Destination Europe?

From this weeks' C&EN, an article by Linda Wang on stories of American chemists in Europe:

Rather than cutting workers, chemical companies in Germany have turned to less aggressive cost cutting methods, Koch says. BASF in Ludwigshafen, for example, avoided layoffs by cutting back on overtime and transferring personnel to other locations, says Sarah Ulmschneider-Renner, head of talent resourcing at BASF. The company has begun expanding its workforce again, she says, with a focus on attracting applicants from around the world. “We are increasing our efforts in [human resources] marketing and worldwide job-posting strategies,” she says. “As a result, we are already seeing a significant increase in applications for our R&D positions from abroad, including the U.S.” 

Polymer chemist Jordan Kopping is among those who moved from the U.S. to Germany to work for BASF. He began working as a research scientist in Ludwigshafen a year ago. Before crossing the Atlantic, Kopping earned a Ph.D. in polymer and organic chemistry from the University of California, Davis, in 2006 and completed a postdoc at UCLA in 2007. In 2010, after teaching at a community college and working at a biopharmaceutical company, both in California, he started applying for positions in Germany. “I had nothing at the time tying me to the U.S., and I’ve always had the idea to try something international,” Kopping says. He chose Germany because of its strong economy and because of his interest in the language and culture. 

While job searching, Kopping enrolled in an intensive eight-month course to learn German. “One of the things I highlighted on my résumé was that I was committed to learning the language,” he says. That dedication demonstrated, he says, that he “would fit well into the culture and also into the way of life.” Language skills are not everything, of course. BASF is looking for Ph.D. scientists who have done research in state-of-the-art chemistry, says Ulmschneider-Renner. In addition, she says, chemists should include extracurricular activities in their curriculum vitae. “This information is often neglected, but we consider it extremely useful in forming an initial impression.” 

Koch invites American Chemical Society members who are looking for positions in Germany to get in touch with GDCh’s career services office. “We will try to help,” he says. But he also warns that applicants should be top-notch in their field. “If you’re not good enough to find a job in the U.S., you won’t find one here in Germany, either.”

I don't really think of working in Europe as a solution to American chemists' unemployment problems -- that said, it is a viable adventure for those willing to invest in the needed language skills.

Are you a moody chemist?

I wish I could be as impassive
as Larry Bird in reacting to bad news.
Credit: ESPN

If your chemistry is going well, does your mood improve? If your research is going poorly, does it depress you? I confess to being a somewhat moody chemist in graduate school; walls were definitely punched and doors were definitely kicked.

More recently, I've really, really tried not to let success or failure in the laboratory dictate my mood. I know that the highs couldn't possibly last forever and I know (I believe? I hope?) that the lows won't either. Nevertheless, it seems every chemist has blue periods.

Readers, how do you deal with the highs and lows of research? 

Observations on the odds of becoming a tenure-track professor

The odds of surviving 'Hell Week' during the Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training? About 33%.

Classes typically lose around 70–80% of their trainees, either due to DORs (drop on request) or injuries sustained during training, but it is not always easy to predict which of the trainees will DOR during BUD/S. Winter class drop out rates are usually higher due to the cold. SEAL instructors say that in every class, approximately 10 percent of the students simply do not have the physical ability to complete the training. Another 10–15 percent will definitely make it through unless they sustain a serious physical injury. The other 75–80 percent is 'up for grabs' depending on their motivation. There has been at least one BUD/S class where no one has completed the program. Most trainees are eliminated prior to completion of Hell Week, but trainees will continue to DOR in the second phase or be forced to leave because of injuries, or failing either the diving tests or the timed runs and swims.

Pen y Fan -- looks a little harder than a candidacy exam, maybe.
Credit: Wikipedia

Odds of surviving from the Special Air Service's (the UK's most prominent special operations unit) hill phase selection? About 15-20%.

On arrival candidates first complete a Personal Fitness Test (PFT) and a Combat Fitness Test (CFT).[nb 5] They then march cross country against the clock, increasing the distances covered each day, culminating in what is known as the Fan dance: a 14 miles (23 km) march with full equipment scaling and descending Pen y Fan in four hours. (at right)[73] By the end of the hill phase candidates must be able to run 4 miles in 30 minutes and swim two miles in 90 minutes.[73] ...Typically, 15–20% of candidates make it through the hill phase selection process. 

Odds of getting a tenure track assistant professor position at a US university? From folks on Twitter (btw, these are mostly non-chemists talking:

@labroides: more news on the Irvine position, "only" 185 applicants, 5 selected for short list.
@sciencegurlz0: That is similar to the UT-Arlington jobs that I applied for. Both had approx 150 applicants. :(
@fianros:  That's better than the 600 applicants for TT chem/biochem positions past couple years.

