Press "load more" on the Faculty Jobs Open Thread to see new updates

Hello, friends:

As the 2017 Faculty Jobs Open Thread has gotten longer, the Blogger software that this blog is run on has added a new wrinkle: when you initially load the thread, it loads only the first ~220 comments and then has a "load more" button near the bottom of the page near the comment box. Only after pressing that button does it load the latest comments.

I'm really sorry about this, especially since there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm asking you to vote, either in the comments to this post, the comments to the Open Thread or by e-mail to me (chemjobber@gmail.com) to tell me if you'd like a new Open Thread. If there is an overwhelming majority that wants a new thread, I'll be closing the old one to new comments and opening a new one.

Again, my apologies for this latest wrinkle. Thanks for hanging in there.

Cheers, Chemjobber

I hear possum bacon is yummy - I wonder if it's an antibiotic

The authors may have a conflict of interest with the opossum...
Credit: Motley et al. J. Nat. Prod.

Via the Chemistry Reddit, a really amusing source for natural products [1]:

...To obtain the large number of microbiome bacteria from diverse mammalian sources that we required for our screening process, we used an opportunistic sampling approach to explore roadkill (animals killed as a result of unintentional vehicular collisions), which is an underutilized source of microbiome bacteria.  

In our case, we focused on fresh (recently deceased) roadkill comprising mammals that are native or naturalized to central Oklahoma. Roadkill offers a convenient route to accessing microbiome bacteria since it (i) is abundant in many areas, (ii) presents the opportunity for sampling diverse animals and their associated bacteria across a broad geographical region, (iii) alleviates concerns over the trapping and testing of live animals since only carcasses are sampled, and (iv) offers the possibility to conduct chronologically dependent testing of specific animal populations over extended periods. In this paper, we present the development and application of our mammalian-microbiome-derived natural product discovery pipeline (Figure 1) and present data for several new and known depsipeptides obtained from opossum-associated bacteria.  

...Opportunistic sampling of mammalian roadkill took place over a two-year period near the University of Oklahoma campus (Norman, OK, USA). Carcasses deemed fresh (generally determined to have been struck by motor vehicles no more than 10 h prior to sampling) were selected, and those with one or more intact orifices (i.e., mouth, nose, ear, eye, and rectum) or gastrointestinal tracts were sampled roadside with sterile swabs....

Imagine the undergraduate who had to sample the intact orifice...

In all seriousness, congratulations to Motley et al. for interesting science and a novel source!

1. Motley, J.L.; Stamps, B.W.; Mitchell, C.A.; Thompson, A.T.; Cross, J.; You, J.; Powell, D.R.; Stevenson, B.S.; Cichewicz, R.H. "Opportunistic Sampling of Roadkill as an Entry Point to Accessing Natural Products Assembled by Bacteria Associated with Nonanthropoidal Mammalian Microbiomes." J. Nat. Prod. ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.6b00772

Low and negative interest rates means nuns are jumping into the market, buying pharma stocks

Is Sister Lioba doing better with her portfolio than you?
Credit: Georgi Kantchev, Wall Street Journal

Unusual story about a stock-trading nun in Germany* by Georgi Kantchev in the Wall Street Journal:

On a recent morning, Sister Lioba Zahn read the Bible, attended prayer, did the laundry and then prayed again. In the afternoon, she called her bank and started trading. 

...For over a century, Mariendonk financed itself by selling milk and candles, and through income on its bank deposits. After the European Central Bank began cutting rates, eventually going all the way below zero to their current -0.4%, Sister Lioba realized her convent needed extra income to survive. 

“With rates so low, we must get a better return if we want to sustain the convent,” says Sister Lioba, who holds the position of “cellerarin,” a convent’s version of a chief financial officer. 

Back in 2013, the nunnery’s roof needed repairing and the only car that the 28 sisters owned was nearing the end of its life. Calling her bank, Sister Lioba was offered a seven-year savings bond that carried a 1% annual return. She said she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You don’t need to have studied mathematics to see that we were going down,” said Sister Lioba, who had studied psychology. 

After morning prayer, she gathered her fellow nuns into a wood-paneled room inside the convent and showed a PowerPoint on low interest rates. Presiding over the meeting, Sister Christiana Reemts, Mariendonk’s abbess, made an observation. “Twenty years ago we could get enough money from interest to renovate our whole building,” she remembered saying. “Now the interest rate can bring tears to one’s eyes.” In Mariendonk, a decision was made and global markets had a new investor.  

Sister Lioba now runs a portfolio of roughly €2 million, or $2.1 million, from her convent office. “I started by googling what a swap is,” Sister Lioba says, referring to a derivative that allows an investor to exchange the income stream of one asset with that of another. 

Like many investors, Sister Lioba remembers the first stock she bought: Novo-Nordisk AS, a Danish drug company. She bought it in late 2013 and its value increased by around a third before she sold it earlier this year at a profit. “My only regret is why we didn’t buy some more at the time,” she says.... 

Her trading has brought her convent a 2.6% return, which isn't great, but not bad compared to negative rates. I'm guessing Sister Lioba doesn't charge much for her services... (Why not just put it into an index fund?)

*Can't get to the article? Google the headline: "Get Thee to a Brokerage! Low Rates Turn Nuns Into Traders" 

Warning Letter of the Week: testing into compliance edition

A firm reminder to the general manager of Dongying Tiandong Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in Shandong, China from the Food and Drug Administration:

 1. Failure to adequately investigate and document out-of-specification results according to a procedure, and implement appropriate corrective actions.

...For example, according to your Deviation Handling Sheet No.07-2015021, you resampled and tested crude heparin batch Y102-1504005 multiple times, with the following results.                                           

You neither evaluated the initial sample OOS, nor conducted retesting of the initial original sample to confirm it. Instead, you resampled until you obtained a passing result.

Similarly, your initial test results for another crude heparin batch (Y102-1503008) were also OOS. Again, you resampled without justification, and accepted the batch when you obtained results within specification.

Disregarding the OOS results, and resampling and retesting without scientific justification, constitutes “testing into compliance.” This practice is unscientific and objectionable under CGMP....

I love that last sentence.  

2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 497 positions

The 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated mostly by Andrew Spaeth, with minor help from me) has 497 positions.

Have you had a Skype/phone interview (or an on-site) with a position on the Faculty Jobs List? Please add the date of the interview to the open thread. The open thread is here.

