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If you were to do a postdoc at the Broad Institute (of Harvard and MIT), can you say you're a postdoc at either Harvard or (/and?) MIT? More importantly, will you actually be affiliated with those universities and have access to resources such as libraries, research instruments, and career support?

For example, I've heard of people working at the Joslin Diabetes Institute say they work at HMS, so I'm not sure if this is how the Broad Institute works or if that is even an accurate example in the first place.

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For your CV, I would list my positions as:

  • Postdoctoral Fellow [or similar and official title]

    Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Cambridge, MA.

    2023-Present

Thier webpage uses this order. You're at both and probably neither. That is, your institution is a joint venture, so it is affiliated with both, but you are not. You would work for the joint venture. Unless you have a second appointment with a department at MIT or Harvard, I would not list those universities.

I suspect Broadies have access to both schools' libraries or their own subscriptions to online resources. As for other support, it looks like their post docs have their own support programs:

Each selected postdoctoral researcher will be provided with a stipend, travel allowances to attend scientific conferences and meetings, and retirement and health benefits provided by the Broad Institute. Funding is provided for up to three years. In addition, participants will receive mentoring and professional development opportunities.

I would encourage you to poke around their website, and, if you're serious about postdoc position there, reach out to PIs and current postdocs who can tell you what it is like to work there.

Lastly, in the grand scheme of things, I suspect listing the "Broad Institute" is more important than listing yourself as being affiliated with Harvard and MIT. They have their own branding. Additionally, your own productivity (e.g., publications, grants, patents) will be more important than where you accomplish them for the next step of your career.

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    Thank you. Your answer was hugely helpful. I completely agree with you on the "grand scheme of things". I recently had an interview there (and I was asking so I didn't appear overly naive in the interview), and I was told it is extremely easy to get a MIT/Harvard card and/or email if you want to, but most people are not too worried to do that. It seems set up to make that easy if you want, but otherwise, it does seem entirely independent (on the postdoc level specifically)
    – sat0ri
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 10:58
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No, you are employed by the Broad. Institutions like MIT and Harvard can give out affiliate appointments, so that faculty can say they are appointed by multiple institutions. These are 0 FTE positions.

Absent a special agreement, you are a postdoc of one institution. These schools offer billing agreements to each other as well, to help share the role of overseeing staff that may report to two advisors cross-institution, but this does not change your appointment--you have one single institution that you are appointed and employed through. Unless you get another appointment, you would just be a Broad employee. Some of this information can be found online, if you look at their appointment information:

https://research.mit.edu/research-policies-and-procedures/visiting-and-affiliate-appointments https://academic-appointments.fas.harvard.edu/research-appointments-summary-table https://hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/hms-affiliates

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  • Thank you for your answer. I think part of the confusion is that at every level--undergrad/graduate, postdoc, and professor--there's a slightly different policy. Since it's not a degree-granting institution, students are officially hosted at either MIT or Harvard; on the other hand, professors can be either or both. From my recent interview there, it does seem exceptionally easy to get a Harvard or MIT email/ID card if you need to do any sort of work there (as well as the hospitals)
    – sat0ri
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 10:54
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    @sat0ri, yes, that's right. Students have to be at an institution that grants a degree. This is not the case with research appointments. In order to pay a student at the Broad, they use billing agreements, whereby the student's institution will be paid back by Broad, but the employment is at the degree-granting institution. You have to get a second appointment (usually 0 FTE) for the systems access. Two questions we always ask, who is paying, and what access do you need. This gets us to the right arrangement, and affiliates are very common in the Boston research environment for this reason.
    – yourfriendlyresearchadmin
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 18:28

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