Well, this was another week. I hope that you had a good week, and that you have a great weekend, with or without snow. See you on Monday.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Job posting: 1-year visiting assistant professor, Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI
If you're a recent (or soon-to-be) analytical chem PhD, or if you know of one...
We're hiring a 1-year VAP as sabbatical replacement.
Link here. Best wishes to those interested.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Job posting: Scientist I: Bioconjugation Chemist/Biochemist, Akoya Biosciences, Marlborough, MA
We are seeking a highly motivated scientist to join the Akoya R&D Chemistry Team. You will work in a dynamic, team-oriented environment and take part in the development of multiplex fluorescent immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays and reagents for use in biological research. You will be a key contributor in a multi-disciplinary team executing scientific research and product development. You should be able to work independently and take initiative in planning, conducting, and reporting on the studies for which you are responsible.
You will have the opportunity to interact with small teams of biologists, chemists, biochemists, image scientists, and engineers in a rapidly moving organization.
Duties & Responsibilities:
- Perform high throughput immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunofluorescence (IF) staining and imaging of FFPE tissue sections.
- Develop workflow procedures for Akoya related platforms.
- Design analytical experiments to measure and quantify biological material and fluid transfer during workflow steps.
- Perform fluorescence microscopy analysis and optimize settings for antibody-stained tissue samples.
Skills & Requirements:
- Requires a BS degree with 4+ years’ experience, MS degree with 2+ years’ experience, or Ph.D. in conjugation chemistry, analytical/organic chemistry, and peptide/protein chemistry.
- Minimum of 2 years of practical experience in protein/nucleotide analytical assays, including analytical and preparatory liquid chromatography, gel electrophoresis, and spectroscopy.
Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
C&EN: "Judge issues temporary restraining orders over NIH indirect cost policy"
A federal judge in Massachusetts has granted two temporary restraining orders blocking the recent decision by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cap the amount that research grant recipients can receive for facility and administrative costs, payments known as indirect costs.
On the evening of Feb. 7, the health agency announced that it would limit the indirect cost rate for both new and existing grants to 15% starting Feb. 10. That rate is substantially lower than the 27–28% rate that universities receive, on average, according to the NIH memo.
Three lawsuits were filed Feb. 10 in response to the policy change. That same day, Judge Angel Kelley granted a temporary restraining order in response to the first suit, filed by 22 state attorneys general, pausing the policy change in those states. On Feb. 11, Kelley halted the policy change nationwide in response to a second lawsuit, filed on behalf of medical centers and medical schools. Hearings on both orders are scheduled for Feb. 21...
There is a raft of expert commentary out there, including Derek's. I don't have much to add, other than that this is really bad, and I made a very incorrect call. I vastly underestimated the level of hatred the right has for the NIH, and the desire to make it suffer. I would like to think that Congress will push back on this, but let's be honest - they are supine. It also seems pretty clear that the second Trump Administration is intent on running the executive branch as though it has no checks and balances.
If you're affected by this, I'm very sorry. Best wishes to you, and to all of us.
Indiana high school whoosh bottle incident injures teachers, students
![]() |
Credit: Joe Schroeder, Fox 59 |
INDIANAPOLIS — Several students and a teacher were injured Thursday at Southport High School when a large glass bottle exploded during a chemistry class demonstration.
According to an email sent to Southport teachers and obtained by FOX59/CBS4, the incident occurred just after 12 p.m. in a chemistry lab during a “whoosh bottle demonstration.” The explosion reportedly shattered a “large glass bottle,” Principal Amy Boone wrote to teachers.
The email said the teacher performing the demonstration and multiple students received “minor injuries.” One student will reportedly require stitches, according to the email, while the rest of the injured students either returned to class or were released to a parent.
It's rather shocking to me that the teacher used a glass bottle (doesn't seem like a great idea), but I guess we'll find out more (or not.)
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 480 research/teaching positions and 81 teaching positions
The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 480 research/teaching positions and 81 teaching positions.
Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.
Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread.
Are you having problems accessing the Google Sheet because of a Google Documents error? Email me at chemjobber@gmail.com and I will send you an Excel download of the latest sheet.