Job posting: synthetic organic chemists, Arcus Biosciences, Hayward, CA

From the inbox, positions at Arcus Biosciences:

Our Medicinal Chemistry Department is one of the most critical parts of our research engine. We are looking to greatly expand the size of this department in 2016, with no less than 6 immediate openings for PhD-level chemists with a strong background in synthetic organic chemistry.

The Medicinal Chemistry Scientist will be responsible for designing and independently synthesizing novel molecules directed at one or more of our biological targets.  He/She will be a key member of one or more of our multi-disciplinary drug discovery teams.  As a member of such teams, the Scientist will be responsible for the identification and characterization of novel drug candidates and their advancement into clinical evaluation.  This will require the development of a broad working knowledge of various scientific disciplines in addition to medicinal chemistry, including immunology, cancer biology, pharmacokinetics, drug metabolism, and toxicology, among others.  With the guidance of our experienced leadership, the Scientist will integrate large amounts of data on previously synthesized molecules into the design of novel molecules anticipated to possess increasingly optimal biological profiles.

The ideal candidate will hold a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry and may have conducted (although it is not a requirement) post-doctoral research on a synthetic or biological project.  The successful candidate will have an excellent scientific publication record and national reputation as a leader in his/her chosen field.  The role demands a highly goal-driven approach and the ability to focus on time-sensitive objectives.

That's cool. Full posting here. Best wishes to those interested.

(P.S. Thumbs up to "postdoc not necessarily required.")  

ACS Publications will have a safety requirement in 2017

From a worthwhile editorial in ACS Central Science by Professor Carolyn Bertozzi on lab safety, a policy change that I was not aware of (emphasis mine):  

ACS also hopes to contribute to safety awareness beyond our campus walls through its publishing activities. Starting at the beginning of 2017, all ACS publications will require experimental details to address and emphasize any unexpected, new, and/or significant hazards or risks associated with the reported work. There are two different important aims in asking for this additional information. First, as the primary source of chemical information, it is crucial that we use the literature to educate researchers about the risks inherent in the experiments we publish. Second, we hope that making this information required and widely available will change how this and future generations of scientists think about safety as integral to their role in the chemical enterprise. It is a professional requirement and a chemist’s responsibility in this world.  

Just as experimental details are turned into lab notebook entries for future findings, the community will then implement these better habits in their own papers and continue to catalyze the responsibility for safety throughout our industry. Finally, we do not want the most crucial of these safety notes to be sequestered only in the experimental sections. Particularly when unanticipated hazards or risks become apparent in the process of scientific inquiry, either in data acquisition or analysis, we want authors to highlight that information in results and discussion sections, perhaps even in the abstract.

Seems like a good idea. Readers, what do you think?

(Can anyone come up with a good way to measure any potential impact?)  

This part of the essay is particularly effective: 

Matt Francis, orchestrator of those brilliant turkey banquets from my intro, both talks the talk and walks the walk. Every year, he held a legendary hands-on training session for new students showing them proper Schlenk line technique. This is the kind of activity that most of us delegate to postdocs or senior students but perhaps shouldn’t in light of what happened at UCLA. Matt’s effort to ensure that students know how to safely manipulate air- and/or moisture-sensitive, often flammable reagents under vacuum may have spared them from countless accidents and injuries.

This kind of hands-on training from a senior PI is invaluable.

A depressing post about graduate student (and postdoctoral) mental health

This is a depressing post about mental health. I'd love it if you were to give me advice on this; if you don't want to read it, I won't be offended.

This week's C&EN

A few articles in this week's issue of C&EN:

• Cover: the state of science and regulation around asbestos (article by Britt Erickson) 
• They use asbestos diaphragms in the chlor-alkali industry?
• Lisa Jarvis covers the sola failure at Lilly. 
• Fascinating article about the challenge posed to cosmetics by EU regulations (article by Marc Reisch) 
• For those interested in contests, looks like a group of companies are sponsoring a content for new cosmetic preservatives. 
• Interesting article by Jyllian Kemsley on the tuition-related protests in South African universities, and their effects on chemistry departments. 
• Beth Halford's always beloved holiday season gift guide. 
•  I find the inflatable DNA oligomer to be particularly cute. 

Federal judge suspends "postdoc overtime" changes

See this post for details. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

As always, I am incredibly thankful for my family, my friends, my community (physical and online) and my job. This particular year, I am very thankful for the health of my immediate family.

I am also incredibly thankful for you, my readers and commenters. Thank you for your reading, your advice, your e-mails and your brilliant, insightful comments. I am truly blessed.

My family and I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving and if you're not in the United States, a happy Thursday and Friday! 

The View from Your Hood: far off buildings

Credit: Anonymous

Anonymous writes, "It's the view from our lab at BC and you can see the Hancock and Prudential buildings in the distance."

(got a View from Your Hood submission? Send it in with a caption at how you'd like to be credited at chemjobber@gmail.com; will run every other Friday.)

FLSA overtime rule: Federal judge issues injunction, Illinois suspends its FLSA increases

In the news this week, you may have heard that a federal judge suspended implementation of the new Department of Labor FLSA rule regarding overtime thresholds, the one that would have made academic institutions either 1) pay their postdoctoral fellows at or above $47,456 or 2) track their hours and pay overtime for any hours more than 40 hours a week.

In my opinion, this best place to look for up-to-date information on this is Gary McDowell's Twitter feed. He's the head of Future of Research, a non-profit working on scientific labor issues. They are tracking the wildly divergent responses from academia on this issue; decisions are being made on day-by-day (if not hour-by-hour) basis. 

Most relevant to readers of this blog is the announcement that the University of Illinois system is suspending the planned salary increases to postdoctoral fellows. 

As far as what may come, I believe all this legal wrangling is moot. The House of Representatives had already made some noises about suspending the FLSA rule, and it is my strong presumption that, on inauguration, President Trump will cancel this rule on the first day in office. That said, we have no real sense as to President Trump's policies on the overtime issue. 

I also believe that academic institutions have already figured out how they will deal with this for the coming calendar year, and that the more financially stable institutions (read: private universities) will keep those planned increases, and public universities will choose not to increase their postdoc salaries, or will require tracking of hours worked above 40 hours a week. But who really knows? 