Now I'm being tricky here, in that there's wild selection bias in special operations selection. Militaries will usually pre-announce their minimum physical standards (and pre-screen their candidates) to ensure that they're not wasting their time with the total number of applicants. Universities requesting applicants for tenure track positions, of course, seem to advertise for anyone with a pulse and a Ph.D.

It is my opinion that the classic "short list" of the 5 or 6 interviewees should be really called a "really short list", with the true "short list" being the various applicants that actually have a real shot at the professor position to begin with. It's my guess that the maximum number of people that a search committee can seriously consider hiring (i.e. applicants given more than a cursory glance) is probably in the 40 to 50 candidate range.

In some sense, applying for a tenure-track position is probably more like running for office or winning a golf tournament than passing an arduous test of physical ability and mental toughness.  In the end, there can only be one -- and that makes things much more daunting for the applicant.

Interesting natural products extraction tidbit in NYT

Via a link from Bethany Halford, the fascinating story of artemsinin in China in the New York Times:

The Chinese drug artemisinin has been hailed as one of the greatest advances in fighting malaria, the scourge of the tropics, since the discovery of quinine centuries ago. ...But few people realize that in one of the paradoxes of history, the drug was discovered thanks to Mao Zedong, who was acting to help the North Vietnamese in their jungle war against the Americans. Or that it languished for 30 years thanks to China’s isolation and the indifference of Western donors, health agencies and drug companies. 

Now that story is coming out. But as happens so often in science, versions vary, and multiple contributors are fighting over the laurels. That became particularly clear in September, when one of the Lasker Awards — sometimes called the “American Nobels” — went to a single one of the hundreds of Chinese scientists once engaged in the development of the drug.

It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's an interesting tidbit from the awarded natural products scientist:

In September, the $250,000 Lasker Award for clinical medical research was given to Dr. Tu Youyou, former chief of the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica in Beijing. The Lasker committee named her “the discoverer of artemisinin.” ...In an interview before the ceremony, Dr. Tu, 81, argued that she deserved it because her team had been the first to isolate qinghao’s active ingredient while other teams worked on the wrong plants. 

Also, after rereading a manuscript by Ge Hong, a fourth-century healer, prescribing qinghao steeped in cold water for fever, she realized that boiling, the typical extraction method, was destroying the active ingredient. She switched to ether (emphasis CJ's) and qinghao became the first plant extract 100 percent effective at killing malaria in mice.

One would love to know who actually suggested organic extraction of the plant matter. The boss always gets the credit -- sigh. 

Daily Pump Trap: 1/19/12 edition

Good morning! Between January 17 and January 18, there were 15 new positions posted on the ACS Careers blog. Of these, 6 (40%) are academically connected and will be covered on Tuesday's Ivory Filter Flask.

Round Rock, TX: Mocon is a company working on the analytical chemistry of odors; they're looking for a B.S. chemist with 2+ years of lab experience. Aroma detection experience desired. (Yeah, right, dude.)

Baltimore, MD: The Lieber Insitute for Brain Development is hiring for 2 positions: a B.S./M.S. experienced medicinal chemist and a 5+ years experienced analytical chemist for a drug metabolism position.

Arden Hills, MN: Land O' Lakes (yes, the butter people) wish to hire a M.S. chemist to be an analytical lab supervisor. Food products analysis is desired.

Martinez, CA: Tesoro Refining wishes to hire an analytical chemist for a petroleum analysis laboratory; 5+ years experience desired, as well as specialization in LIMS.

Philadelphia, PA: Avid Radiopharmaceuticals is looking for 2 positions: a B.S./M.S. synthetic chemist (5+/3+ years experience, respectively) and a Ph.D. synthetic chemist position, for which they're asking for 2+ years experience with radiopharmaceuticals. PET postdocs -- here's your chance! 

Don't steal your company's IP!

With the SOPA/PIPA blackout at Wikipedia today, it's appropriate that we're covering yet another dumb IP theft case by an organic chemist. From Ed Silverman at Pharmalot:

Yuan Li began was hired as a medicinal chemist for Sanofi nearly six years ago. During that time, she worked on countless compounds and signed all the usual paperwork in which she acknowledged there were no conflicts of interest and that the intellectual property belonged to the drugmaker. But last year, Sanofi learned otherwise. 

In May 2011, a little-known company called Abby Pharmatech began advertising chemical compounds on its web site and by the following month, Sanofi had identified more than 6,000 propriety chemical structures on an online database called SciFinder that were registered to Abby Pharmatech.

MICE wins again! She pled guilty to trade secret theft -- she's facing $250,000 in fines and possibly 10 years in prison.

You have to love what her attorney had to say about the matter, (via the Star-Ledger):

Her attorney, Paul Brickfield, said the compounds his client had listed for sale on the Abby website were not actually bought by anyone. He did note that since Li had posted the chemical structure of the Sanofi compounds, the information could have been used by others to develop competing compounds or eventually drugs. "She’s a young lady and she made a terrible error," he added.

