Twice Mice

I recently got a message asking for details about being a post-doc in Belgium. The salary for a first-year post-doc straight out of a PhD is set at 2350 euros per month after tax (more if one has children or a non-working spouse). In addition to this, health care and free public transportation passes are often provided. Naturejobs often has post-doctoral positions advertised, however the best strategy is to search for papers of interest, and then contact the lab heads directly. One will have the best chances of success if one can state why one wants to work in that lab in particular, and suggest a project that one has designed ones self. Most of the websites for Belgian universities are not great, so it can be difficult to get an idea of where the best researchers are situated. A list of the ISI highly cited researchers from Belgium can be found here. Work visas for non-EU citizens will be sponsored by the institute, but can take several months to be processed. Collaborations and conferences within Europe are plentiful, and it only takes a few hours on the train to arrive in one of a number of countries with excellent research and development.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Academia, Belgium.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.