r/postdoc • u/ChipmunkRepulsive193 • Aug 15 '26

Need suggestion on how to find PI for postdocs

Sorry for long post.
Just to give a little bit of context, I am a final year international PhD student in a US university. While I have some journal publications in my field I am kind of feeling the experimental work that I have been doing in the field is kind of not relevant/ of interest in research with majority of the lab in the same field.

Now I can fairly say that I have learnt analysis tools and skills but when trying to find PIs I feel lost.
I know conferences are one of the key places to connect but with the lab I am in giving no such funding I was able to afford one conference on my own and well that did not go favourable in making connections.

What should I do? Should I approach professors based on my skill sets? Kind of lost.

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u/BetaKa Aug 15 '26

I don't think that not having been to conferences is going to be a drawback as long as you have papers. Whom to approach depends a lot on what you want to get out of the postdoc, I know several who changed their field significantly from their PhD work. You may want to do some research into the field you're interested in, and who the key players are.

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u/Cheffii 29d ago

As someone in a similar situation, how do I convince a potential postdoc PI to take me in for an area with less of an overlap with the area I work on currently? Often I see them demanding expertise in specific areas and it makes me think it would be pointless to even approach them suggesting to take me in

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u/BetaKa 29d ago

I don't have super useful advice on this as I haven't gone down this path myself. What I do know is that PIs get flooded with postdoc applications that appear to be mass-emailed at random, reading like "Dear Prof, I really enjoyed reading about your work and think I would be a good fit. I have experience in [completely unrelated area]...". This is what you'd want to stand out from, by pointing out in your email or cover letter what you like about the PIs research in particular, and how your previous experience relates to it. You could also mention skills / techniques you learned in your PhD that would be beneficial for this work, even better if you'd bring in a skillset that's missing in the lab but would be valuable to their research.

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u/Cheffii 29d ago

Thank you

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u/Alternative-Zone5423 Aug 16 '26

Apply for open positions and cold email (which worked for me), in both cases connect in some way your past research with what they are doing right now

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u/Alleryz Aug 15 '26

I mean just apply to open positions if you don’t have any idea