary Anne's dedication to the postdocs themselves. She knows them all. She knows their science and she knows their interests outside of the lab."

With is praised for pushing for expanded professional development opportunities in the lab and working to improve the postdoc program. Along with all of her accomplishments she is lauded as "a role model for service to the Laboratory and to the National Postdoctoral Association, mentoring early career scientists, and establishing unique and innovative postdoctoral research opportunities and appointments as an essential recruiting tool for US National Laboratories."

The NPA applauds With for her various contributions and the profound impact they have had on the postdoctoral experience.

The DSA will be presented at the 17th Annual Conference, April 12-14, 2019. Recent recipients of the Distinguished Service Award include Sam Castañeda, director of the Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs Program at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Postdoc Executive Committee at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

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The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) is a nonprofit, 501(c)3 educational association headquartered in Rockville, MD. Founded in 2003, the NPA seeks to provide a national voice for postdoctoral scholars; to facilitate positive change for postdocs; and thereby to advance the research enterprise in the United States. The NPA serves the postdoctoral community, including more than 14,000 individual members and some 200 organizational members. The NPA provides support to the postdoctoral community through resources, toolkits, professional development and networking opportunities.