Reader question: how do you do a job talk on proprietary material?

A reader writes in with the following question [details redacted for anonymity]:

A colleague recently left because [their spouse] (also a scientist) got a job in a new city and they are relocating.  Inevitably, [they'll] need to give the usual 45-minute job talk to get a new one, but [they] spent most of [their] work on internal projects that [they] can't present outside the company.  What [do they] do for [their] job talk?  Go back and present [their] postdoc work? (This was [their] first industry job.)  What can industry workers do to make sure they have something to talk about when it's time to find the next job (voluntarily or not)? (emphasis CJ's) 

I'm at a [industry conference] this week and polled the few industry folks there (GSK, AZ, Lilly) and none had a good suggestion other than try to get on projects that you're allowed to talk about to the outside world.  

Derek Lowe talked about his solution to these problems a while back:

[...after talking about work that's in published journal articles or patents, or work in published patent applications, not disclosing full structures, but still giving enough detail to show off your work]  

The worst case is "none of the above." No published work worth talking about, no patent applications, no nothing. I actually did go out and give an interview seminar under those conditions once, and it was an unpleasant experience. I had to talk about ancient stuff from my post-doc, and it was a real challenge convincing people that I knew what was going on in a drug company. I don't recommend trying it.

But I don't recommend spilling the beans in that situation, either. I've seen a job interview talk where it became clear that the speaker was telling us more than he really should have, and we all thought the same thing: he'll do the same thing to us if he gets a job here. No offer. 

Derek also talks about mentioning biological data verbally, but not on the slides -- presumably, sharing enough general data to give you credibility, but not so much that you're revealing more than your employer would like.

I'll take a slightly different tack and say that I've mentioned techniques or general approaches that I've used, when I can't give lots of details. In process chemistry, there's the option of saying that "We were asked to fix a filtration problem, etc., etc." or "I had a troublesome alkylation, and I found that..." While it's not exactly a detailed, reproducible procedure, I think chemists are aware enough of when a job talk speaker is circumlocuting around an IP problem.

Readers, how would you solve this issue?

Interview: HV, bioanalytical chemist (was organometallic chemist)

When I recently made skeptical comments about job growth in the biosciences sector, HV suggested that things may be a little bit better. He's transitioned from synthetic organometallic chemistry to more bioanalytical-oriented work. I think his story may be interesting to Chemjobber readers, so I thought I would interview him.

This e-mail interview has been lightly edited by Chemjobber, and checked for accuracy by HV.

CJ: Can you talk about your background and how you found your current position?

HV: I have a PhD from [large Midwestern state university] in inorganic and organometallic chemistry. I graduated in Sept 2007. I did a 3 year post doc at [another Midwestern state university]. My wife is also a PhD and Post doc biochemist and she found a job in St Louis. I moved with her hoping to find a position in St Louis. Boy, was I in trouble.

Around the same time I moved to St Louis, Pfizer was closing their St Louis site and the market here was flooded with chemists with 10 to 20 years of experience. I could not find a teaching position either. I met a scientific director of a biosciences company at a social event and he offered to help. He knew another company's scientific director who was looking for chemists who were interested in jumping to CRO work in biology. He made a couple of calls and I had an on site interview for a position.

CJ: Was it painful to you to transition out of chemistry?

HV: I dont think it was painful at all. Chemistry is a basic science. If you have the interest and the passion to adapt to something new and pursue it, a PhD enables you to make the transition and apply the critical thinking needed.

What would you recommend to people who want to follow in your path?

I highly recommend synthetic organic/organometallic chemists to start looking towards CRO jobs or at least make an attempt towards mass spectrometry or analytical positions. Start attending webinars in biology in basic glycoprotein analysis and get accustomed to GMP and GLP practices.

CJ: Can you talk about some of the personal struggles that you overcame during your job hunt?

HV: Personal struggles... seeing other chemists get jobs while you are struggling to get one, especially the ones I trained in graduate school. I battled depression, got diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and it was a constant struggle to get by everyday. Luckily, I had a very supportive wife. I joined the local American Diabetes Association chapter and I live a very active lifestyle. I run 3 miles a day now!

CJ: What do you think is the current situation in the biotechnology world -- are things looking up or looking down?

HV: Biotechnology is looking up. Think about this: Abbott's Humira is the # 1 selling drug in terms of sales. A TNF blocker... who would have thought that 15 years ago? The traditional way of making drugs using exclusively chemistry has almost disappeared and there is more emphasis on biology-based drugs. Plus, there are a number of biosimilars hitting the market pretty soon.

Chemists need to adapt and it is not very difficult. We already know the basic instruments/analysis. We need to keep an open mind. Comfortable jobs in Big Pharma doing synthetic chemistry in an R&D lab is almost a pipe dream -- unless your advisor really knows someone.

This might be a cliche, but networking really helps. Get involved socially -- I was hesitant and hated to say that I was looking for employment every time someone asked me. This is one of toughest recessions to hit the USA and chemists are just at the wrong place and the wrong time to graduate.

Hope everyone out there gets a job soon!

CJ here again -- thanks to HV for a great interview and thought-provoking comments.

Daily Pump Trap: 7/19/12 edition

Good morning! Between June 12 and June 18, there have been 95 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 11 (12%) are academically connected and 36 (38%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources. 

Chicago, IL: Not too long ago, I made a couple of comments about Polyera and their romance novel approach to hiring. They're upping the ante with this latest one, though:

What do we do? We make possible products like this. (If for some reason this URL doesn't show up, Google "Samsung OLED hammer") 

Have your attention yet?

We’re Polyera. 

Located in Chicago, IL, we are a mid-sized start-up company (~40 people) that is a leading-edge supplier of novel materials that enable printed and flexible electronics (imagine a big-screen TV you can roll up like a newspaper or inexpensive solar panels that could be used in 3rd-world countries). Founded in August of 2005, we now have relationships with nearly every major consumer electronics company in the world and plan to launch our first products by late 2013 – products like a flexible eReader like the Kindle.

So if you work here, what do you get?

• Money. It is a job, after all.
• A ton of experience working on cutting-edge R&D issues with a team that’s been recognized as one of the leading R&D teams in our industry. And they’re actually nice.
• Benefits: Health, Dental, Vision, 401k, Life Insurance, Disability – the works.
• Being part of a company that’s at the start of the next big paradigm shift in electronics. Seriously – save this post and take it out in 5 years: see if we’re lying.

Interested? Good.  The next thing to know is who we hire:

• You need a B.S. or M.S. in chemistry, inorganic chemistry, materials science, or related field, and have significant experience doing hands-on lab work.
• You need to be smart. At least in the top 25% of your class (or higher).
• You need to love learning new things.
• You need to be someone who gets along with others. Seriously.
• You need to be willing to work your butt off.
• You need to want to not just to have a job, but to start a career. 
• You don’t just like going through the motions – you want to create something.