12 things to bring up at Thanksgiving dinner when you don't want to talk politics

I don't want to talk politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and neither do you. Here are some suggestions for other conversation topics:

1. How about those Cubs? 
2. Has anyone found one of those Lego scientist minifigs? 
3. Did you know there's no aloe vera in WalMart aloe vera gel?
4. There's this chemistry professor who's written a book about the chemistry of the kitchen! 
5. What the heck is the Mannequin Challenge, anyway? 
6. No, there's no such thing as a scientist shortage. 
7. That book called "The Chemist" by Stephenie Meyer? It's not very good. 
8. That thing about tryptophan - that's not really true.  
9. There's a family that's had a white streak in their hair for 200 years! 
10. Did you know that median chemist salaries have lost ground against inflation for ten years? 
11. No, I don't think there's a cure for Alzheimer's yet. 
12. Hey, what was the name of that Adele song?

You can use NMR to track aloe vera contents - who knew?

Credit: Process NMR Associates

Via the Chemistry Reddit, an interesting bit of consumer news from Bloomberg's Lydia Mulvany
and Zeke Faux:

...Aloe’s three chemical markers — acemannan, malic acid and glucose — were absent in the tests for Wal-Mart, Target and CVS products conducted by a lab hired by Bloomberg News. The three samples contained a cheaper element called maltodextrin, a sugar sometimes used to imitate aloe. The gel that’s sold at another retailer, Walgreens, contained one marker, malic acid, but not the other two. That means the presence of aloe can’t be confirmed or ruled out, said Ken Jones, an independent industry consultant based in Chapala, Mexico.... 

...The tests used a technique called nuclear magnetic resonance. It found additives such as maltodextrin and other ingredients, like triethanolamine, an emulsifier. In all the samples, lactic acid, a component that indicates degraded aloe vera, was absent.

I was rather skeptical of this, but lo and behold, some Nestle co-workers demonstrated this was possible in 2005. Also, here's this wonderfully rich NMR blog (that I was sadly unaware of) by Process NMR Associates LLC that has some very nice spectra of aloe vera that shows it is quite possible to distinguish the varying components of aloe vera.

Note: I, for one, strongly support the idea of reporters purchasing the services of chemists to check products for quality and authenticity.

2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 487 positions

The 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated mostly by Andrew Spaeth, with minor help from me) has 487 positions.

Have you had a Skype/phone interview (or an on-site) with a position on the Faculty Jobs List? Please add the date of the interview to the open thread. The open thread is here.

Daily Pump Trap: 11/22/16 edition

A few of the positions posted at C&EN Jobs this past week:

Rolla, MO: Brewer Science, looking for a M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist (3-5 years experience) to manage an analytical laboratory.

Washington, DC: DC-area law firm (Keller and Heckman, LLP), looking for a toxicologist.

Los Alamos, NM: "The Physics and Chemistry of Materials group of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory is seeking candidates for one or more postdoctoral positions in the areas of electronic structure theory, principally density functional theory (DFT), and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with applications to complex fluids, warm dense matter, and dense plasmas."

Ivory Filter Flask: 11/22/16 edition

A few of the academic positions posted at C&EN Jobs:

New Paltz, NY: State University of New York at New Paltz has an opening for an assistant professor of inorganic chemistry.

Boston, MA: Northeastern University is searching for an assistant or associate professor of analytical chemistry. 

Portland, OR: Oregon Health and Science University is looking for an assistant professor, searching for those "interested in merging chemical biology and physiology with the goal to develop and use techniques that will further our understanding of diseases and their underlying mechanisms." Huh.

Irvine, CA: Chapman University's School of Pharmacy is hiring an "Assistant/Associate Professor of Natural Products and Alternative Medicine." The "alternative medicine" bit is interesting.

New York, NY: Columbia University's Nano Initiative is looking for postdocs.

Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University is hiring a nuclear chemistry postdoc, looks like.

Someone doesn't like emojis

One of my favorite aspects of C&EN's letters to the editors is the occasional grumpy reader: 

The editorial on science emojis really scraped the bottom of the barrel (C&EN, Nov. 14, page 3). Emojis are nothing more than an indication that their users are incapable of expressing themselves with words. The C&EN reporter who had been invited to attend Emojicon should have declined, saying, “Chemists do not need emojis because they can actually read and write words.” 

Originality and wit cannot be summoned on command on a weekly basis—I understand that. But if Editor-in-Chief Bibiana Campos Seijo cannot come up with something meaningful to say in her column, it’s perfectly all right to forgo the column every now and then. Fill the space instead with letters to the editor or with readers’ photographs of the views from their laboratories. Filling a page of a respectable publication with illiteracy-promoting drivel was an unfortunate choice. 

Dean Meyer
Winder, Ga.

No one I know would ever fill space with letters to the editor or reader photos of views from their laboratories...

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles in this week's C&EN: 

• Cover: Artificial photosynthesis (article by Katherine Bourzac)
• Looks like the answer for "Are there human pheromones?" is 'no, not really'. (article by Alla Katsnelson) 
• Bethany Halford covers the Du Bois synthesis of batrachotoxin. 
• Not a great year for BASF CEO Kurt Bock (article by Alex Scott)
• Fun profile of former Johnson Matthey head Neil Carson by Alex Scott (nice wheels!) 
• I didn't know about the National Chemical Historical Landmark program, but I do now. 

Plastic spoons

A collection of small, useful things (links):

• I really enjoyed this long essay about the late Dave Weininger's life (inventor of SMILES) by Anthony Nicholls. 
• Great profile of Kara Allen by Yanni Wang. 
• Marshall Brennan's interview with Andrei Yudin.
• Also, an update from the comments: Andrei Yudin's blog Amphoteros
• And his interview with Chenfeng Ke.
• Fun post from Carmen about red phosphorus. 
• And one on Frederick Banting!
• Happy that th' Gaussling is still blogging!
• Good question from Mitch about chemical inventory systems.
• Great post from Ash about Jack Roberts and Dorothy Semenow.
• One person's view of chemistry as a major. 
• Hey, check out some total synthesis from the Du Bois lab at NPR!
• Fun list of chemists on Twitter from Stu Cantrill.
• Check out Andy Brunning (of "Compound Interest" fame) on a "What Chemists Do" video. 

Again, an open invitation to all interested in writing a blog, a hobby that will bring you millions thousands hundreds tens of dollars joy and happiness. Send me a link to your post, and I'd be happy to put it up.

Herr Doktor?

Via the Wall Street Journal, it's clear the Germans are very particular about titles (article by Tom Fairless): 

German law in the past prohibited foreign Ph.D.s from using the title “Dr.” 

American Ian T. Baldwin, a Cornell-educated professor of ecology in eastern Germany, received a summons from his local police chief in early 2008. 

“He wanted to know how I planned to plead to the charge of Titelmissbrauch,” or misuse of titles, recalled Prof. Baldwin, who directs the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “I couldn’t even pronounce it.” 

