Thursday, January 31, 2019

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 282 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 282 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

41 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 12 new positions posted for January 30 and 29 new positions posted between January 24 and January 28. 

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 267 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 267 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

For fans of the Warning Letter of the Week

A longer article from Bloomberg Businessweek's Drew Armstrong on the state of the American generic pharmaceutical market, including some pretty hair-raising anecdotes: 
...three federal inspectors arrived at Mylan NV’s manufacturing plant in Morgantown, West Virginia, and flashed their credentials. A tipster had raised concerns there might be unscrupulous activity at the factory where the generic giant makes some of its top-selling drugs. So, with Mylan executives looking over their shoulders in a conference room, the inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, dressed in button-down shirts and ties, began an intense two-week examination. 
The team of chemistry experts sifted through thousands of random files containing what appeared to be forbidden exploratory tests, which some drugmakers have used to prevent quality failures from coming to light. The inspectors suspected Mylan laboratory staff had recorded passing scores on drugs that originally fell short of U.S. quality standards.  
The files didn’t identify which drugs may have been involved in any exploratory tests. Instead they had obscure names like “lop” and “Medium”—and one that ended in LMFAO, a popular acronym for “Laughing My [Redacted] [Redacted]* Off.”
 Well, far be it from me to disallow QC chemists from having their fun.

*redactions to circumvent corporate firewalls re: language issues

Warning Letter of the Week: shipping before testing edition

A love note from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to the General Manager of Hangzhou Guoguang Touring Commodity Co., Ltd.:
3.  Your firm failed to have, for each batch of drug product, appropriate laboratory determination of satisfactory conformance to final specifications for the drug product, including the identity and strength of each active ingredient, prior to release. Your firm also failed to conduct, for each batch of drug product, appropriate laboratory testing, as necessary, required to be free of objectionable microorganisms (21 CFR 211.165(a) and (b)). 
Your firm distributed [redacted] lots of [redacted] and [redacted] lots of [redacted] to the U.S. supply chain without testing the identity, strength, purity, and quality of the active ingredient. Additionally, all your OTC drug products have a specification for the absence of [redacted]; however, this test was not performed during finished product testing. Furthermore, you have not established any specifications for the “[redacted]” used in all your OTC drug products, nor is any testing performed on the “[redacted].” 
In your response, you provided assay testing results for products within expiry that have been distributed in the United States. However, these products have not been tested according to all your specifications, including the absence of [redacted]. Furthermore, you did not provide any established component specifications for the “[redacted]” used in all your OTC drug products.
Well, here's hoping that the [redacted] did not ever make in into someone's system, otherwise the [redacted] would really hit the fan. 

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 18 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 18 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.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Specifications

A list of small, useful things (links):
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.

Have a good weekend!

Got a career dilemma?

I'm always game for writing answer requests for advice in my column at Chemical and Engineering News. Please feel free to write me (chemjobber@gmail.com) if you have a career-oriented dilemma that you'd like me to write about in the magazine. Also, you can submit your questions with this handy web form. Thanks!

Thursday, January 24, 2019

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 274 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 274 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

35 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 25 new positions posted for January 22 and 10 new positions posted on January 17.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 263 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 263 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

This week's C&EN

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

Chemistry Bumper Cars

Chemistry Bumper Cars have gone from See Arr Oh's Just Like Cooking blog over to Marshall Brennan's Colorblind Chemistry for the 2018-2019 season.

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 29 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 29 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.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Fascinating piece on STEM studies at the University of Washington

