What is your role as a ECDN Rep and how can postdocs in your school contact you?
My role as an ECDN Rep for the School of Mathematics is to represent the more specific interests and needs of early career researchers in mathematics and closely related disciplines. Contact me at n.nikolaev@bham.ac.uk and please include "ECDN" in the subject line.
What do you feel are the benefits of the ECDN programme for postdocs and what do you feel have been the benefits to you from being a postdoc rep?
Over the years, I've come to realise that the issues and circumstances faced by researchers in mathematics are substantially different from those in other sciences, even including much of physics. In part, this is because mathematics is a formal science and not an empirical science. This distinction may be subtle, but it makes mathematics stand slightly apart from its sister sciences, which is ever more amplified in how the global mathematical community operates. My goal as an ECDN Rep for the School of Mathematics is to champion issues more specifically relevant to our discipline and promote an open discussion of the unique challenges faced by researchers in mathematics.