Sound like you? Great! Keep reading below....

This is a really conversational approach to the ad, which keeps going and going. I'll be interested to hear who wrote these ads (an actual chemist, I suspect) and whether or not they're going to be as world-beating as they hope.

What's going on in Rolla?: Brewer Science is a supplier of speciality coatings to the microelectronics industry; they're located in Rolla, MO. They're a long time stalwart of ACS Careers and they've posted 12 positions, split between engineering and chemistry. (These positions are connected with the ACS Career Fair in Philadelphia.)

New York, New York: Kenyon and Kenyon is a law firm; they're looking for a M.S./Ph.D. chemist with experience in medicinal or organic chemistry to be a technical proofreader. Didn't know such a position existed.

Orange, TX (and elsewhere): Invista is hiring for 5 positions. Positions in Newark, DE, Wilmington, NC and 3 position in Texas. All laboratory-related.

Zeroes!: PPG Industries is looking to hire Ph.D. chemists (0-2 years experience) for positions in coatings, glass and chemicals:

Coatings Opportunities: Research and Development activities exist in, but are not limited to, the following areas:  Nanoparticle synthesis, unique color technologies for coatings, renewable resource use in coatings formulation, novel polymer synthesis. Coatings formulations for alternative energy technologies, automotive markets and industrial coatings applications 

Glass Opportunities: Anticipated assignments during the first 12 months may include the following: Discovery - work with sensors, devices and functional materials, thin films & optical coatings (PVD & CVD), solar energy materials (photovoltaics and solar thermal), mechanical properties of amorphous materials, chemical properties of amorphous surfaces, process modeling and process control 

Chemicals Opportunities: Research and Development assignments are needed in the following areas: Organic synthesis of fused heterocyclic dye material, photochemistry, polymer synthesis and formulation of sol gel coatings, development of adhesives for polymer films and coatings

I think it's interesting that PPG is basically hiring a class of new Ph.D.s, something that it seemed like pharma used to do.

Sacramento, CA: Ampac is looking to hire a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. process chemist with 3 to 5 years of experience. They're hiring in dribs and drabs for about a year and a half now. Huh.

Hey, they do it too: Daiichi Sankyo is hiring chemists... in Gurgaon, India. Huh. 

A reader's open letter to senators on the SMART Jobs Act

From a reader, an interesting open letter to Congress:

Dear Chemjobber,
I am writing to share with you a letter that I’ve sent off to several US senators, in regards to the SMART Jobs Act recently introduced by Sen. Chris Coons (D) of Delaware and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee. In light of the recent Washington Post article by Brian Vastag, I thought it would be good to share this letter with others (with my personal info removed, though details are in the original).  Hopefully enough senators will have read the article, so it would be good if they heard from individual scientists about our situations, and about how this legislation could have a serious impact on our careers. 

Too many times we chemists think that our voices won’t be heard, or we wait in vain for ACS, or NSF, or the NIH, or some university, or some professor to speak up for us.  I believe that we ought to speak for ourselves.  The more of us that contact the relevant senators about this Act, the more we balance out all the punditry out there that says “We Need More Scientists!!!”
Below are links to contact the main senators on the Judiciary subcommittee that would hold hearings on this Act, along with Sens. Coons and Alexander.  I also encourage people to write to their own US senators.

Sincerely,
J.D.

Senator Chris Coons (D): http://www.coons.senate.gov/contact
Senator Lamar Alexander (R): http://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Email
Senator Charles Schumer (D): https://www.schumer.senate.gov/Contact/contact_chuck.cfm
Sen. John Cornyn (R): http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactForm
Senator Patrick Leahy (D): http://www.leahy.senate.gov/contact
Senator Chuck Grassley (R): http://www.grassley.senate.gov/contact.cfm
Senator Orrin Hatch (R): http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-orrin
Senator Al Franken (D): http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=email_al

Dear Senator: 

I am a science professional with a Ph.D. in chemistry and 10+ years of experience in my field.  I am writing to you about the recent introduction of the SMART Jobs Act (S.3192), which would change the law by giving green cards to all international graduate students in STEM fields upon completion of their degrees, once they find employment in this country. 

If you value science as well as scientists already in this country, you should vote for removing the ‘Science’ portion from the ‘STEM’ designation in this proposed legislation.  Speaking of my own profession, our country does not have enough jobs for chemists already here.  Over the past 10 years, there have been thousands of chemists laid off from American chemical and pharmaceutical companies, while these same companies have permanently downsized labs and/or sent research jobs overseas.  This somber situation has recently been profiled in the front page Washington Post article “U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there”, by Brian Vastag, published July 7th, 2012. 

In my own case, the laboratory where I worked at “XYZ Company” closed 2 years ago and was moved to another state; one third of the research staff was laid off, fired, demoted or forced to retire early.  I have been fortunate enough to find another job - at 60% of my former pay.  And I’ve been luckier than many of my colleagues. 

It is because of the above scenario, repeated over and over again, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted only 3.8% job growth for chemists over the next decade, far below the projected 14% growth for all occupations.For us chemists, the automatic green card effort would make the above poor job growth projections even worse.  

The main premise of the SMART Jobs Act is that future scientists from other countries would start new companies and create jobs if allowed to remain here in the US.  It is possible that a few exceptional individuals might indeed do so at some future time.  But the great majority of these new scientists will not be starting companies. They will be competing with those already here for the decreased number of research jobs still available here in this country, making viable science careers in American industry even less attainable than they already are. 

As you discuss this Act with your colleagues and hold hearings, consider the current situation of us chemists, and how many of us are without jobs, or without the decent salaries that we once had.  We need persons such as yourself to make certain that our employment situations do not degrade any further.  And so, I ask that you work to change this proposed legislation to remove the ‘Science’ portion from the ‘STEM’ designation. 

James Doe, Ph.D.
Anytown, USA

 Thoughts?

UPDATE: I forgot the upper portion of the letter, where Dr. Doe explains the reasoning behind the letter. Ack. My fault. Apologies to Dr. Doe. 

Process Wednesday: Trevor Laird writes a poem

From Trevor Laird, the distinguished editor of Organic Process Research and Development, a poem on what chemistry the editors of OPR&D would like to see. Quoting from the middle of the poem:

...But sometimes my enthusiasm stops
At work ups with bunches of ops,
Or by poor separations,
Numerous crystallisations
(I prefer to see direct drops). 

So writers of manuscripts note,
Our referees may ponder and vote
To reject your paper
If you don’t taper
Operations that will “get my goat”. 

Product isolation is
As important as synthesis.
A large number of streams
Of effuents means
Your process is most likely a miss...

I think this poem reminds the novice process chemist that the nature of the waste streams coming from processes is just as important (and related to!) the inputs into the process. While you tend to think (from a development POV) about the reagents that go into the process, the cost of disposing of waste streams can sometimes be a deal breaker.

