Webinar: Postdoc to PI: Building the Foundation for an Independent Career
Is your goal to lead your own lab?
If you're a PhD student or postdoc with ambitions of becoming a Principal Investigator, knowing how to prepare can be just as important as the goal itself.
In the second session of our Postdoc to PI series in partnership with the British Neuroscience Association, Dr Sam Booker (University of Edinburgh) shared practical insights on building the foundation for an independent academic career. This session focused on preparation - developing the mindset, skills, and strategies that will set you up for success when the time comes to apply for independent roles.
Webinar On-Demand: Postdoc to PI: Building the Foundation for an Independent Career. Originally aired Wednesday 1st October 2025.
Need help equipping your lab?
In this webinar, we also discussed how Scientifica can support your journey with free lab consultations—to help you find the right tools and setup for your research goals
About Dr Sam Booker
Sam completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh with an Honours Degree in Pharmacology in 2008. From there, he moved to the University of Glasgow to undertake a PhD in the laboratory of Imre Vida, carrying out a variety of whole-cell patch clamp recording techniques on hippocampal interneurons. In 2011, he relocated with the laboratory to Berlin to take up a three-year postdoctoral position at the Charité Universitätsmedizin, remaining in the laboratory of Imre Vida. During this time, he further studied the role of hippocampal and cortical interneurons in local microcircuit formation, using a combination of whole-cell recordings, calcium imaging, and GABA uncaging.
From 2014 to 2021, Sam was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh in the laboratories of Peter Kind and David Wyllie, with a primary focus on understanding synaptic mechanisms in the early brain that contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders. For this, the group established multiphoton imaging and uncaging combined with whole-cell and field recording.
In 2021, Sam was awarded a SIDB ESAT Fellowship to establish his own research group. The laboratory studies the fundamental mechanisms leading to plasticity of neurons in the developing brain, and how these are influenced by inhibitory signalling. For this, the group employs a combination of electrophysiology and neuroanatomy in cell and slice cultures, as well as acute brain slices from rodents and humans.
Dr Sam Booker, University of Edinburgh speaking at BNA 2025
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