The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 116 research/teaching positions and 17 teaching positions
The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc and Daniyal Kiani) has 116 research/teaching positions and 17 teaching positions.
Friday, February 7, 2025
Have a great weekend
Well, this has been a tough week for an unexpected reason, but here's hoping things get better. I hope that you had a good week. I hope that you have a great weekend. See you on Monday.
Network with The Polymerist!
There's a trademark on 'slime'????
Via Bloomberg, this funny story:
Mack Toys Inc. asked the US Federal Communications Commission to put conditions on Paramount Global’s pending merger with Skydance Media to prevent the two media companies from controlling the word “slime.”
Paramount’s Nickelodeon kids channel has long used green slime as a gag in its programming. The 157-page filing says Paramount’s “restrictive” enforcement of its trademark on the word creates barriers to fair competition for small businesses like Mack Toys.
Mack Toys is a family-run business selling edible toy putty called Wildputty, according to its website. A photo in the filing shows the company selling a slime product from a stand.
Paramount plans to merge in a deal that would give Skydance founder David Ellison control of the combined operation. Ellison is the son of Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, the world’s fourth richest person. Mack contends Paramount’s control of the word “slime” restricts its ability to market its products.
“If the proposed Paramount Global-Skydance Media merger is approved, Larry Ellison would gain significant control over these advertising channels while also holding monopolistic control over the generic and merely descriptive mark ‘slime,’” according to the filing.
Who knew there are a thousand little chemistry kits in America violating this trademark?
(the grown of slime as a kids' entry into science-related activities is genuinely strange to me)
Thursday, February 6, 2025
Job posting: Senior Scientist - Medicinal Chemistry, Integrated Drug Discovery, Sanofi, Cambridge, MA
Via Indeed, this posting:
Job overview
An accomplished synthetic organic and medicinal chemist, with a good track record of being a key project contributor, to design and synthesize small molecule targets.
Responsibilities
- Design and synthesize small molecule targets to drive programs to clinical candidate nomination.
- Use reaction and reagent databases to select effective techniques/routes to maximize productivity and provide solutions to complex multi-step synthetic problems.
- Prepare and characterize high purity target compounds and intermediates to meet aggressive project timelines...
Requirements & Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree with minimum 8 years of relevant research experience in an academic or biopharmaceutical setting OR Master’s Degree with minimum 5 years of relevant research experience in an academic or biopharmaceutical setting OR PhD with minimum 3 years of relevant research experience in an academic or biopharmaceutical setting.
Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Politico: "Science funding agency threatened with mass layoffs"
Via Politico, this news:
One of the United States’ leading funders of science and engineering research is planning to lay off between a quarter and a half of its staff in the next two months, a top National Science Foundation official said Tuesday.
The comments by Assistant Director Susan Margulies came at an all-hands meeting of the NSF’s Engineering Directorate, according to two program managers who attended.
Marguiles, NSF and the White House didn’t respond to detailed questions about the layoffs and their potential implications.
“A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening,” a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management said in an email. “The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the deferred resignation offer.”
I don't have much to say about this other than the obvious: this is bad, real bad. Derek has a pretty comprehensive post that is, like so much these days, overtaken by events with this latest. Nevertheless, the last lines are good and important:
We are in a Constitutional crisis whether we like it or not, the worst of my own lifetime by far, and the more voices that are raised against it all, the better. That's what we can do for now. If it gets worse, it gets worse, and we'll revisit the topic, God help us.
But most of all, don't give in to cynicism or apathy. That's what the people promulgating these horrible policies want - a bored, indifferent public who figures that who cares, nothing matters any more, it's gonna happen no matter what. But it doesn't have to. Never forget that: it doesn't have to happen.
Best wishes to the scientists and engineers of the NSF, and to all of us.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 476 research/teaching positions and 80 teaching positions
The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 476 research/teaching positions and 80 teaching positions.
Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.
Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread.
Are you having problems accessing the Google Sheet because of a Google Documents error? Email me at chemjobber@gmail.com and I will send you an Excel download of the latest sheet.
The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 116 research/teaching positions and 17 teaching positions
The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc and Daniyal Kiani) has 116 research/teaching positions and 17 teaching positions.