I thought this long article in the Seattle Times about the increase in STEM majors at the University of Washington was really interesting, if a bit odd in places. Here are the core facts: 
...The number of history majors nationwide is down about 45 percent from its peak in 2007, and the number of English majors has fallen by nearly half since the late 1990s, according to research by Benjamin Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University who has been documenting the trends. 
Since 2008, on the UW’s Seattle campus, the number of students studying in STEM programs (science, technology, engineering and math) has increased 37 percent. Among all three campuses, it’s up 50 percent. On the main campus, non-STEM programs have declined by 13 percent. 
At UW Seattle, there are now almost as many students studying in STEM programs as in non-STEM programs. That’s a dramatic flip: Just 10 years ago, there were twice as many students in non-STEM majors as there were in STEM majors....
Because humanities classes cost less (professors are less costly, no startup packages for new laboratories, etc) and some unique budgeting rules in Washington, this shift is costing the universities money.
...It’s not true, Cherniavsky says, that there’s no job market for graduates who can write, do critical analysis or have the ability to view knowledge from diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives — a concept known as multicultural literacy. “It’s not that the corporate world has no use for these skills,” she said. Instead, companies tend not to pay much for the jobs that require them, she said.... 
...Both Microsoft and Amazon offer mentorships exclusively for College of Arts & Sciences majors. “We are using these programs not as recruitment tools, but as myth-busting,” said Matt Erickson, manager of college-to-career initiatives in the College of Arts & Sciences. 
Erickson said the UW is sometimes guilty of reinforcing the idea that only STEM degrees lead to good jobs in Seattle. But UW humanities majors have found jobs at every big tech firm in Seattle — including majors in history, English, art history, sociology, German, French and linguistics. They’ve found roles in human resources, community engagement, customer outreach and marketing, he said.
Microsoft President Brad Smith has also written about the need for tech companies to hire liberal-arts majors, particularly in artificial intelligence. “As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important,” Smith wrote in an introduction to the book “The Future Computed.”
Brad Smith is well-known as a proponent of tech-related immigration, i.e. H1b visas. I am grimly amused that Mr. Smith is both a big fan of saying that there is a shortage of STEM workers in the United States, and that we don't have enough* liberal arts majors as well.

Overall, I don't think it's a surprise at all that people are piling into computer-oriented fields. What is the field that seems to have stable, well-paying jobs that lead to seeming riches? It seems like it's computer-related stuff more so than any other field.

*Okay, he really doesn't say that. 

Friday, January 18, 2019

View From Your Hood: smiling observer edition

Credit: @LeitchLab
Via Twitter, from the laboratory of Professor Dave Leitch: "This observant observatory watches us all day. What makes it smile? We think it’s happy about our latest results. And that the rain is gone. #EmojiIRL #UVic #ViewFromMyHood @Chemjobber @chemistryatuvic @UVicScience"

(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.)

TIL: Radon health mines

...A half-dozen defunct gold and uranium mines south of Helena, Montana, attract ailing tourists, who bask in radioactive radon gas and drink radioactive water to improve their health. Each summer, hundreds of people, many of them Amish and Mennonites, come to the radon health mines to relax and treat arthritis, lupus, asthma and other chronic cripplers. 
With colorful names like the Sunshine Health Mine, Free Enterprise, Earth Angel, Radon Tunnel, and the Merry Widow, the mine shafts tout radon levels as much as 175 times the federal safety standard for houses. Yet, visitors claim miraculous recoveries and disease remissions in the damp, cool passages. Some have arrived in wheelchairs, then walked out on their own. 
The health mines opened in the early 1950's when little was understood about the health and hazard aspects of atomic radiation. One claim is that the gas stimulates the nerves and helps the human body heal itself. 
The typical vacation at a radon health mine lasts a week or two. Visitors are recommended to sit in the mine two or three times a day, until they hit the maximum annual exposure level designated by the state. The permitted total visit is determined by the radiation level of the particular mine. The average visitor is 72 years old. The mines appeal to "plain people," such as the Amish or the Mennonites, because of the "natural" healing aspects, the lack of commercialization, and the relatively low cost-per-hour for treatment sessions...
I think I've exposed myself to sufficient levels of ionizing radiation for one lifetime by being a reasonably frequent air traveler and a summer or two working with radioactive phosphorus. I don't think I'll be heading into the radon mines for this...