There's an obvious lesson here: don't steal your company's IP. Even if you think they're not going to use it, even if you think you're not going to get caught, it's wrong -- and they will come down on you eventually. At best, you'll lose your job. At worst, you'll be caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck driven by merciless federal prosecutors.

Process Wednesday: non-green solvents

Credit: Laird, T. Org. Process Res. Dev.,
Dunn, P.J. Pharmaceutical Process Development

In a recent editorial, Trevor Laird reiterated Organic Process Research and Development's stance on "undesirable solvents":

...From 2012 the policy on use of organic solvents has been changed to discourage scientists from using  particular solvents and to encourage them to seek alternatives wherever possible; papers containing strongly undesirable solvents (e.g., benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, HMPA, carbon disulfide, etc.) will only be considered if accompanied by an analysis of alternatives or if a convincing justification for such use is presented.

The editors encourage all authors to consider these issues before submitting their papers to OPRD, and we warn that authors risk having papers rejected unless environmental impact and green chemistry principles are considered. (emphasis Laird's)

He also provides a helpful table. Finally, he throws darts (legitimately!) at ethyl acetate:

The only quibble I have is that I prefer isopropyl acetate to ethyl acetate as an extraction solvent since the relatively high solubility of EtOAc in water (and water in EtOAc) means that the aqueous waste is contaminated with more organic material, thus making it harder to dispose of and also product could be lost in the aqueous layer!

 I'm vaguely surprised to see DMF and NMP on the list -- what's non-green about them?

UPDATE: Chemblogosphere pioneer milkshake has some recommended alternative solvents. 

Does anyone think Professor Harran should go to jail?

Many people mistake Rudy Baum for the "voice of chemistry" -- picture the anger of readers in Chemical and Engineering News' mailbox whenever he inveighs on the perils of climate change. However, he does have a prominent position in chemistry as the editor-in-chief of C&EN. I certainly pay attention when he has this to say about the #SheriSangji case:

Many of the comments on the blogs and other news stories have shown no such restraint. Among the worst are those that suggest that, at 23 and with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, Sangji was an experienced chemist who should have known better; that her death was, in fact, her own fault; and that UC and Harran are guilty of nothing at all. “Sheri was a big girl, an educated adult responsible for her own actions who did not need to be babysat in the chemistry lab,” one commenter wrote. Others maintain, essentially, that making an example of UC and Harran by throwing the book at them is the only way that the lax attitude toward safety in too many academic labs will be corrected. 

Neither of these extreme positions seems appropriate to me. That UC and Harran should face no sanctions given the facts that are known is unacceptable. As Kemsley said to me in a conversation about the case, the only people who think of a 23-year-old as experienced are 21- and 22-year-olds. Sangji was clearly unprepared to conduct the experiment that killed her. Other people in Harran’s lab who were there at the time of the accident were just as ignorant of basic safety procedures. 

That said, sending Harran to prison for what are all-too-common safety lapses in academic labs would be overly harsh and almost certainly counterproductive. We need to change the safety culture in academic labs, not shut them down. If Harran is found guilty of the charges against him, a hefty dose of community service—maybe teaching lab courses and lab safety in Los Angeles high schools—would be a much more appropriate penalty to impose on him.

Here's my question: does anyone think that Professor Patrick Harran deserves to go to prison? Rudy doesn't. Paul doesn't. (I know that's the gamut of opinion in the chemblogosphere from A to G.) I haven't found anyone who think that Harran actually deserves to go to prison; those commenters that do advocate for it seem to do so pour encourager les autres, i.e. chemistry PIs. That's not just, nor is it going to happen.

I think Harran going to prison is wildly unlikely and probably counterproductive. If Patrick Harran deserves to go to prison for the conditions in his laboratory, there are a lot of PIs in this country that are going to spend time in the slammer. That said, I'm willing to entertain reasons as to why he might deserve the harshest sanction possible.*

I'm inviting readers and commenters to make a rational case as to why Professor Harran deserves prison time. If you don't want to wrestle with the comment box, you can always e-mail me at chemjobber -at- gmail/dot/com. Commenters that are selected by me and/or by popular acclaim will be given a prominent spot on the blog -- probably next Tuesday's headliner for the day. (And if there are no cases for the prosecution (actually the sentencing phase), I'll do it myself.)

*I'm also willing to confess that all of this might be my possible prejudice that "professors who make serious and irresponsible mistakes are too nice and of the wrong socio-economic status to go to prison." But I have fairly serious policy (Kleiman-esque, if anyone cares) views on prisons, especially California ones.

Daily Pump Trap: 1/17/11 edition

Good morning! Between January 12 and January 16, 20 new positions have been posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 11 are academically connected and are covered in today's Ivory Filter Flask.