Several other American academics were caught up in the investigation, triggered by an anonymous whistleblower. 

Public outcry prompted a change to the law, but after his close shave, Prof. Baldwin still doesn’t use his title in Germany.

If I were Professor Baldwin, I probably would have guffawed aloud - but then again, I've never faced a police chief in a foreign country... 

"We just cut what we're going to pay for in the future; we hope you don't mind."

From Delaware Online's Jeff Mordock, a depressing/important bit of news that all current DuPont employees will no longer have access to a company pension (as opposed to a 401k) nor health care nor dental care in their retirement dotage*, this whopper of a statement (emphasis mine): 

Ari Jacobs, a senior partner, global retirement solutions at Aon Hewitt, the company that manages DuPont's benefit programs, said moving from pension plans to defined contribution retirement benefits has become an industry-wide trend. 

"As workers became more transient in the 1980s, they appreciated the flexibility and access to account balances offered by defined contribution plans," Jacob said. "It's been a broad trend and companies have adjusted accordingly."

The amount of passive voice and assumptions in those two sentences is just stunning. I'd rather Mr. Jacobs have said "We think we can get away with this, and we don't feel guilty."

It's important to note that this particular policy change doesn't affect current DuPont retirees. 

Well, this is cheery

Via my daily Endpoints e-mail, a depressing roundup of Big Pharma dislocations, focusing on GSK and its RTP operations by John Carroll: 

Back in late 2014, when the company outlined plans to lay off 900 staffers in its WARN letter to the state, GSK had a sizable 2,500 R&D workforce in RTP. Today, a spokesperson tells me that’s dwindled down to about 400 as the company followed through on its cost-reduction plan. 

Hundreds of the workers were transferred to GSK’s CRO, Parexel, which promptly turned around and laid many of the same workers off in its own downsizing effort — outsourcing the layoffs, so to speak. 

“Today there is a very much reduced scale of R&D activity in RTP,” says the spokesperson for GSK. “What remains in RTP is some infectious disease research (including ViiV folks), late-stage research groups, regulatory and medical functions.” A “handful” of those people may still be in transition, she adds. 

GSK, though, is still investing heavily in R&D, as its $250 million lab project underscores. The company spends about $4.4 billion per year on R&D. 

Makeovers like this have become the rule rather than the exception in Big Pharma. Novartis’ latest rejigger happened weeks ago, as Merck was overhauling its ops with an eye to creating a new hub in the Bay Area. AstraZeneca is building a South San Francisco research hub as well. Pfizer long ago relocated much of its research staff into Boston/Cambridge, warning at the time that there would always be a focus on refining and changing in the face of new R&D priorities. Shire has been relocating staffers into its Boston-area HQ. And so on.

So what happened to those 2,100 people? How many of those people left science? I suppose we'll never know.

The inability of the media (including myself, I guess) to accurately measure headcount in pharma R&D is a continuing problem in being able to accurately quantify the quality of the chemistry job market; this is a disappointment. 

Daily Pump Trap: 11/17/16 edition

A few of the positions posted at C&EN Jobs:

Research Triangle Park: AgBiome is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. formulations development chemist; 5-7 years experience desired.

Washington, D.C.: ACS is looking for a manager for its Graduate and Postdoctoral Scholars office.

Chattanooga, TN: Chattem Chemicals is looking for a B.S. synthetic chemist; 2-3 years experience desired.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) "1000+", 421, 9,906 and 28 positions for the search term "chemist."

LinkedIn shows 1,354 positions for the search term "chemist" and 14,725 for the search term "chemistry." Job titles from LinkedIn - first with quotes, and the second without: Analytical chemist: 200/254. Research chemist: 28/40. Synthetic chemist: 14/373. Medicinal chemist: 12/41. Organic chemist: 25/54. Process chemist: 17/42. Process development chemist: 4/3. Formulation chemist: 43/44. 

A Theranos whistleblower speaks out

I've refrained from commenting on Theranos on the blog, because I haven't had much to say other than "Gee, it's not clear to me what the heck Theranos was actually selling" over and over and over again. But I do want to recommend that you read John Carreyrou's long piece about one of his sources, Tyler Shultz, former Theranos employee and a grandson of George Shultz (one of Theranos' board of directors): 

...The younger Mr. Shultz and Ms. Holmes met in late 2011 while he was visiting his grandfather’s house next to the Stanford campus. Tyler Shultz was a junior at Stanford majoring in mechanical engineering. Mr. Shultz interned at Theranos that summer and went to work there full-time in September 2013. He had just graduated after changing his major to biology to better prepare for a career at the startup, he says. 

The new employee was assigned to the assay validation team, which was responsible for verifying and documenting the accuracy of blood tests run on Edison machines before they were deployed in the lab for use with patients. 

Mr. Shultz says he found that results varied widely when tests were rerun with the same blood samples. To reduce that variability, Theranos routinely discarded outlying values from validation reports it compiled, he says. 

One validation report about an Edison test to detect a sexually-transmitted infectious disease said the test was sensitive enough to detect the disease 95% of the time. But when Mr. Shultz looked at the two sets of experiments from which the report was compiled, they showed sensitivities of 65% and 80%. That meant that if 100 people infected with the disease were tested only with the Edison device, as many as 35 of them would likely incorrectly conclude they were disease-free. 

A few months later, Mr. Shultz moved to Theranos’s production team, where he quantified by how much patient tests should be allowed to vary during daily quality-control checks. Under federal rules, labs are allowed to set those parameters on their own within the bounds of accepted industry guidelines. 

He says he noticed Edison machines often flunked Theranos’s quality-control standards. He says Mr. Balwani, the No. 2 executive at the company, pressured lab employees to ignore the failures and run blood tests on the machines anyway, contrary to accepted lab practices. 

Mr. Shultz says he took his concerns directly to Ms. Holmes. When they met in early 2014, she encouraged him to talk to Daniel Young, a Theranos vice president in charge of biostatistics. 

According to Mr. Shultz, Mr. Young said the differences with the sexually-transmitted infectious disease test occurred because some results fell inside an “equivocal zone,” meaning they were unclear at first but clarified later through other methods...

There's a lot more to the story, including quite a bit of intrigue with lawyers and his family. Read the whole thing.

One of the funny things about life is how early and often ethical dilemmas come. It seems to me that the younger Mr. Shultz acquitted himself well. 

Ask CJ: do I get to ask about funny gaps in references?

