Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Ivory Filter Flask: 9/15/15 edition

A few of the academic positions from C&EN Jobs this week:

Bowling Green, KY: Western Kentucky University looking for an assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Livermore, CA: Lawrence Livermore is looking for postdocs; the pay is remarkable at $8,500/month (works out to $102,000/year.) Dude!

Think about that - the Department of Energy can pay almost 3X the NIH minimum for a postdoctoral fellow in biology. Lots of different ways you can take that little market signal.

Furnace, PA: Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus is looking for an assistant professor of chemistry.

Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University looking for an assistant professor of organic chemistry as well as an assistant professor of analytical chemistry.

Stevens Point, WI: The University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point is looking for an assistant professor of analytical chemistry.

Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts - Amherst is searching for, well, a lot:
We seek applicants who will develop or continue vigorous research programs at the interface of organic, analytical, and physical chemistry with materials or biological sciences.  Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, materials organic and bio-organic chemistry, spectroscopy of macromolecules and biomacromolecules, and the use of physical methods to study and characterize molecules and materials at interfaces. 
I think it's missing a "nano".

The list: The joint ChemBark/Chemjobber 2016 Faculty Jobs list is getting longer, with the last official update on September 11, with 255 total positions. 

11 comments:

  1. GIven the cost of living in the SF Bay area, I'm not sure that you come out ahead very much with that salary. Also, it is a DOE position, which probably means needing a security clearance to walk in the door, and having to get preclearance for trips outside the country (yes, even a weekend in Baja). I'm sure they are doing some interesting science, but I wouldn't apply without being clear-headed about the setting.

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    1. Keep in mind Livermore is the very fringe of the Bay Area; if you live in the other direction COL will be almost reasonable, at least by California standards.

      Also, is there really much of a security clearance issue? I thought that Los Alamos hired Chinese nationals as postdocs as much as anywhere else.

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    2. Generally don't need pre-clearance. You just notify the security office, it's not a request. A bit more work if it's a sensitive country though.

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    3. Also, depending on the position, a clearance isn't necessarily required. There are lots of foreign national postdocs.

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  2. A few years ago it was famously lucrative to get a postdoc position at Los Alamos or (maybe?) Pacific Northwest National Labs. In fact most of the people i saw go there never left and are still there, as some sort of group leaders. Seemed to be a materials version of postdoc at a medical school and hoping for a long-term research associate position.

    Maybe others out there have more information on if that's still true at other national labs?

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    1. There are far too many postdocs at PNNL for them all to be taken on as staff scientists most of them move on to industry or academia.

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  3. Bryan Balazs, Candidate for ACS PresidentSeptember 16, 2015 at 2:28 PM

    I started as a post-doc at LLNL in 1992, and the salaries for post-docs were competitive then with many other entry-level Ph.D. jobs, as they are now. Depending on what you work on, clearances may or may not be required, so check it out if you're interested. Yes, in general the Bay Area is expensive, but there are affordable housing options. I was hired as a staff chemist after my post-doc ended in 1994, and it's been a very rewarding career with no end of interesting science to work on. Bonus points for Livermore having almost 60 wineries and a vibrant downtown!

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  4. OK, I am fairly certain the postdoc position is atypical. It is for a Lawrence Fellow. This is a more prestigious postdoc than most.
    My postdoc at a national lab was through DOE and paid 52k/year. (I am NOT complaining). This national lab also had competitive Fellow type postdocs that were paid above 70k/year.

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  5. Had a post-doc at LBL. Paid in the 40's. Knew someone with position at Livermore but left to come to Berkeley because apparently you can't use gmail at Livermore. He also didn't like it that he had to account for his time spent (writing down what he did every hour). He had connections at Berkeley Lab and decided life would be easier there.

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  6. The post-doc salary noted by CJ isn't atypical at LLNL. It's real, so check it out if you're interested.

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  7. https://fellowship.llnl.gov. I cannot say for certain that the salary is unusual, but the ad above is for a Lawrence Fellow. There are only a few selected each year, so it is atypical in that regard

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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