Organometallics recently published a panel discussion between an impressive panel of professors and industrial experts; they talked about the state of organometallic chemistry in 2011. Esteemed friend of the blog See Arr Oh is covering the research oriented sections at Just Like Cooking today as well. Go on over there and read it.
What should we teach? Industrial chemists versus academics: The panel discussed a number of different questions, most of which were academic in nature ("Are there any nominations for an "organometallic molecule of the year" for 2011?"). One of them seemed to generate more discussion between the different panel members. The editor of Organometallics asked about Whitesides and Deutsch's editorial (where they state that chemical academia is need of more innovation). This led to a (for this panel) heated discussion between Dr. Joachim Ritter of DuPont and Prof. James Mayer at the University of Washington, among others. A condensed version is below:
What should we teach? Industrial chemists versus academics: The panel discussed a number of different questions, most of which were academic in nature ("Are there any nominations for an "organometallic molecule of the year" for 2011?"). One of them seemed to generate more discussion between the different panel members. The editor of Organometallics asked about Whitesides and Deutsch's editorial (where they state that chemical academia is need of more innovation). This led to a (for this panel) heated discussion between Dr. Joachim Ritter of DuPont and Prof. James Mayer at the University of Washington, among others. A condensed version is below:
Joachim Ritter: [SNIP] What is involved in not just making 100 mg or a gram of a material, but 100 million pounds, and what are the implications? Challenges in the industrial world include space−time yields, purification methods, catalyst recovery and lifetime, solvent usage, etc. These topics sound straightforward, but when you’re actually working in industry developing new processes with broadly trained junior chemists coming straight out of top schools, sometimes you see that very talented chemists have a hard time connecting to these challenges. So I do feel there is something to be done in education. In addition to an in-depth drive toward the newest cutting edge developments in science, there needs to be a perspective of today’s problems in the context of chemistry.
