Postdoctoral Fellow appointment and training policies at Northwestern are currently under review and will be located here upon review completion.  Until then the policy for Research Staff Appointments from the Office for Research are to be followed. 

The sections below are provided purely as informational and subject to the ongoing policy review outcome.

Categories

There are 3 categories of Postdoctoral Fellow appointments:

1. Postdoctoral fellows (Full-time or part-time staff employees)
2. Visiting Postdoctoral Fellows (visitors and not our employees)
3. NRSA Postdoctoral Fellows (Policy related to this category is located at the HR website.

Postdoctoral fellows are individuals with recently granted degrees of PhD or MD, or the equivalent terminal degree, who are primarily involved in continuing post graduate education or training in conducting research. Postdoctoral fellows are normally paid through the University payroll system.

Visiting postdoctoral fellows are individuals with recently granted degrees of PhD, MD, or the equivalent professional degree. Visiting postdoctoral fellows are not employees of the University and are unpaid. They receive their funding directly from and external agency. Visiting status is only approved upon documented external support. They may be appointed for a period not to exceed one year. Where the situation warrants it, such externally supported postdocs may be provided with supplemental funding from University or grant funds; such funding is considered financial aid for living and/or travel expenses and is not tied to services rendered to Northwestern.

NRSA Postdoctoral Fellows are recipients of National Research Service Awards (NRSA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - both those receiving grants as individuals and those participating in institutional grants. As provided by the terms of the award, NRSA Postdoctoral Fellows are considered to be trainees rather than employees of NIH or of the University. The status required by NRSA determines the availability of benefits, as described in the document Benefits, Tax, and Other Policy Provisions for Postdoctoral National Research Service Awards http://www.northwestern.edu/hr/benefits/emptype/nrsa.html issued by the Department of Human Resources.

Appointment

Appointment process to be followed is detailed here.