The 2020 Faculty Jobs List: 13 positions

The 2019 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 13 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions. In 2019-2020, we will be adding teaching professor positions, targeting positions that demonstrate a promotion ladder and/or are titled "assistant teaching professor" or "associate teaching professor."

On June 26, 2018, the 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 9 positions.

Here's the link to the latest open thread. 

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 31 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 31 positions.

This list is curated by Sarah Cady. It targets:

• Full-time STAFF positions in a Chem/Biochem/ChemE lab/facility at an academic institution/natl lab
• Lab Coordinator positions for research groups or undergraduate labs 
• and for an institution in Canada or the United States

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

Want to chat about staff scientist positions? Try the open thread.

Alonzo Yanes, on the stand

Sad testimony from the victim of the 2014 Beacon School "rainbow demonstration" incident:

The Beacon High School student who was horrifically burned in a class chemistry experiment gone awry in 2014 testified Friday that he takes off his glasses to avoid seeing strangers’ stares. 

“I tried not to look at people directly in the eye. I took my glasses off. Then I can’t really see details far away,” Alonzo Yanes, now 21, said during his second day on the witness stand in his Manhattan Supreme Court civil suit trial. 

“This made it easier for me. Then I’m not really focused on peoples’ faces,” Yanes, who now bears scars on his face, neck, arms, hands and legs, continued as his glasses sat folded in front of him in the courtroom. “The world wasn’t very accepting of the way that I physically looked.”

Yanes — who was 16-years-old when a fireball engulfed him after his teacher Anna Poole performed a botched “Rainbow Experiment” — recalled his friends and sister’s shocked looks when they first visited him in the hospital...

Maybe we could stop doing the rainbow demonstration? 

View From My Hood?: Huangpu view edition

Shanghai, China

(got a View from Your Hood submission? Send it in (with a caption and preference for name/anonymity, please) at chemjobber@gmail.com; will run every other Friday.)

Interesting new program for chemists who have 'taken a break' from the lab

This was an interesting posting from Johnson and Johnson:

Did you take a break from the professional world to pursue other priorities? Do you want to generate innovative solutions to synthetic and medicinal chemistry challenges within the context of small molecule drug discovery projects? If you are an experienced, medicinal chemist with excellent organic synthesis expertise with a break of two or more years, this “Re-Ignite Career Program is for you. 

This four (4) month paid internship as part of our Re-Ignite Career Program will refresh your technical skills while you work with a market leader in healthcare. In addition to key job responsibilities, we provide technical training, professional development, and peer mentoring with full access to the R&D chemistry community at Janssen and the possibility of becoming a full-time employee after completion of the program with the most dynamic health care organization in the world, Johnson & Johnson. Janssen Research & Development, L.L.C., a division of Johnson & Johnson's Family of Companies is recruiting Associate Scientists, Discovery Chemistry, for our site in San Diego, CA.

Qualifications

• A current career break from chemistry of two or more years, required
• A Bachelor’s Degree with 2 or more years of synthetic organic or medicinal chemistry industry experience is required.

~ OR ~

• A current career break from chemistry of two or more years, required
• A Master’s Degree in synthetic organic or medicinal chemistry with significant synthetic experience is required
• Strong track record of achievement in organic synthesis, with a deep knowledge of modern synthetic, analytical techniques is preferred.
• Proven track record of scientific contributions including peer reviewed publications, patents and presentations is preferred.
• Independent thinking and the ability to effectively collaborate in a highly matrixed environment is required.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including preparation of presentations is required.
• This position is based in our company location in San Diego, CA.

If this is what it says it is, it seems like a pretty great idea to bring folks back into the lab who may otherwise have a somewhat difficult time with such an aspiration. 

Warning Letter of the Week: casual batch record edition

Via an epistle from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to the Plant Manager of Vida International, Inc. in Taipei City, Taiwan:

The batch production record for lot [redacted] of [redacted] is deficient because it does not represent the formula and ingredients that the product purports on its label. Specifically, the batch record does not list all inactive ingredients included on the product label. The batch record also lacked the actual amounts of each active and inactive ingredient used during manufacturing, a calculation of theoretical or actual yields, documentation of the equipment used, and critical manufacturing parameters such as [redacted] speeds and [redacted] times.

Eh, just throw the stuff in there, let it stir around for a while, take it out. 