Tracking graduates: an idea whose time has come?

From the draft report on the NIH workforce (co-chaired by Professor Tilghman of Princeton and Dr. Rockey of NIH) comes this interesting recommendation after a page of text decrying the relative lack of data on the fates of graduate students and postdocs in the biomedical field (page 43):

Institutions that receive NIH funding should collect information on the career outcomes of both their graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and provide this information to prospective students/ postdoctoral researchers and the NIH.   Such information should include completion rates, time to degree, career outcomes for PhD trainees, as well as time in training and career outcomes from postdoctoral researchers over a 15-year period.  Outcome data should be displayed prominently on the institution’s web site.  This will require institutions to track the career paths of their students and postdoctoral researchers over the long-term. One way to do that would be to assign graduate students and incoming postdoctoral researchers an identifier that can be used to track them throughout their careers.  This could be part of a unique researcher ID system that would allow tracking of all researchers throughout their career.  The ID would need to relate to any NIH ID assigned to the individual.

In the live chat hosted by ScienceCareers a couple of weeks back, I got to ask Professor Tilghman about this issue. Her response (and a followup by Beryl Benderly) were interesting:

Comment From Chemjobber: I support the push for universities to devote resources to tracking the career outcomes of their graduates and publishing that information. How committed are the universities to make this happen? 

Shirley Tilghman: Chemjobber: Universities will be committed if the NIH requires such tracking as a condition of receiving federal funds.

Comment From Beryl Benderly: For how long a period would universities be required to track graduates' careers?

Shirley Tilghman: Beryl, the committee was proposing tracking for period of 10-20 years. We settled on 15 as a compromise. By that time individuals have usually settled into their career.

Gotta say, I like the cut of Professor Tilghman's jib. We'll see if any of the draft report's recommendations get implemented by NIH. Also, an revealing comment from Joseph LaManna, president of FASEB:

Comment From Chemjobber: Is there a sense from the political side (i.e. senior NIH or Congressional officials) of the sacrifices (monetary and otherwise) that people make to go into biomedical science? 

Joseph LaManna: We have found that there is a tremendous amount of bipartisan respect for the research community in Congress. We have also found that the leadership at NIH is very eager to discuss issues and potential solutions with working scientists. The problem is simply (?) too little available resources in a poor economic climate.

I think Professor LaManna's final comment is dead on. At the moment, many of the problems of academic science (and perhaps even #chemjobs) could be fixed with a better economic climate. Would that it were so easy.

Post-wedding comments

Went to a wedding on Saturday -- a lovely time.* Nice ceremony, fun reception.

I was seated at a table full of chemists, all under 40. Lots of shop talk, lots of talk of job loss, of the difficulty in finding work in our field. The best line of the evening?

"I've survived [3 < x < 7] rounds of layoffs -- I don't want to survive another one."

There has got to be literature on what happens to an industry when the median entry-to-mid-level worker is quite jaded about the future of the field. Yikes.

At the same time, most people I talked to were pretty clear about their personal situation as compared to those worse off. "I've got a job -- I can't complain" seemed to be the final refrain of the night.

Best wishes to all of us.

*Thanks to See Arr Oh for watching over the blog while I was out. 

Wow, that's some interesting prose

I assume when professors are asked to comment on another professor's work, they have to walk a fine line of saying something complimentary, without sounding gushing or damning with faint praise. In this week's C&EN (article by Stu Borman), Professor Erick Carreira doesn't shy away from strong language when praising Professor Paul Wender's recent work on bryostatin analogues that can cure dormant HIV:

“The tour de force complex synthesis of bryologs is a brilliant realization of the goals of function-oriented synthesis,” says synthetic chemist Erick M. Carreira of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. “This strategy brings the viral terrorists out of hiding, where they can be targeted for destruction.”

I'm surprised that there wasn't some reference to synthetic Predator drone strikes or something.  

Tough times for biotech

In this week's C&EN, an article noting 6 companies having difficulties by Ann Thayer:

...A new board at Canada’s QLT hopes to fix a “precarious financial position.” In 2011, the firm lost $30 million, despite revenues of $42 million. To align spending and headcount, the board has cut 146 jobs.  

...Another Canadian firm, Cardiome Pharma, is cutting 85% of its workforce after Merck & Co. stopped work on an oral form of Cardiome’s heart drug vernakalant. The cutbacks will eliminate internal research. 

...Chelsea Therapeutics is facing a delay in the approval of its hypotension drug Northera. The North Carolina company will keep only as many of its 49 employees as it needs to complete the regulatory process. 

...To cut costs, Savient Pharmaceuticals will reduce its workforce by 35%, or about 60 employees.  

...In light of market pressures, Switzerland’s Actelion is cutting 135 positions, or about 5% of its workforce, and emphasizing R&D in specialty areas. 

...Meanwhile, Biolex Therapeutics has shut down entirely. 

“It is a challenging financing environment, and within that the fates of individual companies and technologies move in all sorts of directions,” says Glen Giovannetti, global life sciences leader at Ernst & Young. “Long term, I think we are in a period of contraction.”

Yikes.

What Happens to a (Vacation) Dream Deferred?*

Clark Griswold: Chemist / Vacation Pro

Happy summer, everyone! This is See Arr Oh, reporting for active duty. While CJ's away, I've been put in charge of curating comments, dusting off all the old posts, and mowing the lawn. 


Since we're talking about summer trips, let me ask you: in today's economy, does anyone still take long holidays? Do you, like a certain Hollywood food chemist, pack up the whole family for a few weeks of adventure?


For me, it's tempting to slide back into the old refrain of "one more experiment." After all, for bench chemists, that's how we've always done it. During summers in undergrad, we're encouraged to join a lab, or perhaps travel for an REU. When grad school starts, advisors and senior grads casually mention that truly devoted grads work straight through the season (not to mention that the NMR gets less traffic in July).


When you hit the job market, the time crunch of your first few projects may cause you to rethink that tropical getaway; I once heard a manager say "Everyone gets vacation, but no one really takes it." 


Readers, what are your summer vacation plans? Do you feel secure enough to drop 'under the radar' for a few weeks? Or will you be manning your post, dreaming of far-off time off?


(*With apologies to Langston Hughes) 

Wedding announcement: Lisa Brown and Phil Smith

(CJ Press) Elizabeth Jennifer Brown, a graduate student of Professor F.M. Jones of Fancy Pants, Massachusetts was married Wednesday to Philip Andrew Smith, the postdoctoral fellow of Professor M.T. Allen of Universityville, Georgia. Samuel Tilghman, George and Gracie Burns Professor of Chemistry at Football School State School in Los Angeles, CA, performed the ceremony in the NMR facility between group meeting and the evening departmental seminar.  

The bride, 28, and bridegroom, 30, met at FSSU from which they graduated, both with unlikely hopes of being professors at Ph.D.-granting institutions.