Monday, February 3, 2025
NSF releases funding due to federal court intervention
1. When will the Award Cash Management Service (ACM$) be restored to allow disbursements on active awards?
Access to ACM$ has been restored and the system is available to accept payment requests as of 12:00 PM ET on February 2, 2025.2. On Friday, January 31, 2025, a Federal Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) directing Federal grant-making agencies, including the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), to "...not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate... awards and obligations." What is NSF doing to comply with this TRO?
NSF has restored access to the ACM$ system as of 12:00 PM ET on February 2, 2025 and is in compliance with the TRO...5. Will Fellows (GRFP, et al) receive their February stipend?Fellows must log into ACM$ and verify their payment request has been accepted. Most Fellows will have to resubmit a request.
Dow cutting 1500 jobs
Via the AP, this bad news:
Dow Inc.'s fourth-quarter profits came in well below Wall Street expectations and the material sciences company said Thursday that it is slashing 1,500 jobs globally in an effort to cut costs as sales stagnate.
The layoffs amount to about 4% of Dow’s workforce, according to data firm FactSet. Dow said the staff reductions are part of a broader plan to cut $1 billion in costs, citing “persistently weak macroeconomic conditions.”
Shares of Midland, Michigan-based Dow tumbled nearly 8% in morning trading.
Dow posted a loss of $35 million in the fourth quarter. Adjusted for one-time expenses, per-share profits in the period were zero. That’s down from last year’s earnings of 43 cents per share and well short of the 24 cents-per-share profit that analysts were expecting. For the full year, Dow recorded profits of $1.71 per share, down from 2023’s $2.24...
Here's hoping things turn around for the folks at Dow. Best wishes to them, and to all of us.
Friday, January 31, 2025
Have a great weekend
Science: "EXCLUSIVE: NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with Trump’s orders"
This from the news division of Science:
In a radical break with tradition, the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway, wreaking havoc across the academic research community.
The funding freeze and vetting of research and training projects that NSF previously decided were worthy of support is a response to a slew of presidential directives since 20 January that ban all federal funding for what Trump considers to be “woke gender ideology;” diversity, equity, and inclusion; foreign aid; the green new deal; and support for nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest. For academic scientists, the list of banned activities could include efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, collaborations with foreign scientists, and research on more environmentally friendly technologies...
There are reports from NSF-awarded postdocs that they have been cut off from funds. I don't really have anything intelligent to add, other than that this is the worst possible way to go about implementing this. What a horrific mess. Best wishes to those affected, and to all of us.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Job posting: Principal Scientist, Computational Chemistry, Merck, Boston, MA
We are seeking a creative, self-motivated computational chemist with exceptional interpersonal and problem-solving skills to join the Modeling and Informatics (M&I) department in Boston, MA, US. M&I is a diverse and inclusive team of approximately 50 computational chemists, cheminformaticians, data scientists and machine learning specialists who employ state of the art capabilities to drive drug design. We are an integral arm of both discovery and process chemistry and collaborate seamlessly with teams across the globe to innovate and invent better molecules faster. We are looking for a strategic thinker and accomplished computational drug hunter to take on a position that carries significant influence across our Company chemistry from target identification through delivery of clinical candidates.
Education Minimum Requirement:
- Ph.D. or M.S. in chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, or equivalent with a computational emphasis
Required Experience and Skills:
- 7+ years of professional experience with a Ph.D., or 9+ years with a M.S.
- Evidence of creative application of computational approaches to problems of pharmaceutical interest...
Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
NYT at global mathematics convention
Via the New York Times, this cool story:
The world’s largest gathering of mathematicians convened in Seattle from Jan. 8 to Jan. 11 — 5,444 mathematicians, 3,272 talks. This year the program diverged somewhat from the its traditional kaleidoscopic panorama. An official theme, “Mathematics in the Age of A.I.,” was set by Bryna Kra, the president of the American Mathematical Society, which hosts the event in collaboration with 16 partner organizations. In one configuration or another, the meeting, called the Joint Mathematics Meetings, or the J.M.M., has been held more or less annually for over a century.