From the inbox, a good question [redactions for privacy]:

If a person interviewing for a research assistant type of position has [5 to 15 years] of experience with a single employer as a technician, and followed that stint with attainment of a masters degree, is it fair to ask why none of their references are from their prior employer?   

I don't have tons of experience hiring folks, and to me it would make sense to not ask an old supervisor or colleague to be a reference after just a one to three year stint at some company, but for [5 to 15 years] with one employer, it's hard for me to see why one [of a number of] references wouldn't be with that organization.  Is it fair game to ask an interviewing candidate how they spent [a long time] with one employer but did not wind up using them as a reference?

This is an interesting question, and one that I'm not quite sure what the answer is. Seems to me that it would be perfectly reasonable for an employer to ask. That said, I would be prepared for some tap-dancing - if a person's old employer won't vouch for them, there might be something there. 

Then again, this is an interesting edge case, and I'm probably not imagining the right set of circumstances where it would be perfectly innocent to leave names off reference lists. Readers, what do you think? 

2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 470 positions

The 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated mostly by Andrew Spaeth, with minor help from me) has 470 positions.

Have you had a Skype/phone interview (or an on-site) with a position on the Faculty Jobs List? Please add the date of the interview to the open thread. The open thread is here.

Daily Pump Trap: 11/15/16 edition

A few of the positions posted at C&EN Jobs recently: 

Baltimore, MD: So here's an interesting one: "Rapafusyn Research and Development" is looking for experienced M.S./Ph.D. medicinal chemists with 10 openings. Stemming from Johns Hopkins natural products research.

Wilmington, DE: Incyte Corporation is looking for a Ph.D. medicinal chemist, with 0-2 years experience. (Zeroes!) "Post-doctoral experience is highly desired though not required."

(Friends, are we there? Are we through with asking people to do postdocs? Please?)

"Cambridge, UK or Boston, USA": AstraZeneca is looking for a senior medicinal chemist - looks like a fascinating role:

We are currently seeking a senior medicinal chemist with pre-clinical / clinical drug discovery experience to join us as a chemical toxicologist within the Predictive Compound Safety Group, a division of our Drug Safety and Metabolism (DSM) unit at AstraZeneca. Drug Safety and Metabolism (DSM) partners across the Innovative Medicine therapeutic area units for the optimization and selection of small molecules and new modalities as novel candidate drugs. 

As a medicinal chemist in the Predictive Compound Safety Group you will operate at the interface between medicinal chemistry design and drug safety, working alongside multiple project teams in the Oncology therapeutic area. In this role you will develop and apply your knowledge of medicinal chemistry in the toxicology arena to influence the quality and progress of drug discovery projects. You will develop a deep scientific understanding of mechanisms leading to compound-related toxicity through collaborations with AstraZeneca colleagues, as well as key external stakeholders.

So this is someone with a Ph.D., probably 5-10 years experience?

Washington, D.C.: One of the occasional test-writing positions that the American Institutes for Research posts. M.S., 1 year of experience desired.

Faculty positions: assistant professor, organic chemistry, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY

From the inbox, an assistant professor position at the University of Wyoming:

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Wyoming invites applications for a tenure-track position in organic chemistry. Individuals from all areas of organic chemistry are encouraged to apply including polymer chemistry, energy science and chemical biology. The position will be filled at the Assistant Professor level and candidates must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent with postdoctoral experience highly desirable. Expectations for the successful candidate will include: excellence in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, nationally recognized and externally funded research program and participation in departmental and university-wide governance.

Full listing here. Best wishes to those interested. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 11/15/16 edition

A few of the academic positions posted at C&EN Jobs this past week: 

San Diego, CA: Point Loma Nazarene University is searching for an assistant professor of physical chemistry.

Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University is searching for an assistant professor of synthetic inorganic chemistry.  

Syracuse, NY:  The State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry is looking for an assistant professor researching "renewable materials/organic chemistry."

Montréal, QC: Concordia University is hiring an assistant professor of inorganic materials chemistry.

"New Brunswick/Piscataway": Rutgers, looking to hire an assistant professor of organic chemistry, broadly defined.

Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, searching for an assistant professor of biochemistry. 

Northampton, MA: Smith College, looking for a teaching/research postdoc.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University is hiring a lab director of general chemistry.

The 2015 ACS IRS Form 990

This was 2015's form 990. (Here's 2014's form 990.)

For comparison's sake, Madeleine Jacobs was paid $888,199 in reportable compensation in 2015. Current ACS CEO Thomas Connelly was paid $590,190. (Hard to determine if this was his total compensation for the entire 2015 calendar year, since he took office in February 2015.) If this is only 11 months' pay, his total annual compensation would be in the 643k range.)

I see that just about all officers had high-single or double-digit increases in their pay. The cost-of-living in the DC metro area must have gone up.

The 2016 ACS Salary Survey is out

Credit: C&EN

Also in this week's C&EN, the results of the 2016 ACS Salary Survey (summary by Andrea Widener):

• Overall ACS member unemployment is down from 3.1% in 2015 to 2.6% in 2016. 
• The median ACS member salary was $97,850, which is up slightly from $97,000 in $2015. 
• The median industrial ACS member salary was $116,000 in 2016, up from $112,996. 
• The median government ACS member salary was $107,615 in 2016, down slightly from $108,987.
• The median academic ACS member salary was $80,000 in 2016, up from $76,000.
• Overall, men ($105,000) make more than women ($81,000). 
• Chemical engineers make more than chemists ($123,000 versus $97,630). 
• The highest salaries and unemployment (3.6%) were in the Pacific (California, Oregon and Washington) area. 
• The median age of respondents was 49; 32% of them were female. 
• Interestingly, ~25% of the industrial respondents work in the pharma/fine chemicals/specialty chemical space. 
• There were ~twice as many female respondents who are adjuncts or secondary teachers. 

I refrain from making predictions routinely, but last year I was saying things like "2016 will be a better year than 2015", which I think is vaguely borne out by this data. I would not be making any such predictions about 2017 - the direction of GDP and political risk (thanks, Paul Hodges!) are simply too fuzzy for me. 

Job posting: R&D materials scientist, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA

From the inbox, a position in Livermore, CA with Sandia National Laboratories:

We are seeking an experienced R&D Science & Engineering, Materials Scientist with a Ph.D. to join our efforts developing new organic-based radiation detection materials and understanding the use of organic materials in ionizing radiation environments.  The successful candidate is expected to have knowledge and experience related to the design, synthesis, and characterization of fluorescent polymers, light-emitting organometallic compounds, and/or organic luminophores.  Experience with detailed photophysical and microstructural characterization is also required.  The candidate must have a working knowledge of the interaction of ionizing radiation with organic compounds. The candidate must show aptitude with verbal and written communication and have a publication record commensurate with the above activities.