Ms. Brown, who is known as Lisa, is a senior graduate student (H-index of 20) in the Jones Group at Fancy Pants University and is known for exceptionally clean baselines in her NMRs. Her pump oil changing skills are unsurpassed.

The bride's advisor is the most skilled raconteur in the Department of Chemistry at Fancy Pants University. From 1994 to 2004, he was the chairman and president of the department's glee club and social committee.

Dr. Smith is a postdoctoral fellow in the Allen Group at Southern University of Georgia; he has published 10 publications and given 4 presentations. He is known for excellent slide transitions during his group meeting talks, as well as being able to recondition dead HPLC columns.

The bridegroom's advisor is the chairwoman of the department of chemistry and biochemistry at Southern University of Georgia, where she has won 3 R01 grants from the NIH in the last 6 years.

The bride and groom intend to live together in the same city for approximately three years while they attempt to secure employment, postdoctoral positions and solve the two-body problem unsuccessfully.

*I'm actually attending a wedding, so I will be traveling today. (You'll be in good hands, though.) 

Ask CJ: When is it time to hang 'em up?

Well, pardner, are you tired of
going to the lab?
(John Wayne, The Shootist) 

Regular reader Anon071020120836p asks:

...I would like to ask for advice from you or anybody else on this forum. How do you know when it's a good time to leave a laboratory research career? Anyway, thanks in advance from a regular reader.

Still being in the lab, and still within 10 years of getting my degree and leaving school, I don't really know the answer to that question. I found myself being frustrated by picayune stuff in the lab today (I'm out of acetone again!?!), but I know that isn't really a sign of time to leave the bench, it's time to get better about cleaning my glassware and time to get a better restocking routine for my laboratory.

But I would imagine that being emotionally exhausted by bench chemistry and not looking forward to new projects would be a very good sign that perhaps it would be time to hang 'em up. While I do tie an unhealthy amount of my wellbeing to the next darn peak on the HPLC, I've learned to give myself just a little bit of emotional distance. I see so many things to learn, and so little time to do it in -- I can't imagine leaving the bench (i.e. less than 60% in the lab) anytime soon.

Readers, your collective wisdom on this issue is much larger than mine. Your thoughts? 

What are the chances to make it to Big Pharma from a small company?

I'm heading straight for Big Pharma after
I bust this guy's head open and break
out of this developmental league.
Credit: Ryan Wolf/Phoenix New Times

There are a lot of talented new graduates and postdocs who are finding their ways to smaller pharma companies and startups these days; there are also the various new academic drug discovery centers. The same assumption is that some percentage of these people would have been part of the traditional campus recruiting hires for Big Pharma.

Will they ultimately transition to the large pharmaceutical companies, as older entry-level employees or lower-to-mid-level management? I've covered this once before, when I said:

If smaller companies are like the minor leagues in baseball (where future talent is grown and developed over time) and assuming that there is a more-than-likely chance (unlike the minor leagues) that your experience will translate into a better-paying job in the future, then it's worth it. 

If taking a job at a smaller startup or a CRO is more like joining an independent league American football team* (where the chances of joining the NFL are vanishingly small), then no, it's not worth it and we're just keeping our jobs because we want to keep doing chemistry.

To which beloved commenter bbooooooya said:

...there is little transition from biotech to the big boys, though it does happen. The opposite transition seems more favored. A few years as a director or group leader at a big pharm makes it easier to slide into a VP role at a small biotech with, I assume, a jump in salary (at least while the company is around). I'm assuming non-executive salaries in big pharms tap out near $200K for group leaders, maybe a bit more for directors(but really don't know)?

I assume that bbooooooya would probably stick to his now year-old statement. 

Lower in the hierarchy, if Pfizer (and other big pharma companies) are going to stick to their designer/synthesizer motif, then I don't see why designers at small organizations can't become designers at large organizations. (Apart from the typical nepotism networking reasons, of course.) At the same time, I don't see the Big Pharmas deciding to hire lots of synthesizers (entry-level or otherwise) any time soon. 

I'm sure there's a pony in here somewhere. Readers, your thoughts? 

*Or an independent wrestling league (as pictured?)

Daily Pump Trap: 7/12/12 edition

Good morning! Between June 10 and June 11, there were 30 positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 3 (10%) are academically connected and 10 (30%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Boston, MA: bluebird bio wants a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. chemist:

We seek an experienced Scientist that will research and develop biochemical and biophysical characterization assays in support of clinical development of our novel products. These activities include the development of novel methods and approaches for the characterization of complex viral, protein, and cellular products as we advance our candidates from discovery through regulatory submissions. 

You know, that sounds interesting.

Indianapolis, IN: Dow AgroSciences is looking for a synthetic chemist in their R&D section; no education specified, but they're looking for someone who has total synthesis experience. 

Speaking of which, open positions at Dow?: How many open bench chemistry positions are there at the mighty Dow, anyway? Well, in North America, there appear to (upon a search of their job website) to be 4 positions open, including the synthetic position above. (I'm counting the analytical position in Pittsburg, CA, the automation position in Indy and the senior chemist position in Massachusetts.) 

Mount Vernon, WA: PACCAR is a company that works on vehicle fluids (engine oils, coolants, etc.); they're looking for a B.S. chemist with 3+ years experience in vehicle fluids research. (There has to be a better way of finding this chemist than posting a job ad, right? Right?)

Columbus, OH: Chemical Abstracts Service is posting ads for scientific information analysts; minimum B.S. or M.S. required. It would be fascinating to talk to someone who took one of these positions -- they advertise them yearly, it seems. 49k-58.8k isn't a ton of money, but it's not bad for Columbus, I'd think. (Median household income is 38k, so you're not doing too poorly, I'd think.) 

How are your peers doing?

A reader asked a terribly interesting question -- what has the career track of your graduate school peer group been? They give the following information ("people who started chemistry program (Top 50) between the years of 2004-2006 and have received a PhD/MS (48 people)"). Here's how it looks, tabulated (note that these are the numbers for an entire department):

Here's the table for my academic group. (Small-to-midsize academic group, top 50 department, graduated between 2000-2008 with MS/PhD, used percentages for anonymity.)

I think it's the last set of number that's the most stunning. Readers, what does it look like for your academic peers?

Process Wednesday: Filtering out an enzyme? Whoa.

