Whitehead, University College London Take Top Honors

According to The Scientist's 2011 edition of its annual "best places to work" survey for postdocs — in which the magazine charts the top 40 US institutions and the top 15 international institutions, as voted on by readers — the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., took top US honors for a second time. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich., the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, also in Cambridge, round out the US top five. On the international front, University College London takes the top honors, while the Novartis Institutes' posts in Basel, Horsham, and Shanghai earned second place. The Biotechnology Center at TU Dresden, Australia's University of Queensland, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany claim third- through fifth-best, in that order. The Scientist also profiles postdoc training at Woods Hole and University College London at length, and provides tips for making the most of a postdoc appointment abroad, here.