On any given day, you may be called on to: Interact closely with an interdisciplinary team comprising computational/synthetic chemists, physicists, materials scientists, and product engineers will be utilized to understand and harness fundamental structure-property relationships for improved materials performance. 

Qualifications We Require

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, Materials Science, Nuclear Engineering, or a related discipline. 
• Extensive experience related to the synthesis and photophysical characterization of organic and organometallic compounds; understanding how ionizing radiation interacts with organic and organometallic compounds.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. DOE Q security clearance.

Full job posting here. Best wishes to those interested. 

This week's C&EN

A few of this week's articles from Chemical and Engineering News: 

• Cover: Fascinating write-up of the recent news surrounding the FDA's approval of eteplirsen for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. (article by Lisa Jarvis)
• Interesting idea to use vaccines against siderophores. (article by Stu Borman)
• More on the aftermath of Election 2016, with a look at legal marijuana and the plastic bag ban in California. 
• I hadn't heard about the plastic bag ban - that's bad for someone...
• Very interesting overview of the Li-ion battery space by Mitch Jacoby, with an eye towards removing flammable organic solvents from them. 

The View from Your Hood: Ithaca, NY

Credit: Anne LaPointe

Actually a view from an office, but still, lovely. (taken November 3)

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

Interview: Edwin Villhauer, medicinal chemist, process chemist and high school teacher

Via friend of the blog James Ashenhurst, I am pleased to have been introduced to Dr. Edwin Villhauer, a former Novartis medicinal chemist who has started his second career as a high school teacher of chemistry. This post has been lightly edited for grammar, and checked by Dr. Villhauer for accuracy.

Can you tell us a little about your educational background? 

I obtained a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Rochester and immediately jumped into the pharmaceutical world on July 1st, 1985.  Up until that time, life was macaroni and cheese, 17 hour days working in the lab, and wearing blue jeans with many holes due to acid burns.  Who knew that my jean style back then would become today's fashion!

When I entered Sandoz (merged with Ciba-Geigy to become Novartis in 1996), I started on a fantastic metamorphosis to becoming a medicinal chemist which is critical if you expect any possible chance of championing your little molecule from idea to market.  The transformation from bench chemist to a fully functional medicinal chemist with confidence to maneuver through the foreign lands of pharmacology, toxicology, drug metabolism, patent law, regulatory, formulation, and process development took about 10 years.

A good article from C&EN on the consequences of the election

I wanted to send you to some good thoughts from C&EN's Cheryl Hogue and Britt Erickson on President-elect Trump's potential policies and the likelihood of the next Congress being Republican: 

The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and a Republican-controlled Congress portend impacts to the chemistry enterprise. In addition, state ballot measures also decided in the Nov. 8 election will affect the burgeoning analytical testing industry that’s grown around legal marijuana. 

With Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, cuts in federal spending are likely. This means chemistry researchers are apt to see the dwindling of federal grant money from the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department, and other federal agencies. 

Budget cuts would also limit the abilities of federal agencies to regulate, which could trammel the chemical industry’s expectations for modernized regulation of its products. With tightly limited resources, the Environmental Protection Agency could struggle to implement Congress’ revisions earlier this year to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which had strong backing of chemical manufacturers and product formulators. 

Trump has been quiet on the topic of chemical regulation, with one exception. He has spoken out about the benefits of asbestos, a known human carcinogen that activists are calling on EPA to ban under its new TSCA authorities....

More to come soon.

UPDATE: Here are President-elect Trump's answers from ScienceDebate.org.
UPDATE 2: Here's some speculation about the EPA transition team from Scientific American. Mostly climate-oriented comments, deregulation-inclined.
UPDATE 3: Here's an item from the Healthcare page of the official transition website: "Reform the Food and Drug Administration, to put greater focus on the need of patients for new and innovative medical products" 

Well, that was unexpected.

As of 2 AM Eastern, neither candidate has conceded, but it's pretty clear that my predictions were wrong, and Donald Trump is likely to be elected President. It looks quite clear that we will have a Republican Congress.

So - what does that mean? How much of his agenda will be enacted, and how much of it will be relevant to chemists? I predict poorer funding for both NIH and NSF (more cuts at NSF than NIH, I suspect), and I predict emigration of scientists from the United States to their countries of origin.

Mr. Trump was not particularly friendly to pharma during the election season, but it's not like Secretary Clinton was either. (Incidentally, it looks like that pharma initiative from California is going down.)

It's hard to see how macroeconomics will go. He made noises about raising interest rates, but I could easily imagine his tune on the Fed changing.

Your thoughts? 

Election day prediction

293 HRC/245 DJT.

Popular vote: 51% HRC/47% DJT

What's your prediction?

UPDATE: There's a much longer post that I need to write with an acquiescence to Paul Hodges. Last year, I made the following comments about what I now see as a rather prescient post about political risk, where Mr. Hodges made the suggestion that political risk was going to be a lot higher in 2016:

...Readers, I don't know a darn thing about UK or French politics, but I am quite sure that neither Trump nor Carson will become the GOP nominee. I have no idea who will win the GOP nomination, but the trend of presidents being former governors, senators, vice presidents and the odd 5-star general isn't going to be broken anytime soon, in my humble opinion.... 

I personally would love $30/barrel oil (I figure that would drop gas well into the $2.50/gallon range or below), but I don't see that happening either.

Of course, as it turns out, Donald Trump is indeed the GOP nominee and we actually did get $30/barrel oil. Paul Hodges was right, and I was proven wrong.

This was brought to mind (as of 8 PM Eastern) when one of the major issues of the evening to be decided will be this ballot initiative about pharmaceutical price controls in California (article by John Carroll):

A week ago, Proposition 61 looked like a sure winner for its advocates. With sentiment running strongly against Big Pharma companies, polls showed plenty of support for a ballot measure in California that would cap drug prices for the state at the level that the Veterans Administration reaches through price negotiations. 

But with the vote now just hours away, the industry is seeing the polling results leaning to a dead heat after throwing more than $100 million into the fight, which is reaching a fever pitch in the hours before final voting begins.... 

...Whatever happens in California, after the election these same pharma execs are likely to face a grueling debate in Washington DC over drug prices, where execs from Mylan, Valeant and Turing have already had to face dyspeptic lawmakers. Right now, the industry will have to wait and see who comes up a winner on election day Tuesday. But no matter who wins the votes, this is one issue that will not be going away anytime soon....