Kilomentor has an interesting post on the practicalities of running an enzymatic process (based on a process chemistry conference talk by Dr. Jacob Janey of BMS) -- specifically, now that you have an aqueous/organic slurry of product and enzyme, how the heck do you get the product out?:

The method applies to an enzymatic transformation that has been conducted in water with 2-50% of an organic cosolvent such as methanol, DMSO or isopropyl alcohol (IPA). First, the pH is adjusted (if necessary) so that the substrate will be extractable into an essentially organic layer when it is introduced. Then, 0.5 relative volumes of alcohol (IPA or MeOH) is added. Then 0.5 relative volumes of isopropyl acetate or methyl t-butyl ether is added. The order of addition of these liquids is noted to be crucial. Then moderate agitation is employed to cause phase mixing to even out the concentration of liquids in between the  physical layers and then allow phase separation. The goal here is to achieve a 1:1:1 v/v/v mixture of water, alcohol and aprotic organic before the two layers separate. The bottom, more essentially organic,*  layer is then backwashed with 0.5 relative volumes of 30:70 v/v  alcohol/aprotic organic. The upper, more essentially organic wash is combined with the first upper, essentially organic layer and after being combined together they are in turn washed with water. 

The product is to be found in this wet combined alcohol/aprotic organic layer. The advantages of this method claimed are that it is scaleable, gives reliable easily visible quick separating cuts, and is reliable and adjustable to the particular process by adding more or less alcohol as needed to give best separation of the layers. I would judge this makes it the most general and scalable isolation procedure available. The admitted disadvantages are that significant product losses arise for relatively more polar substrate molecules. These are held more strongly in the water rich layer and so are lost to a greater degree. The method is of necessity more volume intensive and can be more lengthy since more additions are made to achieve superior layer separation.

I suspect the most difficult part of this procedure would be adjusting the relative ratios of solvent -- too much alcohol would probably not be a good thing. "Reliable easily visible quick separating cuts" are easy to come by in the lab, but when you're staring at a 3 inch sight glass in the middle of the night, you want your separations to be as foolproof as possible. 


*Less organic? See comment from Anon071120120753a. 

Daily Pump Trap: 7/10/12 edition

Good morning! Between July 3 and July 9, there were 73 positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 12 (16%) were academically connected and 43 (59%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

South San Francisco, CA: Genentech is looking for a senior information specialist, preferably someone with a lot of experience in searching databases. B.S./M.S. in chemistry desired, with M.L.S. "an asset."

Rahway, NJ: Now there's a place I don't get to type very often. Merck is looking for new Ph.D. organic chemists. Yes, you read that right. Check it out (emphasis mine):

Successful candidates will be part of a Global Chemistry Network, working either on a project team to improve the properties of lead drug candidates through the design and synthesis of new small molecules across a range of disease areas, or collaborating across the network to develop innovative solutions to catalytic challenges in organic synthesis. 

Education: PhD required or will be obtaining PhD before July 2013 Required: Candidates must have conducted outstanding research in the field of synthetic organic chemistry or transition metal catalysis while obtaining a Ph.D. in that field. This position requires the mastery of all techniques associated with modern laboratory synthesis, purification and characterization of organic compounds on small and medium scale. Successful candidates will function well within multidisciplinary teams and possess outstanding communication skills. Strong problem solving and troubleshooting skills are required. In addition to strong technical skills, the successful applicant will need to exhibit strong leadership and interpersonal skills. 

Preferred: Additional experience within an academic laboratory (post-doctoral fellowship) or the pharmaceutical/biotech industry is a plus. Our employees are the key to our company's success. We demonstrate our commitment to our employees by offering a competitive and valuable rewards program. Merck's benefits are designed to support the wide range of goals, needs and lifestyles of our employees, and many of the people that matter the most in their lives. 

I can't imagine that Merck's campus recruiting programs won't take care of whatever actual needs they have, so I don't know why this ad is being published. But there we are.

Waltham, MA: Astra-Zeneca is hiring for an experienced Ph.D. medicinal chemist position in infectious diseases; 4+ years in the industry. 

Chicago, IL: Silliker is a food science company -- they're hiring chemists! Lots of chemists! (Well, they are a number of openings for analytical chemists, anyway.)

Macon, GA: KaMin is looking for a B.S. chemist, starting at $18.51/hour. (I sure hope that's the very bottom of the wage scale there.) 

Small companies galore!: Well, not really, but a couple. Avid Pharmaceuticals in Philadelphia is searching for senior analytical chemists. Bothell, Washington's Seattle Genetics (what is their story, anyway?) is looking for 2 positions, a senior process chemist and a senior analytical chemist. Pellion Technologies (the Cambridge battery startup) is hiring an inorganic chemist with 3-5 years of industrial experience.

Darn it all!

qvxb, your comment got eaten by the spam filter. Sorry. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/10/12 edition

Good morning! Between July 3 and July 9, there have been 10 academic positions posted to the ACS Careers website. The numbers:

Total number of ads: 10
- Postdocs: 1
- Tenure-track faculty:  4
- Temporary faculty: 4
- Lecturer positions:  0
- Staff positions:  1
- Ratio of US/non-US positions: 7 / 3

Lynchburg, VA: Lynchburg College is looking for a one-year visiting professor of organic chemistry; M.S./Ph.D. desired.

Staten Island, New York: Wagner College desires an assistant adjunct professor of biochemistry; M.S./Ph.D. desired.

Xi'an, Shaanxi, China: Xian Jiaotong University wishes to hire professors in a variety of advanced material science applications.

University Park, PA: A little closer to home, Penn State would also like to hire some postdocs in advanced materials fields, specifically battery/energy storage and CO2 utilization.

Johannesburg, SA: The University of the Witwatersrand has a headship of the School of Chemistry available. I think that's like a chair.

Washington Post: "U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there"

For those of you not tied to a computer over the weekend, Brian Vastag of The Washington Post has written an article on the troubles in finding a job in science. It was on the front page of the paper yesterday; the article has garnered 3,712 comments (most of which are ridiculous elephant-v-donkey yelling.).

Vastag's article is a fantastic writeup of the situation. I have some small points to make, which I've written up here. Go over there and tell me your thoughts! 

A quick note -- one of the pharma scientists makes this comment:

Haas, the former drug company chemist, has even harsher words. She plans to “get out of Jersey and get out of science” when her daughter graduates from high school in two years. “She’s very good at everything, very smart,” Haas said of her daughter. “She loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made that very clear to her.”

Obviously, this is sad and one would rather that chemists could encourage their kids to get into their field and become proud members of NAICS 325.*

That said, don't all parents say some version of , "Kid, you don't want to go into my field -- there's gotta be a better way of making a living"? (My Dad doesn't -- he's an engineer and he thinks it's a great field.) But it seems like just about everyone thinks that way -- why should scientists be any different?

*See this comment for my clarification of the statement. 

C&EN: Former Wyeth site leased by Dow

From this week's C&EN, an interesting story on the former Wyeth site at Collegeville, PA that was closed by Pfizer by Alex Tullo:

Dow Chemical has agreed to lease a College­ville, Pa., R&D facility owned, and once operated, by Pfizer. Some 800 researchers will begin the move from Dow’s current site in Spring House, Pa., in the first quarter of 2013. The labs are about 17 miles apart in Montgomery County. Pfizer ended research operations at Collegeville in 2010 as part of an R&D consolidation after its 2009 purchase of Wyeth. That year, the company laid off 450 workers in Collegeville, although the firm’s specialty care unit is still based there. 

