Your message was broadcast to the list (at least I saw it a week or so ago).  
There are probably several reasons why nobody has contacted you.  Apart from 
the fact that it's very difficult for anyone outside your country to interview 
you (and European countries, for instance, require us to interview, even by 
phone, before we can make an appointment), your cv contains no indication of 
biomimetic input.  It looks like a normal metallurgy PhD, so why should anyone 
on this list be interested in employing you?

There is another face to this, though, for the wider group.  What do we look 
for in a prospective post-doc?  Apart from the specific skills (which may be to 
do with biology or engineering), I look for not just the ability to mix biology 
and engineering (in your case I'd want to see that you had experimented with 
the appropriate biological system in order to extract the specific information 
that you wanted for your metallic system) but also a basic interest in biology 
so that you had some idea of the breadth of available concepts.  As an example, 
the next person to join our group was trained as a physicist, and one of his 
current activities is organising and leading field courses in biology.  He 
clearly has two sets of skills and can move ideas freely between biology and 
physics/engineering.  An alternative would be a biologist who is an effective 
engineer or physicist.

Would it help to have a check list of what we look for?  Perhaps then people 
like Yang Gan could tailor their CV to be sure that they advertise themselves 
to best advantage.

Julian Vincent

Quoting Yang Gan <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear all list members: 
>     Several days ago I posted this information in our active discussion
> board, but I wondered it must have been ruined by virus which has been
> propagating so wildly recently. So please accept my aplogies for your
> receiving this message again.
>     I'm seeking a postdoctoral position in Biomimetics and related
> researches.  
>     I got my doctoral thesis two years ago from Institute of Metal Research,
> Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. R. China. The thesis work there concentrated
> on the mechanical properties of nanocrystalline alloy and toughening by
> bio-inspired approach. Presently I've just finished my postdoctoral research
> on micromechanics study by SPM in Univ. Sci. &Tech. Beijing.  
>     Attached please find my CV with a list of publications. Anyone interested
> in my application may contact me offline. Thank you very much. 
> 
> Regards 
> Y. Gan
> ÿÿÿÿÿ
> 
> 
> ---------------------
> Dr Yang Gan
> Department of Materials Physics and Chemistry
> University of Science and Technology Beijing
> 30 Xue yuan Rd.
> Beijing 100083
> P. R. China
> Fax: 86-10-62332345
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> ÿÿÿÿÿ
>