Job posting: Alchemie, Customer Success Specialist, Troy, MI

As part of the Alchemie team you will be interacting with two groups of customers, college faculty and their students. In this position you will demonstrate our Mechanisms app and Epiphany data platform to professors, through on-line demos and in-person meetings, with a goal of increasing adoption of the technology as an active learning platform for college classrooms. You will work with both faculty and students in on-boarding the technology and answering their questions as issues arise. Your subject matter expertise will be used to create new content, both by authoring new problems for mobile applications and in creating support material for student use. As part of our content team, you will also work with our researchers to produce literature for peer-reviewed publications and for our own technology blog. 
This position will put you at the forefront of educational technology, as we position Alchemie for growth by building Augmented Reality applications and advanced assessment analytics for chemistry and other STEM courses. 
We are looking for a person with strong interpersonal and communication skills, with a gift for writing and creative problem-solving. You will work side-by-side with software developers, data scientists, content specialists, and marketers to build the Community of Practice for the Alchemie technology suite. 
Requirements: 
Chemistry or Chemistry Education degree, with a minimum of a BA/BS
Instructional experience – either through peer-led tutoring or classroom experience (organic chemistry instruction is not a requirement, but is a strong plus)
Strong technology skills, especially with Google Apps and Microsoft Office Suite
Aptitude to learn new technology platforms, such as CRM software...
Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.  

Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 285 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 285 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 262 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 262 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Rest in peace, Sheri Sangji


Ten years ago today, Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji died of her injuries sustained while running a reaction with tert-butyl lithium in the laboratory of Professor Patrick Harran at UCLA. My thoughts and prayers are with her friends and her family.

Postdoctoral position: Pierce Lab, NC State University

Via Twitter, a postdoc at NC State: 
A funded postdoctoral position in the research group of Professor Joshua Pierce at NC State University is available to work at the interface of synthetic chemistry and infectious disease drug discovery. The position is to support a project aimed at commercialization of small molecule anti-infective agents and is currently supported for one year, with the opportunity to extend this funding based on milestones. Candidates who have an interest in commercialization and transitioning to a start-up pursing these efforts are of particular interest. 
Candidates should have a PhD in Chemistry or Chemical biology, and experience with microbiology is preferred but not required. If interested, please send a CV and list of 3 references to Professor Pierce by e-mail (subject line: Postdoc Position Application) and additional materials will be requested as necessary. Review will begin immediately with a start date in the first half of 2019 preferred. 
Joshua G. Pierce PhD
Associate Professor of Chemistry
University Faculty Scholar
NC State University
jgpierce@ncsu.edu
 Best wishes to those interested. 

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 29 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 29 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.

Friday, January 11, 2019

Bankers' boxes

A list of small, useful things (links):
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.

Have a good weekend!

There is no skills gap, 2019 edition

...The theory here was that high unemployment reflected a structural shift in the labor market such that jobs were available, but workers simply didn’t have the right education or training for them. Harvard Business Review ran articles about this — including articles rebutting people who said the “skills gap” didn't exist — and big companies like Siemens ran paid sponsor content in the Atlantic explaining how to fix the skills gap. 
But nothing was really done to transform the American education system, and no enormous investment was made in retraining unemployed workers. And yet the unemployment rate kept steadily falling in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 as continued low interest rates from the Federal Reserve let a demand-side recovery continue. Donald Trump became president, injected a bunch of new fiscal stimulus on both the spending and tax sides, and in 2017 and 2018 the unemployment rate kept falling and the labor force participation rate kept rising. 
Now along comes a new paper from Alicia Sasser Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Ballance presented this week at the American Economics Association’s annual conference that shows the skeptics were right all along — employers responded to high unemployment by making their job descriptions more stringent. When unemployment went down thanks to the demand-side recovery, suddenly employers got more relaxed again....
You can read a draft copy of the paper here. (scroll down, PDF)

I think it would be interesting to see the written requirements for a principal scientist in medicinal chemistry at Merck or Pfizer over the last 15 years to see if the requirements did any significant shifting from 2003 to 2008 to 2013 to now. 

Got a career dilemma?