Dow, meanwhile, acquired the Spring House facility in 2009 when it purchased Rohm and Haas, which had opened the labs in 1963. Since the acquisition, the facility has started to support Dow businesses such as performance plastics and Dow AgroSciences. Dow says the 750,000-sq-ft College­ville facility offers a substantial increase in lab and pilot-plant space that can better accommodate future growth in research operations. “Dow did a comprehensive feasibility study and found it would be cost-prohibitive to upgrade the Spring House facility rather than customize Collegeville,” a Dow spokeswoman tells C&EN.

Is this a harbinger of a shift away from the glamour days of pharma back to chemical manufacturing? One wonders if new PhDs would rather not work in pharma, these days. 

Albermarle: Br on activated carbon? Wow!

From this week's C&EN, a writeup on Albermarle's business plans by Michael McCoy (emphasis mine):

He [Albermarle CEO Luke Kissam] reserves his highest hopes for Albemarle’s fine chemistry business, which sells a variety of brominated compounds and provides custom manufacturing to pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and specialty materials customers. There, he is betting on 18% annual growth through 2015. 

Albemarle is confident that coal-fired power plants will adopt its brominated activated carbon to meet coming limits on mercury emissions. In custom manufacturing, Kissam thinks he can continue to deliver 25% growth by focusing on customers that require complex or multistep syntheses and are willing to sign long-term contracts.

 Brominated activated carbon? That's so cool. 

Washington Post: "U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there."

Brian Vastag has written a really fantastic article in the Washington Post about the troubles of scientists finding jobs. It's a really great article, and a wonderful opportunity to tell the wider world about #chemjobs issues. Mr. Vastag also talks about the relative glut of new PhDs, the postdoc trap and the troubles with Big Pharma. 

A few choice quotes:

“It’s been a bloodbath, it’s been awful,” said Kim Haas, who spent 20 years designing pharmaceuticals for drug giants Wyeth and Sanofi-Aventis and is in her early 50s. Haas lost her six-figure job at Sanofi-Aventis in New Jersey last year. She now works one or two days a week on contract at a Philadelphia university. She dips into savings to make ends meet. 

Until recently, PhD organic chemist Mark Darey fit that description. In 2009, he was laid off from Albany Molecular Research, a contractor for pharmaceutical companies, after 20 years in the business. As he applied for 400 chemistry jobs, he worked as a low-wage office temp — and so was not included in the unemployment figures. “It was quite scary,” said Darey, who this year finally landed another chemist position, at DuPont in Belle, W. Va. “I was watching my bank balance dwindle away, wondering when I’d have to sell the house.” 

...Like many scientists, [postdoc] Amaral grew disillusioned with the system that left her with an expensive degree but few job options. She left her lab in December after federal funding for her post-doc position ran out. She now works as an administrator at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and is in a “holding pattern,” unsure whether — or how — to advance a science career she spent more than a decade working toward. “I’ve listened to this stuff on the news about how we need more scientists and engineers,” she said. “I’m thinking, ‘What are you talking about?’ We’re here. We need something to do besides manual labor for another academic person.” 

Haas, the former drug company chemist, has even harsher words. She plans to “get out of Jersey and get out of science” when her daughter graduates from high school in two years. “She’s very good at everything, very smart,” Haas said of her daughter. “She loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made that very clear to her.”

Some questions and thoughts:

Reality check: Does anyone dispute the facts that Mr. Vastag has laid out? Would anyone like to take the contrarian case that America Needs More Scientists Now? Or is that (as Unstable Isotope has put it), the trope for the laziest of pundits? 

Must budgets keep going up? Vastag writes the following:

The number of new PhDs in the medical and life sciences boomed, nearly doubling from 2003 to 2007, according to the NSF. But that boom is about to go bust, because an equal number of permanent jobs failed to follow. One big factor: Since 2004, federal research spending across all agencies has stagnated relative to inflation, according to an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Although the injection of $10 billion in federal stimulus funds to the NIH from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 “created or retained” 50,000 science jobs, according to the NIH, that money is running dry, putting those positions at risk. 

The lack of permanent jobs leaves many PhD scientists doing routine laboratory work in low-wage positions known as “post-docs,” or postdoctoral fellowships. Post-docs used to last a year or two, but now it’s not unusual to find scientists toiling away for six, seven, even 10 years.

Is Vastag's summary/formulation correct? Isn't it true, then, that the NIH/biomedical science complex must have ever-increasing budgets (or at least budgets that keep pace with inflation?). (CPI inflation is what -- 2-3% a year?) (Hey, if you've been a postdoc for more than 5 years, isn't that a sign that it's time to get out?) Outside of the Defense Department (a topic for another conversation), is there any part of the US discretionary budget that keeps pace with inflation? 

If you're in debt, R U DOIN IT RONG?: Vastag makes a couple of references to degrees being costly ("After earning her expensive doctorate...", "buried in debt)? Is this factually correct? I am under the perhaps-wrong impression that PhDs in the sciences are paid for (tuition + stipend) and student debt undertaken in graduate school is lifestyle, not education-oriented. Am I wrong?

Pyramid scheme?: Brian Vastag correctly consults Paula Stephan for comments on the economics of science:

Stephan, the Georgia State economist, calls the post-doc system a “pyramid scheme” that enriches — in prestige, scientific publications and federal grant dollars — a few senior scientists at the expense of a large pool of young, cheap ones.

Is it fair to term the postdoc system a pyramid scheme? Pyramid schemes are characterized by the flowing of money from the bottom to the top (and the requirement of exponentially more suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.) Is it more accurate to term the postdoc system a labor tournament, where the gains are split amongst a very small pool of winners (i.e. tenure-track positions, etc.) 

Kroll's uh-oh comment: From the article: 

Although the overall unemployment rate of chemists and other scientists is much lower than the national average, those figures mask an open secret: Many scientists work outside their chosen field.  

“They’ll be employed in something,” said Michael S. Teitelbaum, a senior adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who studies the scientific workforce. “But they go and do other things because they can’t find the position they spent their 20s preparing for.”

First of all, if true, is that the best use of their 20s? But better yet, David Kroll has a very, very good comment:

One thing missing from the article was a discussion of the so-called alternative career paths where one uses PhD training but not in an academic or industrial setting. Even a typical non-lab career of science writing is becoming extremely competitive, both for salaried positions and freelancers. 

I hesitate to say this without complete data but we may indeed be reaching a point where more PhDs are being produced than can be absorbed by both academia/industry and non-laboratory positions.

