Large explosion at Louisville, KY food coloring plant

credit: Michael Clevenger / Courier Journal 

Via WHII, this news: 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A large explosion was reported Tuesday afternoon in Louisville's Clifton neighborhood, and it wasn't the first time the factory experienced a hazardous materials incident.

MetroSafe confirmed a large explosion occurred in the 1900 block of Payne Street at about 3 p.m. 

Louisville Metro police advised the public to stay away from the area.

The business located at the address is the Givaudan Sense Colour company was formerly known as D.D. Williamson Company. It's known for producing the caramel color in soft drinks. 

D.D. Williams and Company started in 1865 and was bought by Givaudan Sense Colour in 2021. 

Givaudan Sense Colour also has facilities in the US, Ireland, and UK but they are headquartered in Louisville.

The Tuesday explosion is not the first time the plant on Payne Street has had issues.

In April 2003, one person was killed at the plant after a catastrophic vessel failure, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).

That building sure looks like it was a pretty bad explosion. I'd love to know what caused such a large explosion, but I suppose we'll find out eventually. 

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 408 research/teaching positions and 54 teaching positions

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 408 research/teaching positions and 54 teaching positions 

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

To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.

On November 14, 2023, the 2024 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 440 research/teaching positions and 40 teaching positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Go to the first open thread. 

Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread. 

Are you having problems accessing the Google Sheet because of a Google Documents error? Email me at chemjobber@gmail.com and I will send you an Excel download of the latest sheet. 

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 107 research/teaching positions and 15 teaching positions

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc and Daniyal Kiani) has 107 research/teaching positions and 15 teaching positions. 

Here is a link to the open thread for the year.

C&EN: "The chemical enterprise braces for a second Trump presidency"

In this week's Chemical and Engineering News, this summary (article by Leigh Krietsch Boerner and Rowan Walrath)

With the dust settling after the US elections, chemists are trying to work out how a second Donald J. Trump presidency will affect their work and lives.

Scientists in many corners are concerned—about their funding, about the politicization of their research areas, and about their intellectual freedom. Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says scientists in federal and state governments who work in politicized fields like climate change are worried that “their name is going on a list.”

“President Trump has promised to fire government scientists and to dismantle scientific agencies,” Jones says. “Without strong federal science, historically marginalized communities bear the brunt of policies that benefit corporate profit over people and communities.”

A scientist in the federal government, who spoke to C&EN on the condition of anonymity because they fear retribution, worries that some government scientists “might just choose to throw in the towel.” That would leave the federal government without the staff needed to assess data and enact evidence-based policies, the person says.

It will be fascinating to see if the BIOSECURE Act is passed, and if it is signed in the lame duck session. I would expect yes, but we shall see. 

Give your instruments to the museums?

Also in this week's C&EN, this letter to the editor: 

We read with much interest the article discussing options of what to do with old laboratory equipment and instruments (C&EN, June 17, 2024, page 16). The article describes an ad hoc approach to dealing with surplus equipment, which is not dissimilar to our experiences at other institutions.

The author points out that less attention tends to be paid to expensive instruments after they have been superseded, and she lists three options: “Sell, donate, or scrap.” We would like to propose a fourth option: consider archiving old documents and equipment. Science and medicine museums, such as the Wellcome Collection and Science Museum in London, are considered national treasures in the UK: 89% of adults surveyed earlier this year said museums are important to UK culture. Museums attract visitors. The Science Museum, for example, attracts nearly 3 million visitors per year and appeared in the top 10 visitor attractions in the UK in 2013 and 2023.

People experience and learn science in many different places and ways, not just at school, and science museums are informal learning experiences that help broaden people’s perception of science and medicine. They also have the potential to inspire a broader range of people and bring about more diversity in the field.d

Please consider archiving documents and equipment, and remember that a beaker or an ordinary piece of kit today might constitute a precious artifact tomorrow.

Sami A. Al-Ani and Ilaria Scaglia 

Birmingham, England

Uh, I think that the available old scientific instruments could easily overwhelm museums. But hey, you can ask! 

Have a good weekend

Well, this week hasn't gone exactly the way I'd like. I hope that your week was better? I am very much looking forward to the weekend. I hope you have a great one. See you on Monday! 

Thinking about a second Trump Administration

Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the United States. I’m not happy about that. 

But this is not a blog about my personal feelings about politics; it is a blog to help chemists find jobs, and to help understand how to measure the quality of the job market. 

We have a couple of months before he takes office. I plan to spend some time between now and then making predictions as to actual Trump Administration policy, and how it might impact the readers of this blog. 

Five topics I can think of immediately: 

• Immigration: What will immigration policy be under the second Trump Administration? 
• Tariffs: How will Trump’s threatened tariffs impact American chemists? 
• Regulation: How will the EPA and the FDA be impacted under their new leadership? 
• Academic science: How will US academic science be impacted, in terms of funding for NIH and other federal funding agencies? 
• Employment: How will this change the long-term trajectory of employment for American chemists? 

What topics do you suggest I tackle? Please respond in the comments with specific topics and NOT predictions. (Please avoid posting lengthy political opinions in this thread. If you must post your political opinion, I ask that each person limit themselves to the same number of words as me - 6 words.) E-mails welcome: chemjobber@gmail.com 

Job posting: forensic drug analyst, Ministry of Health, Government of Bermuda

Via C&EN, this position: 

The Government Analyst works under the direction of the Senior Government Analyst to provide Forensic Drug Chemistry and technical analysis to assist in crime detection and associated reporting and presentation of evidence in court.