I'm always game for writing answer requests for advice in my column at Chemical and Engineering News. Please feel free to write me (chemjobber@gmail.com) if you have a career-oriented dilemma that you'd like me to write about in the magazine. Also, you can submit your questions with this handy web form. Thanks!

Thursday, January 10, 2019

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 271 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 271 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

40 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 18 new positions posted for January 7 and 22 positions posted for January 5.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 258 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 258 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Job posting: Core Facility Research Specialists, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

From the inbox, two positions with a core facility at the University of Iowa: 
The University of Iowa Materials Analysis, Testing, and Fabrication (MATFab) Facility is an Office of the Vice President for Research core resource, offering a wide array of instrumentation to research investigators.  
Position 1: The MATFab Facility is seeking a Core Facility Research Specialist to: support X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and chemical fabrication and characterization instrumentation including spin coating, chemical etching, and optical profiling. 
Position 2: The MATFab Facility is seeking a Core Facility Research Specialist to: support medium- to ultra-high vacuum, electron emission and detection, deposition, and etching instrumentation for materials fabrication and characterization including e-beam lithography, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), reactive-ion etching, atomic-layer deposition, photolithography, and chemical vapor deposition.
Position 1 ads here and here, Position 2 ads here and here. Both positions close on January 21. Best wishes to those interested. 

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 29 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 29 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.

Friday, January 4, 2019

How to make a popular bourbon

Among them was Jim Rutledge, the master distiller at Four Roses. Mr. Rutledge, who recently retired after 49 years with the distillery, is widely regarded as one of the greatest whiskey makers of his generation. Starting in 2010, Mr. Dedman would buy barrels of whiskey, then bring samples to Mr. Rutledge’s home for him to assess. 
Unfailingly polite but highly opinionated, Mr. Rutledge was not impressed. It turned out that even with access to good barrels, Mr. Dedman had something to learn about picking the right ones. “One day he had five samples, and we met over breakfast,” Mr. Rutledge recalled. “I tried them and thought, ‘How do I tell him not to ever put these in a bottle?’ I told him he might have to blend them” — a laborious process that involves taste-testing endless combinations of barrels. 
Undeterred, that’s what Mr. Dedman did. After closing up the inn at night, he would set up dozens of barrel samples at a table in the back of the restaurant and methodically mix them, paying close attention to their age, alcohol level, even where they had been sitting in the warehouse (temperature affects how a whiskey ages, and temperatures vary widely in an unheated warehouse). 
It took nearly four years, but he finally settled on a blend he liked. He combined the barrels, paid someone to bottle and label them, and then took them around to local liquor distributors... 
...By almost all accounts, that first batch of Kentucky Owl was a transcendently beautiful bourbon, reminiscent of whiskey made in the mid-20th century, often considered a golden age of distilling. “When you pick up that bottle, Kentucky Owl just feels like Kentucky,” Mr. Minnick said. “And when you taste the early releases of Owl, it just tastes like old Kentucky bourbon from the 1950s.”
I wonder if he kept a notebook? Maybe design of experiments techniques would have helped Mr. Dedman work faster? Still, a lot of tasting to blend a good bourbon.

UPDATE: In other important bourbon news, Thomas reminds us of a NPR story about the use of a GC to recreate an old bourbon.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 270 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 270 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

11 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 11 new positions posted for December 20.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 256 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 256 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Warning Letter of the Week: can't come in edition

...Your firm limited the inspection and/or refused to permit the FDA inspection as follows: 
1. Barring access to areas 
During the inspection, your firm limited the investigator’s access to the manufacturing area. Your employee stated that your firm was currently manufacturing and packaging drug products; however, you prevented the investigator from entering the manufacturing area. 
2. Refusal to provide copies of documents 
During the inspection, FDA requested records, including a list of drug products you manufacture, as well as some of your facility’s shipping records. Your firm limited the inspection by refusing to provide copies of these records to FDA. 
Access to Information During Inspection 
When an owner, operator, or agent delays, denies, limits, or refuses an inspection, the drugs may be deemed adulterated under section 501(j) of the FD&C Act....
Welp, that's one way to avoid getting a long detailed list of findings.