I think David's thoughts are mostly correct. The job market for college graduates is relatively fine; that said, I don't think science PhDs necessarily end up at the front of the line for entry-level positions in other fields. I'll also troll a little bit and say that David, a former academic, is probably way out in front of other academics, who might still hold fast to thoughts that their graduates and postdocs could get a non-science-related job anytime they wanted.

All in all, this is a great article, and I hope that its most prominent impact will be felt upon policymakers in the Washington area.

What are your thoughts on the questions that I have raised? What are your thoughts? (P.S. Over at the Washington Post article itself, there are a stonkering 3621 comments and it has degenerated into a mass elephant-v-donkey shouting match. I know that won't happen here.) 

Assignment desk: 8 things that need to get done

8 things that need to happen in the chemblogosphere:

• A NMR spectroscopist blog. 
• A rogue Sigma-Aldrich Twitter account. 
• There really needs to be an analytical chemist blogger, specifically HPLC. 
• A quantum/theoretical chemistry blog -- they would have to be awesome writers, but it'd be worth it!
• Why hasn't there been a lab reality show already? 
• It would be awesome if a big name in synthetic chemistry started to blog anonymously, dogging lame methodology papers and bogus total syntheses. C'mon, it's not like it doesn't happen on e-mail all the time. 
• QC chemistry would lend itself to a terribly sarcastic blog, I'd think. 
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter would have nothing on R.B. Woodward: Zombie Slayer.

Speaking of which, folks, what is there that you would like me to do? All suggestions welcome. 

Unemployment rate unchanged, U6 up 0.1% in June

Credit: Calculated Risk

Fresh electrons from BLS: The headline number is going to be the relatively anemic job growth numbers at as the economy added 80k nonfarm payroll jobs in June. The national unemployment rate stayed steady at 8.2% and U6 unemployment ticked up 0.1% to 14.9%.

I'm beginning to be reminded of the last line from This American Life's "The Giant Pool of Money" episode which came out in May 2008. There's nothing quite like driving on I-5 in '08, looking for a job and hearing this: 

"And there's more talk that the next few years will feel like the 1970s. There are lots of technical differences between this crisis and Jimmy Carter's malaise. But for the average person it could feel the same. It's not an out-and-out depression. Everything's just kind of crappy. And not just in housing and banking, but for the economy as a whole. It's barely growing. There aren't a lot of new businesses, new jobs, unemployment keeps creeping up. We're just sort of stuck in neutral for a while. Anyone under, say, 45 probably doesn't remember that 1970s malaise too well. Anyone under 30 has barely known a US economy that wasn't growing. Now, there's a decent chance we'll all get to see what life felt like in the '70s, which isn't great. It's pretty bad, actually, unless you're comparing it to the 1930s."

Great, just great.

Thanks, as always, to Calculated Risk for the best Worst Graph in the World.

A colorful Diazonamide A

Since BRSM Blog hasn't put up his final posting, I don't feel too bad about adding an unofficial entry from our household to the K.C. Nicolaou birthday celebration. As it is after the deadline, it is not an official submission.

I like this one a lot (other than the obvious reasons.) It's so bright and cheery and colorful, and we seem to have a red sun on our planet. 

Hmmmm, I'll bet that trend goes up.

From the NIH extramural grants blog Rock Talk comes this interesting graph (and the accompanying text) by Dr. Sally Rockey, NIH's Deputy Director for Extramural Research:

However, data from the NSF Survey of Doctorate Recipients suggest that most US-trained biomedical PhDs spend fewer than 5 years in postdoctoral positions. Some do remain in postdoc training a lot longer, though. There is some indication those who do the longest postdocs are the ones who go on to tenure-track academic research careers. For example, in the figure below, the age at first non-postdoctoral job (many of which are in industry) has been consistently a year or two lower than the age of obtaining the first tenure-track job. Note that the latest data in this graph (2002-2003) may be underreported due to delays in reporting that result in a lag time bias.

It's always nice to get a sense of the historical trend of things -- I wasn't aware that there was a time in the mid-eighties where it seemed it was difficult to get an academic position. One imagines that this is the sort of graph that you'd like to show an entering class of 1st year graduate students. Also, one imagines that all the lines have continued to trend up. 

In honor of K.C. Nicolaou's birthday...

BRSM Blog has suggested a chemistry graphical abstract contest. Below, my humble submission, in the style of Professor K.C. Nicolaou, on the glorious occasion of his birthday.

(Perhaps my style is unsubtle, but I was going for something that you might see on a T-shirt at the State Fair, you know?)

Daily Pump Trap: 7/3/12 edition

Good morning! Between June 26 and July 2, there were 110 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 8 (7%) were academically connected and 63 (57%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Chicago, IL: Sometimes, a company will outsource their ad writing to someone who clearly missed their calling as a romance novelist (or some other career that uses purplish prose.) Polyera Corporation seems to have done this:

We are seeking an elite, PhD-level scientist with deep commercial experience and proven accomplishment in the areas of barrier materials, passivation, and/or polymer chemistry, targeted at the development of high-performance solution-processable dielectric materials for use in flexible display applications. 

...2. Desire for professional fulfillment and satisfaction from seeing one's work reach commercial success. 3. Achievement orientation by applying knowledge and persistence toward attaining exacting targets and demanding goals. 4. Confidence, optimism, perseverance and mental toughness to deal with setbacks and obstacles in a fast-paced environment. 5. Strong attention to detail to maintain organized forward progress of multiple tasks concurrently against varying timetables

How much does this position pay? 65-90k. Wooo! (Granted, a start-up.)

Waukegan, IL: Abbott is hiring for a position in their high pressure/catalysis group; a B.S./M.S. in chemistry is desired, as well as experience in inert atmosphere chemistry.

Loveland, CO: Hach Company is an analytical instrumentation firm; they wish to hire an experienced electrochemist (B.S./M.S./Ph.D., with 5+ years minimum) for a R&D position.

Cary, N.C. (?): The interestingly-named LORD Corporation desires a M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist; zero! to 3 years experience for the Ph.D., 3-5 for a M.S. chemist.

Nashville, TN: Aegis Sciences Corporation wishes to hire a B.S. chemist for a position performing forensic mass spectrometry. 

Daily Pump Trap: 6/26/12 edition

Belated greetings! Between June 21 and June 25, there were 65 positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 13 (20%) were academically connected and 39 (60%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

St. Louis, MO: The Food and Drug Administration would like to hire a Ph.D. chemist for a one-year position as a postdoctoral fellow. Experience "working with lasers and in the area of Raman spectroscopy and chemometric methods for spectral analysis" is desired.

Torrance, CA: Phenomenex wants a B.S. chemist to be a senior scientist for LC/LC/MS work; 3+ years experience desired.

Neenah, WI: Georgia Pacific wishes to hire a M.S./Ph.D. organic chemist for a position in tissue-based consumer products. Actually sounds interesting.