Applicants must possess BSc in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Analytical Chemistry or a related science degree together with a wide knowledge in Forensic Science and three (3) years relevant experience in Forensic Science or related Laboratory Science is required. In lieu of the requisite years of experience, consideration will be taken into applicants whom possess a Post-graduate degree in Chemistry, Biochemistry, or Forensic Science along with at least one (1) years relevant experience.

This post is offered on a three year contract. Qualified persons wishing to be considered for the post may apply online at www.govtcareers.gov.bm by the specified closing date of 27th November, 2024.

Salary:  PS28 $93,610.96 (=US$ Equivalent)

Curious what the standard of living is on Bermuda (probably quite pricey). Best wishes to those interested. 

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 396 research/teaching positions and 45 teaching positions

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 396 research/teaching positions and 45 teaching positions 

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

To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.

On November 7, 2023, the 2024 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 424 research/teaching positions and 40 teaching positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Go to the first open thread. 

Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread. 

Are you having problems accessing the Google Sheet because of a Google Documents error? Email me at chemjobber@gmail.com and I will send you an Excel download of the latest sheet. 

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 102 research/teaching positions and 14 teaching positions

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc and Daniyal Kiani) has 102 research/teaching positions and 14 teaching positions. 

Here is a link to the open thread for the year.

Harvard Crimson: Charles Lieber to visit Beijing for "employment networking"

Via the Harvard Crimson, this unusual news: 

A federal judge gave former Harvard Chemistry professor Charles M. Lieber permission to visit China for “employment networking” and give a lecture in Beijing — nearly three years after Lieber was convicted for lying to federal investigators about his relationship to China.

Lieber is currently serving a 18-month term of supervised release after completing six months of house arrest.

Lieber has been actively searching for employment in China since at least June, when he asked a judge if he could visit the University of Hong Kong the next month “to discuss potential faculty appointment and employment opportunities.”

In July, Lieber requested to attend the International Beijing Brain Conference in August to deliver a keynote speech and “discuss research and potential collaborations with local students.”

All three of Lieber’s requests were approved by U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper. The most recent request, which Casper signed off on last week, did not specify Lieber’s planned dates of travel.

In the requests, Lieber’s attorneys wrote that they had sought approval for Lieber’s travel from the Chinese consulate but had not heard back.

The Crimson could not determine whether Lieber has visited China yet, and neither Lieber nor his attorneys responded to requests for comment. In August, he told the South China Morning Post via email that he had “not yet visited Hong Kong, but may do so this fall.”

In some sense, this is reasonable, i.e. China pays significant money to be associated with prominent academics, and Charles Lieber is certainly very prominent. Also, I presume that he needs employment. However, it was his past associations with Chinese academia that got him into trouble, and in that sense, this move is rather surprising. I guess we'll see where Dr. Lieber ends up. 

C&EN on horseshoe crab blood testing

In the latest issue of C&EN, this fascinating feature by Laurel Oldach:

At a recent meeting of the Parenteral Drug Association, where industry microbiologists discussed ways to make drugs without a trace of unwanted biological material, photos of horseshoe crabs danced across a screen between sessions. The sediment-snuffling arthropod with a dozen legs and a shell like a helmet may seem like an unlikely pairing with the sleek, highly engineered robotics of a pharmaceutical production line. But estuaries teeming with life and clean rooms where it should be all but absent are linked by their dependence on this animal.

That is poised to change. In November, US regulators will formally announce their acceptance of alternatives to a key test that ensures drug products are not contaminated. The new tests will use proteins produced in bioreactors rather than in wild horseshoe crabs.

The change was hard fought. Arguments played out in the technical literature and in expert committee meetings. The stakes included hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales for the company with the most to lose from a switch and the professional reputations of a group of industry insiders who were fired from their volunteer jobs. Now it appears that the tide may be turning on endotoxin tests made from horseshoe crab blood—but it hasn’t gone out just yet.

This piece is pretty long and detailed, but it is definitely worth it, as it explains the rather labyrinthine process of changing USP standards, and how it is its own bureaucratic battlefield. Read the whole thing. 

Have a great week

This has been kind of a wild week, but here I am, I guess, with a larger project due. At least I got a couple of decent meals out of it. Hope you had a great week, and have a great weekend. See you on Monday. 

Meet a candy scientist and their IP

Via the Wall Street Journal, this fun bit of intellectual property trivia: 

...Taste testers wanted more flavor and felt the chewing experience wasn’t gummy enough, so Ferrara made the product even tangier and tweaked the crunch-to-chew ratio. 

In the summer of 2020, the candy company and the inventor of Nerds Gummy Clusters, a Ferrara scientist named Sean Oomens, filed for a patent on a “dual-textured confectionery” with a “chewy center” and “crunchy coating.” 

The details in the application, which is pending, included an exact definition of gummy (“a springy, resilient character with varying degrees of firmness”) and a less exact shape of the cluster (“generally ovoid, spherical or bean-shaped”). 

...Ferrara’s experiments with Gummy Clusters did result in batches of soggy Nerds, according to a person familiar with the process. The patent on Gummy Clusters suggests that Ferrara’s candy scientists solved their problem with additives such as gum arabic, an additive that prevents moisture from the chewy center from seeping into the candy pebble’s coating...

I bet it's a lot of fun to be a candy scientist, but you probably have a serious salt tooth at the end of a work day... 

makes you wonder who the PHOSITA for candy science would be...