Dr. Kra intended the A.I. theme as a “wake-up call.” “A.I. is something that is in our lives, and it’s time to start thinking about how it impacts your teaching, your students, your research,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. “What does it mean to have A.I. as a co-author? These are the kinds of questions that we have to grapple with.”
I feel like I've been reading the Science section of the Times for many years, but I've yet to see a dedicated story about the ACS National Meetings? Maybe we need to invite them? Anyway, read the whole thing, it's pretty cool, especially the picture of the crochet art.
Monday, January 27, 2025
C&EN: "Some chemists fear delays in NIH funding"
Via C&EN's Krystal Vasquez, this news:
Scientists are on edge following the Jan. 22 cancellation of multiple meetings with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). There’s no tally of how many meetings were cancelled, but some included NIH study sections and advisory councils, which review grant and fellowship applications.
Chrystal Starbird, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received an email stating that her study section, which was scheduled for the following week, would be canceled. The email from the federal health agency was vague and didn’t provide any reason for the cancellation, she says.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Pompano, a professor of chemistry and bioengineering at the University of Virginia, was supposed to attend a training session that day for an upcoming study section. The training session was canceled 20 min before it was set to start.
The cancellations came a day after the new administration of President Donald J. Trump put a temporary external communications freeze on all federal health agencies, though it’s not clear if the two are related. “It’s very concerning that everything has been stopped for review, which hasn’t happened in prior presidential transitions,” Pompano says. “It tells you there’s some major changes happening.”
The communications freeze at NIH, according to CNN, extends to purchases?:
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have been told the communications pause announced by the Trump Administration earlier this week includes a pause on all purchasing, including supplies for their ongoing studies, according to four sources inside the agency with knowledge of the purchasing hold.
The supply crunch follows a directive first issued on Tuesday by the acting director of the Department of Health and Human Services, which placed a moratorium on the release of any public communication until it had been reviewed by officials appointed or designated by the Trump Administration, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN. Part of this pause on public communication has been widely interpreted to include purchasing orders to outside suppliers. One source noted they had been told that essential requests can proceed and will be reviewed daily.
Researchers who have clinical trial participants staying at the NIH’s on-campus hospital, the Clinical Trial Center, said they weren’t able to order test tubes to draw blood as well as other key study components. If something doesn’t change, one researcher who was affected said his study will run out of key supplies by next week. If that happens, the research results would be compromised, and he would have to recruit new patients, he said.
I have a very difficult time imagining that someone in the Trump White House wanted this to happen, but nevertheless, it's happened. Here's hoping that it's only the long-term prospects of grad students, postdocs and faculty that have been affected, and that the short-term, life-and-death aspects of the patients at the NIH Clinical Center will not actually been impacted by this stupidity. Best wishes to them, and to us all.
Friday, January 24, 2025
Have a good weekend
Well, this was a more chill week than I expected, all things considered. I hope that all is well with you, and that you have a good weekend. See you on Monday.
Help out this young PhD inorganic chemist
Via Bluesky, this sad story from r/chempros:
I had a job as a chemist for the US Government, but was let go today due to the onslaught of executive orders. (I was on a mandatory new-hire probation and my agency head decided to let all probationary employees from my division go to hopefully spare some cuts elsewhere.) I’m obviously devastated, but I have to find work to support my wife and her medical treatments. She has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which fortunately is not a death sentence as long as treatment is consistent.
So, I’m hoping some of you fine folks out there might know of some positions that would hire a PhD inorganic/organometallic chemist with a lot of computational experience. I graduated just barely over a year ago with my PhD from a large R1 state school and have ~10 publications (3 first author and 1 co-first author). I’ve googled “chemist jobs” in every major metropolitan area in my state and adjacent states and looked on LinkedIn and Handshake. I did not find many positions for which a PhD in organometallic chemistry would be competitive. I’m not really sure how to search every open position in the country (because at this point I’m willing to relocate if necessary to gain employment), so I’m asking in earnest for help from kind strangers like you. If you know of any positions that might be available, I’d love to hear about them.
There are many people negatively impacted by the transition to the Trump Administration, but this hiring freeze is really crummy. If you can help out the OP, please do. Best wishes to them, and to us all.