Assuming this is true, and Big Pharma faces political risk to its revenue model in the future, it seems to me we may see this reflected in future hiring. 

2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 460 positions

The 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated mostly by Andrew Spaeth, with minor help from me) has 460 positions.

Have you had a Skype/phone interview (or an on-site) with a position on the Faculty Jobs List? Please add the date of the interview to the open thread. The open thread is here.

Job posting: lecturer, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC

Via Twitter:

This position is envisioned as a long-term appointment for an innovative teacher, with an initial appointment term of four years. This colleague will be responsible for teaching sophomore-level Organic courses, such as CHEM 261, 262, and 262L, as well as General Chemistry, CHEM 101 and 102, and will also be expected to be involved in curriculum development, laboratory course development, serve on committees, and engage in departmental activities outside of teaching. 

Candidates must have a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry. Candidates with postdoctoral experience, experience with or a strong demonstrated interest in innovative and evidence-based teaching methods, and experience in laboratory curriculum development will be considered most competitive. The ability to teach introductory courses in biochemistry or inorganic chemistry is a plus, but not required.

Full posting here. First contract is for four years. Best wishes to those interested. 

Daily Pump Trap: 11/8/16 edition

A few of the positions posted at C&EN Jobs recently: 

Kalamazoo, MI: Kalsec is looking for a director of process technology and engineering; I feel like I've seen this before... 

"Bay Area": Henkel is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. chemist to be a technical lab manager in aerospace adhesive applications. 100-140k offered. 

Long Island, NY: Brookhaven National Laboratories is looking for a scientist in catalysis and surface science. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 11/8/16 edition

A few of the academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs this past week: 

Just a very few: Things are slowing down, it seems. 

Northridge, CA: Cal State Northridge is hiring two assistant professors; one for physical/analytical chemistry and the other for chemical education. Starts at 82k. [insert impressed Luca Brasi face here.] 

Cedar City, UT: Southern Utah University desires an assistant professor of physical chemistry. Offering $52,575 ("excellent benefits"!)  

Cullowhee, North Carolina: Western Carolina University is looking for an assistant professor of forensic chemistry. 

Montreal, Canada: McGill University is looking for an assistant professor in materials/nanochemistry. 

Shanghai, China: NYU Shanghai is searching for a professor of theoretical or computational chemistry; open-rank. 

Ethical questions in chemistry?

Also in this week's C&EN, an invitation from Keith Vitense, ACS Committee on Ethics to participate in the conversation about how best to promote ethics in chemistry: 

...And if that is truly the case, what role can the ACS Committee on Ethics play as we go forward? 

The first and most obvious role is in providing more opportunities for education on ethics. The ethics committee was formed in 2006. That year, it held its first symposium on ethics at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of ACS (SERMACS) in Augusta, Ga. That ethics symposium has evolved into half-day ethics workshops that are now held at both national and regional meetings. 

The committee continues to survey the landscape to cosponsor and/or develop symposia that reflect current “hot topics” in ethics. Symposia topics in the pipeline include publishing and authorship, patents and discovery, and nanotechnology. We welcome your input to help identify topics. We are also able to provide help in the form of subject matter experts where appropriate. 

The committee is working on a publication on ethics for undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The goal of the publication is to increase the awareness of the importance of ethics as part of the practice of chemistry. The publication, which we hope to make available in both print and online, will be modeled after the Guidelines for Chemical Laboratory Safety in Academic Institutions that was developed by the ACS Committee on Chemical Safety Task Force for Safety Education Guidelines but will have a focus on ethics rather than on safety.... 

...The very nature of ethics is personal. Ultimately, we can only control our own actions. The Committee on Ethics does not adjudicate; we facilitate. We don’t judge; we educate. Our goal is to provide you with the information needed to help you make the ethical choice. 

You can contact me (keithv@cameron.edu) or Eric Slater, our staff liaison (e_slater@acs.org) with information pertaining to anything that you believe the committee should actively promote.

I'm not much of a philosopher, but it seems to me that chemists at all levels are challenged with various ethical questions. A few that I can think of:

• What are the most ethical approaches to dealing with letters of recommendation? How much promoting should one do for the people that you're writing letters for? 
• What are the ethical obligations to one's customers? If you had to rework their material to get it in-specification, are you obligated to tell your customer? 
• What are ethical obligations to one's employers? If you're thinking about leaving for another employer, how much warning should you give them? Do those extend to the organization, or just your supervisor? 

Huh, this is fun. Readers, I'll bet you can come up with a few of your own. 

This week's C&EN

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

• Cover: Stephen K. Ritter on with a profile of prominent cold fusion researchers. 
• I don't understand why a retired synthetic organic chemist was the voice of skepticism. Surely there were nuclear chemists willing to throw cold water on this field? 
• Peter Dorhout is the new ACS President-Elect. (article by Linda Wang)
• A very interesting profile of a pioneer in the fine chemicals business, Peter Pollak (by Rick Mullin)
• This idea to prominently post the employer's consequences for safety violations might be a good one. 
• Tardigrades are amazing! (article by Ryan Cross)
• Chinese CROs are beginning to get projects from Chinese biotech/pharma companies. (article by Jean-François Tremblay) 

UPDATE: I should also congratulate Stephen Ritter on the most #chemjobs opening paragraph of the year: 

Howard J. Wilk is a long-term unemployed synthetic organic chemist living in Philadelphia. Like many pharmaceutical researchers, he has suffered through the drug industry’s R&D downsizing in recent years and now is underemployed in a nonscience job. With extra time on his hands, Wilk has been tracking the progress of a New Jersey-based company called Brilliant Light Power (BLP).

The "underemployed in a nonscience job" part makes it.  

500 mL plastic squeeze bottles

A collection of small, useful things (links):

• A new chemistry-oriented subreddit for organic chemistry.
• A new "What Chemists Do" with Chris Bianca, JRF America pesticide research chemist.
• I thought this was an interesting website: ratethisteaction.com
• Ash on a really bad year for prominent chemists.
• Also, Ash on the Fermi method.
• German chemistry jobs, Halloween edition.
• A bunch of new chemistry podcasts from Chad.
• Retraction Watch: Who wrote this chemistry paper?
• Remember, on the internet, no one knows if you're a dog (or a duck). 
• Kat Day asks, "What is a chemical?"
• Lots of great new entries at The Sceptical Chymist.
• Also, lots of fun tweets at RealTimeChem week.