Cambridge, MA: Ahhh, you again. Millenium Takeda is announcing (after a hiatus of 2 or 3 years?) that they have multiple! positions! (sounds naughty) available.

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/3/12 edition

Good morning! Between June 26 and July 2, there were 8 academic positions posted on the ACS Careers website. The numbers:

Total number of ads: 8
- Postdocs: 0
- Tenure-track faculty:  2
- Temporary faculty: 1
- Lecturer positions:  2
- Staff positions:  3
- Ratio of US/non-US positions: 7 / 1

Syracuse, NY: SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry would like to hire a B.S. chemist for a position as the organic and analytical lab coordinator. 33k-39k.

This is what shortage looks like: The University of New Mexico (located on the same street as the fabulous Frontier Restaurant, I might add) is hiring a "Lecturer 3" in chemical engineering. Why am I noting this? Because this position has a starting salary of $72,000. Good heavens -- I'll bet that rivals assistant professor salaries in chemistry.

Villanova, PA: Villanova would like to hire 2 Ph.D. instructors of general and analytical/physical chemistry.

Utica, NY: Utica College wishes to hire a one-year visiting assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Ivory Filter Flask: 6/26/12 edition

Good (belated) morning! Between June 12 and June 25, there were 29 academic positions. The numbers:

Total number of ads: 29
- Postdocs: 4
- Tenure-track faculty:  11
- Temporary faculty: 4
- Lecturer positions:  4
- Staff positions:  6
- Ratio of US/non-US positions: 24 / 5

Starkville, MS: Mississippi State University wishes to hire an assistant professor of chemical education. You will be teaching undergraduate courses in general and organic chemistry and graduate courses in chemical education.

Muscat, The Sultanate of Oman:  Sultan Qaboos University is hiring 6 faculty positions in their chemistry department. Assistant professorship subjects include: biochemistry, general chemistry, inorganic, NMR spectroscopy, organic and physical chemistry. Sounds interesting. 


San Luis Obispo, CA: Cal Poly State University is hiring 2 full-time lecturers for teaching general chemistry, organic chemistry and biochemistry. They're also hiring 2 assistant professors.

Minneapolis, MN: The Center for Drug Design wishes to hire a postdoc with experience in heterocyclic chemistry and antiviral research, starting at 35,000/year. Whoopee!

A reporter's request

A veteran reporter from a reputable organization has contacted me about the Sheri Sangji case. While this reporter has talked to most of the relevant players in the situation, they would like to hear from people who know or have worked with Professor Patrick Harran and would comment (or know someone who would comment) about Professor Harran.

If this is the case, contact me at chemjobber -at- gmail/dot/com and I will put you in contact with the reporter. 

What's wrong with New Jersey?

Also in this week's C&EN, Lisa Jarvis covers the Roche Nutley site closure. She ends her article on an interesting set of comments about New Jersey:

“Nutley’s legacy and footprint as a much larger former regional headquarters and a manufacturing site left us with an expensive and oversized infrastructure,” says Thomas G. Lyon, the Nutley site’s head. “While we have made notable progress to cut costs by more than 50% in the past two-and-a-half years, it was not enough.” 

The shuttering of the Nutley operations is part of a troubling trend for the life sciences in New Jersey. From 2007 to 2010, the number of drug industry jobs in the state fell by 22.4% to 32,794, according to a report released last month by the nonprofit Battelle and the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Pharma’s retrenchment from New Jersey is a symptom of the industry’s changing approach to research, says Richard M. Gordon, a drug industry analyst at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Although the state is steeped in traditional drug discovery expertise, companies are now investing more heavily in large molecules and “information-driven discovery,” Gordon says. “New Jersey’s competitive advantage was one of the previous generation, but it offers nothing in terms of the new generation,” he says. When considering where to put new labs, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking at San Francisco and the Boston area, which offer proximity to biotech firms and academic research centers. 

Merck & Co. and Pfizer both shed jobs in the state after their 2009 acquisitions of Schering-Plough and Wyeth, respectively. Among the more recent setbacks for New Jersey, Sanofi is set to close its Bridgewater facility by the end of the year. Research activities will be moved to a new site in Boston.

The article also comes with a map that suggests that (according to BIO), the overall US biotech industry has lost 7.0% of its positions since 2007. Those losses fall unevenly on New Jersey, which has lost 22% of its positions during that time, while California has only lost -1.8% of its positions and Massachusetts has gained 4.2% of its positions.

I would like to hear some independent confirmation of Professor Gordon's hypothesis that New Jersey's pharma expertise is old and busted. I also suspect that "information-driven discovery" is a term that is compleat bulls---te mostly meaningless. I think that New Jersey's problems have more to do with the area having an unusually large amount of pharmaceutical research campuses (campii?); as we all know, these research campuses haven't done anything awesome for us lately and are just costing us money are prime targets for large pharma cuts, in that they're full of relatively well-paid scientists.

I don't have a hypothesis, but I do have a set of observations. At the start of the last decade, I would have said that there were 5 pharma/biotech metropolitan hubs (in order of prominence): Boston, San Francisco, New Jersey, San Diego and the RTP area in North Carolina. (Feel free to argue with my order in the comments.) It seems to me that New Jersey, RTP and San Diego have done the poorest, while Boston and San Francisco have maintained their positions. Why is that? I have no idea. (Guesses: relative prominence of local biology departments? local VC/startup culture? dependence on federal support?)

Readers, any thoughts?

C&EN: 2011 chemical employment mixed

Credit: C&EN

In this week's Chemical and Engineering News, the Business Department looks at the chemical industry's employment figures in their annual Facts and Figures issue. As you might guess, it's a pretty muddled picture:

In 2011, employment in the U.S. chemical industry increased by a slim 0.2% to 788,000, according to the Department of Labor. This move into positive territory, though slight, contrasts with a 2.1% decrease in the workforce in 2010. But even if the U.S. economy came roaring back to life, it would be difficult to counteract a decadelong erosion of the chemical workforce, which has been eaten away at a rate of almost 2% per year. 

Although hiring was incrementally positive for the U.S. chemical industry as a whole, readers of C&EN will not be surprised to learn that the pharmaceutical industry shed 4,000 workers in 2011 after losing 7,000 jobs in 2010. Consolidation and budget cutting continue to affect the industry as the lingering effects of acquisitions, such as Merck & Co.’s 2009 purchase of Schering-Plough, shake out. Subsequent deals, including Sanofi’s purchase of the biotech drug firm Genzyme, will likely take a toll on pharmaceutical employment.

I think it's fascinating that pharmaceutical employment peaked in 2007; sometimes I wonder if pharmaceutical chemist employment peaked in 2003 or 2004, but no one is ever going to release those numbers. It's also interesting to note that, for the decade, the US pharmaceutical industry was the one bright spot for the 2001-2011 decade, only losing 0.4% of positions, as opposed to the -1.9% for the entire chemical manufacturing sector.