<p>So, I am not sure how postdoctoral fellows work. Do they always have an advising professor?
Are there times where the postdoc does the research on his own without other professor's involvement?</p>
<p>Most of the time there is a professor who is the PI of the grant which supports the postdoc. On some occasions, there are departmental postdoctoral fellows who have more independence but even those usually work with a faculty member.</p>
<p>The best postdocs are very independent and supervise students and even write research proposals.</p>
<p>To add to the last post, if you are a postdoc and you aren’t effectively working independently with little to no PI involvement, you are doing it wrong. That’s sort of the point.</p>