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles in this week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News:

• Cover: "Marking 50 years since the Cuyahoga River fire, which sparked US environmental action" (by Cheryl Hogue)
• Doesn't sound like people were too cheery at this year's American Chemistry Council meeting (by Michael McCoy)
• "Errors, little oversight led to gas drillers’ deaths in Pryor Trust gas well explosion" (by Jeff Johnson"
• CVS testing dietary supplements? (by Tien Nguyen)
• "Corn Belt rain clobbers chemicals" (by Alexander H. Tullo) 
• great headline
• Some d00d yapping about business cards and the like...

The 2020 Faculty Jobs List: 9 positions

The 2019 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 9 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions. In 2019-2020, we will be adding teaching professor positions, targeting positions that demonstrate a promotion ladder and/or are titled "assistant teaching professor" or "associate teaching professor."

On June 19, 2018, the 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 8 positions.

Here's the link to the latest open thread. 

Job posting: Assistant Professor of Chemistry (1 Year), Utica College, Utica, NY

From the inbox: 

Assistant Professor of Chemistry (1 Year) 

The Department of Chemistry at Utica College invites applications for a one-year, non-tenure track faculty position beginning August 1, 2019. The successful candidate will teach courses in our General Chemistry sequence and our Liberal Arts Chemistry courses. While most sections will be in our General Chemistry sequence, there will be an opportunity to teach upper level courses in the area of the candidates’ expertise, such as biochemistry, analytical chemistry, or inorganic chemistry. Research projects involving undergraduates would be supported. Applicants must have a Ph.D. Experience teaching college level chemistry courses preferred; area of expertise might include biochemistry, analytical or inorganic. Will consider ABD.

Full listing here. Best wishes to those interested.  

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 31 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 31 positions.

This list is curated by Sarah Cady. It targets:

• Full-time STAFF positions in a Chem/Biochem/ChemE lab/facility at an academic institution/natl lab
• Lab Coordinator positions for research groups or undergraduate labs 
• and for an institution in Canada or the United States

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

Want to chat about staff scientist positions? Try the open thread.

Civil trial of NYC teacher whose rainbow demonstration burned student underway

Via the New York Post's Priscilla DeGregory and Laura Italiano, this update from the lawsuit brought by Alonzo Yanes: 

All she remembers is her victim’s screams. 

In a deposition read aloud at the civil trial against Beacon High School chemistry teacher Anna Poole, she describes the moment a lab demo caused a fireball that engulfed 10th-grader Alonzo Yanes, who is now seeking $27 million in damages. 

“I remember looking up and seeing him rolling on the floor and I remember him screaming,” she said in a 2017 deposition, for which she was under questioning by Yanes’ lawyers. 

The reading of Poole’s deposition in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday is the first public airing of her account of the accident that left Yanes permanently disfigured.
But while the now-21-year-old will never forget that 2013 afternoon in Room 317 of the prestigious Upper West Side school, Poole herself said she has little memory of it. 

Yanes has lost his sense of touch, is permanently disfigured in his face, torso and hands, and has been too afraid of his looks to make friends or start an intimate relationship, his lawyer said during opening statements on Monday. 

Yanes is seeking damages from Poole and the city.

$27 million dollar lawsuit - that's pretty steep!  

Bad news from the agrochemical sector

It's weather related (via Chemical and Engineering News, by Alex Tullo): 

Chemical suppliers to the US agricultural sector are blaming bad weather in the Corn Belt for a difficult year so far. Warnings about lackluster sales for the first half are piling up from firms such as Novozymes, DuPont, and Corteva Agriscience. 

A cold and snowy winter, followed by a rainy and cool spring, has caused flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota. 

Novozymes says it experienced a 2% sales decline during the first 5 months of the year. Nearly 20% of the company’s annual sales come from supplying products such as yeast and amylases to the ethanol industry. “Severe weather in the US Midwest are [sic] impacting grain-processing volumes and challenging the planting season,” the Danish company says. “The recovery of our US Bioenergy business has not progressed as expected, and demand in some emerging markets is soft.” Similarly, last month DuPont said it would take a charge of between $800 million and $1.3 billion. The company blamed slow demand in its biomaterials segment as well as “challenging conditions in U.S. bioethanol markets.” 

Farmers are indeed off to a slow start. According to the US Department of Agriculture’s June 10 Crop Progress report, only 83% of the available corn acreage across 18 states had been planted as of June 9, versus 99% last year. Additionally, only 59% of the planted corn is rated in good or excellent condition, versus 77% a year ago...

It will be interesting to see the second-order effects - does less revenue mean fewer chemists hired in Corteva R&D? Here's hoping that food prices don't go up too much...