I have a friend who is a post doc. She has made some novel discoveries in her last 3 years of work. Based on her work a grant was written which is on the verge of being funded, the last revision came back with a ranking of 2 and very postive feedback. Unfortunately her PI did not want to include her name on the grant. With her title as post doc researcher she was not able to write for grants on her own either. Now that the grant is going to be funded, the PI has cut off her funding. She was given a 1 month notice of termination for lack of funds. This puts her at a terrible disadvantage. She will be without a job and that will make it all the more difficult for her to get another job. In a situation where the post doc makes a major contribution to the grant, she should either be the co-pi of the grant or the PI would support her to find a faculty position, right? Why would they terminate her funding with such short notice? The PI never mentored her or allowed her to write for grants. If the post doc had the funding she could take it and establish herself in a good insitution. So in this situation what is the post doc to do? Her intellectual property was stolen and she has been left with nothing. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much.

Are you / she in the UK? This is all UK-specific so apologies if irrelevant. If she's a member of UCU then I'd suggest going to one of their reps to get some advice on her legal position, but regardless of the justice of the situation, I have a nasty feeling that she's not got much hope, as I know a lot of science postdocs who've had their contracts terminated at the end of the grant under which they were originally employed. This is UNLESS she's been continuously employed on the same contract for more than 4 years in which case I think there's been a ruling based on EU law that says she must be given a permanent contract (look on the UCU or Timeshighereducation.co.uk websites and do a search for it - it was reported in the press). PIs can't terminate contracts though - it's a HR decision and so I suspect it will turn out to be legal.

My understanding of the problem she faces from talking to science postdocs is that research councils do not allow people without permanent contracts to be sole PIs, and in some cases PIs at all, so the PI possibly had strong grounds for not making her a co-PI. What I think would be rather important is whether she has any written records of the decision not to write her in as a named researcher, his rationale for not doing so and any promises she was made about being employed on the grant despite not being named. If any promises were made in writing, then there might be a bit of a case to be made. Similarly, if she could prove sex discrimination i.e. that she has been treated differently on this to male postdocs in comparable cases by the PI, then that might also be a case. However, unless there's something dynamite that might sway HR to act, both those are probably routes to an employment tribunal rather than continued employment.

I rather suspect that the university owns the intellectual property to her research, but this is something that should be specified in her contract or in the documents she was sent at the time of appointment, and varies from place to place so she needs to check that out herself to see if there's any room for complaint on that basis.

Unfortunately your friend seems not to have really realised how insecure being a postdoc is. If the PI was giving out signals that her continued employment was in doubt (which it seems he was in not naming her on the grant) then she really needed to be applying elsewhere then - not that that helps now. Very few postdocs get lectureships in the sciences from what I'm told, so I suppose the other thing she needs to think is whether she continues to try for an academic career or tries the industry route. If she is determined to stay in academia, it would be a good idea to get advice from someone she trusts there, about how best to get agreement on subsequent publications based on her data to make sure her name is on them.

Sorry this isn't very encouraging and I do think, like in all abusive employment situations, your friends has moral right on her side. What I'm afraid is that she may not have legal right. Universities are not very good employers really. They treat postdocs badly and their hourly paid staff are even worse off. I hope something in this essay might help.

Thank you SO very much for replying. My friend and I are in the US, but looks like the situation in the UK is not very different. Here in the US the PI holds the life of the postdoc in their hands. In this particular situation looks like the PI wanted the grant all for herself, so she did not include my friend. My friend was unhappy about this but since a career in science is so dependent on the reference or good words spoken by the supervisor, (in this case the PI), she continued to work hard hoping that in return for giving up her claim on the grant, the PI would support her for a faculty position. Since the PI terminated her it seems like she is not in favor of doing this either. Yes, it is a moral right issue, maybe we could talk to an attorney here to figure out if she has any legal rights at all. Thanks again, so very much for the insight.