Again, an open invitation to all interested in writing a blog, a hobby that will bring you millions thousands hundreds tens of dollars joy and happiness. Send me a link to your post, and I'd be happy to put it up.

You can get a DNA match on cremated remains?

An odd story that you may have heard about this weekend - an afternoon production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York was stopped because someone was sprinkling a white powder into the orchestra pit: 

...It was during the second intermission at Saturday’s matinee of “Guillaume Tell” that a man was spotted sprinkling a white powdery substance into the Met’s orchestra pit, around the timpani and the conductor’s podium, before walking out. Musicians reported it, and, amid fears that the powder could have been a dangerous substance such as anthrax, the remainder of the opera was canceled so the police could investigate...

As it turns out, someone was trying to honor a deceased friend and opera fan by scattering their cremated remains (emphasis mine):

...Investigators said that Mr. Kaiser told them that he tries to scatter the ashes discreetly so as not to cause alarm. He had walked out of the opera house gone to dinner, and hoped to return for the evening performance, the official said. 

The police, in consultation with the Met, decided not to charge Mr. Kaiser with a crime. 

As a precaution, the substance was sent to a lab for further testing to confirm that it was human remains...

You can test to figure out whether or not cremated remains are human? Thanks to John Campbell on Twitter, I have discovered that there's a DNA test for cremated remains. I presume this is PCR-related? I'm a little skeptical for that DNA can survive cremation, but who knows? 

FDA short-staffed?

Via John Carroll's Endpoints e-mail, this piece from Kaiser Health News on FDA job openings: 

The Food and Drug Administration has more than 700 job vacancies in its division that approves new drugs, and top officials say the agency is struggling to hire and retain staff because pharmaceutical companies lure them away. 

“They can pay them roughly twice as much as we can,” Janet Woodcock, who directs the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), said at a rare-diseases summit recently in Arlington, Va. 

The FDA has been under fire for taking too long to approve new drugs, despite approving a record number of generic drugs in 2015. Although it met its goal of hiring 1,000 new employees to help clear the backlog of unapproved generics, that program had nearly 200 job vacancies as of Sept. 30. And CDER itself had 711 openings out of 5,525 positions at the end of September, according to spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman — meaning that more than 1 out of 8 positions were empty. 

Most openings have occurred as the result of new laws or initiatives increasing the FDA’s workload and creating new positions. The agency has had a difficult time accelerating its hiring in response, but the pace has picked up, Eisenman said. CDER continues to utilize employees borrowed from elsewhere within the FDA and contract workers to help fill the breach....

Well, there's at least one chemist opening at CDER right now...

November 10: Panel on computational chemistry careers, Cambridge, MA

From the inbox, an invitation to a panel at Moderna a week from today:

Exploring Careers in Computational Chemistry and CheminformaticsA panel discussion for students and postdocs
Thursday, November 10, 2016 5:30-7 PM
Moderna Therapeutics, 200 Technology Square, 3rd floor, Cambridge, MA 02139

Interested in pursuing a career in computational chemistry or cheminformatics? Join us for a panel discussion by young career scientists in industry, ranging from big pharma to startups. Learn more about the field as well as tips and tricks for successful interviewing, networking, and job hunting. Hear what it's like making the transition from academia to industry and what it's like day-to-day working in this growing field.

Followed by a networking reception at a nearby watering hole which is open to all (aspiring) modelers.

RSVP via Meetup greatly appreciated

Best wishes to those interested.  

2015 ACS industrial member median salaries by work specialty

Credit: 2015 ChemCensus

Just a random perusing of the 2015 ChemCensus (the once-every-five-years salary survey of all domestic American Chemical Society members.) The response rate for the 2015 was ~33%, I estimate.

Seems to me to be reasonable that the pharmaceutical/medicinal chemist types show the highest pay.

Daily Pump Trap: 11/3/16 edition

A very few positions posted at C&EN Jobs:

Just one: And it's our old acquaintance PharmAgra Labs. (Brevard, NC)

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) "1000+", 394, 9,737 and 20 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 2,343 positions for the search term "chemist" and 14,029 for the search term "chemistry." Job titles from LinkedIn - first with quotes, and the second without: Analytical chemist: 229/286. Research chemist: 33/43. Synthetic chemist: 15/427. Medicinal chemist: 12/49. Organic chemist: 26/64. Process chemist: 16/63. Process development chemist: 4/6. Formulation chemist: 37/41. 

Warning Letter of the Week: aseptic technique edition

Just when you thought that FDA 483s are all about sending letters to Pigu Huaxue International in Chengdu, China, they send a letter to the CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Works Pvt. Ltd. about a facility in Hungary:

1.    Your firm failed to thoroughly investigate any unexplained discrepancy or failure of a batch or any of its components to meet any of its specifications, whether or not the batch has already been distributed. (21 CFR 211.192) 

...b.    Sterility Test Positive Investigations 

You also did not thoroughly investigate sterility test positives. For example, your investigation of  a sterility test failure for [redacted] injection (batch [redacted]) did not adequately assess the hazards in the aseptic manufacturing operation that led to the sterility failure. You also did not determine whether other batches made on the same production line were affected.

In addition, you invalidated multiple sterility test positive results obtained during batch release testing. However, we note that your firm uses a sterility test [redacted] as well as a sterility testing kit that minimizes potential for adventitious contamination that could cause false positives....

2.    Your firm failed to establish and follow appropriate written procedures that are designed to prevent microbiological contamination of drug products purporting to be sterile, and that include validation of all aseptic and sterilization processes. (21 CFR 211.113(b)) 

a.    Poor Aseptic Behavior 

During the inspection, our investigators observed poor aseptic processing techniques that had been previously videotaped at your facility. For example, video from September 8 and 9, 2015, showed the following during the set-up and filling of the sterile injectable drug [redacted]:

• an operator passing a pen directly over the stopper bowl to another operator.
• an operator sitting on the clean room floor during set-up of the filling line and not changing the gown after standing up.
• operators leaning against the cleanroom walls.
• an operator leaving the RABS [redacted] open for extended periods of time during filling line set-up, even when he was not working in the immediate area.

The economics of general sterile injectable drugs seems to me to be pretty crummy. There's not going to be a huge margins on these drugs, and the regulatory burden is going to be (quite justifiably) very high. It's just gotta be a huge volume play, right? 

2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 442 positions

The 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated mostly by Andrew Spaeth, with minor help from me) has 442 positions.

Have you had a Skype/phone interview (or an on-site) with a position on the Faculty Jobs List? Please add the date of the interview to the open thread. The open thread is here.