Monday, April 29, 2013

Podcast: Brandon Findlay, Chemtips

Brandon Findlay writes the Chemtips blog; he's a recently defended Ph.D. chemist from the University of Manitoba. We recently recorded a podcast, where we talked about chemistry at Canadian universities, his blog and his favorite organic chemistry techniques -- hope you enjoy!



Timepoints:

1:10: Brandon's educational biography
3:00: Brandon's research
6:00: Canadian universities and their specialities
8:20: Where do Brandon's colleagues end up?
9:17: The geography of Canadian industrial chemistry
12:00: Talking about Brandon's blog, Chemtips
14:00: Brandon on extractions
15:00: Talking column chromatography
20:14: Reverse-phase column chromatography
21:00: Evaporating water off compounds is good clean fun
24:00: Brandon on solid-phase peptide synthesis
25:30: Brandon's favorite organic chemistry technique books
31:00: Concluding thoughts

Thanks to Brandon for a fun conversation, best of luck in his postdoc and happy 1st blog anniversary!

2 comments:

  1. To address CJ's question a bit more: the job market (at least in academia) isn't that much rosier in Canada. Hundreds of applications are received for every position posted (tenure or non-tenure track), including many from the US and abroad. We have also been seeing significant funding cuts from the federal government agencies and from the provinces to the universities themselves (especially in Alberta).

    Myself and many of my colleagues ended up going abroad for post docs

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  2. Man, that Organic chem technique blog sounds great. I wish I had one for highly, highly air sensitive work. Most books I've seen don't take such things into account.

    If you want to see an area with a lot of superstitions then look at crystallization. I'm told there is a crystallization dance I will learn (I'm reasonablly sure that isn't new masters hazing...), and that there is a grad student in our group who does all her crystallizations in a pyramid.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20