postdoctoral

American  

[pohst-dok-ter-uhl] / poʊstˈdɒk tər əl /

adjective

1. of or relating to study or professional work undertaken after the receipt of a doctorate.

   postdoctoral courses.

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postdoctoral British  

/ pəʊstˈdɒktərəl /

adjective

1. of, relating to, or designating studies, research, or professional work above the level of a doctorate

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Etymology

Origin of postdoctoral

1935–40; post- + doctoral ( def. )

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Explanation

Research or other work done after getting a PhD is postdoctoral. Your cousin must be pretty happy about the postdoctoral fellowship she got at the University of Hawaii. Surf's up! When you stay in school long enough to earn a doctorate degree (usually called a PhD or Doctor of Philosophy), you can describe the work, writing, and research you do as doctoral. It follows that related work done after that — but generally before getting a full-time academic job — is postdoctoral, since post- means "after." A postdoctoral student, for example, might work for a few years and teach some classes before pursuing a university teaching position.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

postdoctoral

Dr. Abshar Hasan, a postdoctoral fellow and the study's lead author, explained why recreating enamel's internal structure is so important.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2026

He holds a call every Friday with his research group that includes Caltech postdoctoral scholars and researchers in the U.S.,

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2026

This fall, 213 new graduate students and postdoctoral scholars came to campus, down from 287 a year earlier.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2026

The team included co-senior author Jason Ulrich, PhD, a professor of neurology at WashU Medicine, and first author Joshua T. Emmerson, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Holtzman's laboratory.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 20, 2026

So I was not faced with the prospect of absorbing chemistry until I went to Copenhagen to do my postdoctoral research with the biochemist Herman Kalckar.

From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson

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