Zeroes!: MPR Services is in the water treatment and refinery business. They're looking for a Ph.D. analytical chemist with 0 to 15 years of experience. Given the salary range (76-90k), they're probably looking for the lower range of experience. Starts in Dickinson, TX and there will be a relocation to Phoenix.

Packaging!: Printpack (a company specializing in rigid packaging) is looking for a M.S. chemist with experience in polymers for an analytical chemist position. Experience in instrumentation and analytical method development helpful.

Carbon!: MeadWestVaco is searching for a Ph.D. chemical engineer to work on their activated carbon filtration products.

Allison Park, PA: A confidential employer is searching for a B.S. chemist for a position as an environmental analyst. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 1/1/7/12 edition

Good morning! Between January 10 and January 16, 15 academic positions were posted on the ACS Careers website. Let's do the numbers:

Total number of ads: 15
- Postdocs: 6+
- Tenure-track faculty: 8+
- Temporary faculty: 1
- Lecturer positions: 1
- Staff positions: 0
- Ratio of US/non-US positions: 11/4+

Niiice!: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is advertising the Springborn Postdoctoral Fellowship, which comes with a $45,000 salary for 2 years. Let me tell you -- that is enough to live like proverbial royalty in Urbana, IL. Just think -- if you had one, and you married one, you'd crack the top 20% of US household income (for 2 years, that is.)

That sounds fancy: The Florida Solar Energy Center (Cocoa, FL) is hiring a postdoc with specialization in materials characterization (as applied to hydrogen storage materials). Hydride synthesis experience, polymer chemistry experience desired. Sounds like you'll spend some time in Oxford, UK.

Statesboro, GA: Georgia Southern University is searching for an assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University desires a laboratory coordinator and instructor.

Vancouver, BC, Canada: TRIUMF is a Canadian national laboratory in nuclear and particle physics. They're searching for a Ph.D. pseudo-tenure-track nuclear/radiochemist. Sounds like they're upgrading their facilities on the campus of UBC; I sure hope they're upgrading their name, which I mentally pronounce TRY-UMPHHHH.

RIP Sheri Sangji

Three years ago today, Sherharbano (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 are with her friends and her family. 

Christening drugs: there's a process for that

Also from this week's C&EN, a terribly interesting article by Carmen Drahl on the process of giving a generic name for a compound:

A list of naming rules, some of them quirky, has evolved as well. The letters h, j, k, and w are off-limits because they lead to pronunciation problems in other languages. Drugmakers can suggest names to the USAN Council, but any name with an implication that a drug is better, newer, or more effective than the competition heads straight for the reject pile, Shubat says. When a prospective name reaches the WHO stage, international connotations come into play. A name that sounds perfectly fine in English might have bad or even obscene connotations elsewhere. No one wants to sell the Chevy Nova of the drug world. 

The crux of the generic-naming system is a collection of short name fragments called stems. Each stem has a meaning connected to a particular drug class or mode of action. The official list of USAN and INN stems and substems has grown and changed over time as companies come up with new classes of drugs, Shubat explains.  

Understanding drug names through stems is a lot like learning English vocabulary by studying Greek and Latin roots. Learn what the stems mean, and you’re most of the way to figuring out what a drug does. Take top-selling drug Nexium, which has a generic name of esomeprazole. The stem in that name is -prazole, which means the drug is a benzimidazole antiulcer agent. The drug’s es- prefix describes the nature of the drug’s chirality—esomeprazole is dextrorotatory and contains a chiral center in the S configuration.

There's also a blogpost from Carmen at The Haystack about how dasatinib got its name from BMS research fellow Jagabandhu Das, even though he didn't invent the molecule:

So how’d Das make a difference? About one and a half years into the search for a kinase inhibitor that might be able to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia, “we were hitting a wall,” Barrish, today vice-president of medicinal chemistry at BMS, recalls. “We couldn’t get past a certain level of potency.” 

Early on, the team’s work suggested that a 4′-methyl thiazole was critical for potency. Replace the methyl with a hydrogen, and potency went out the window. But Das challenged that dogma, Barrish says. He thought the compound series had evolved to the point where it would be a good idea to go back and test those early assumptions. His hunch paid off – in the new, later kinase inhibitor series, it turned out that removing the methyl group from the thiazole actually boosted potency. Thanks in large part to that discovery, the team eventually was able to make kinase inhibitors with ten thousand fold higher activity. 

“Jag didn’t stop there,” Barrish says. After debunking the methyl dogma, Das found a way to replace an undesirable urea moiety in the team’s inhibitors with a pyrimidine group, which improved the inhibitors’ physical properties. With help from Das’s two insights combined, eventually BMS’s team came up with the molecule that became dasatinib (J. Med. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jm060727j).

There's nothing wrong with challenging assumptions.

Organic chemist charged with IP theft

From this week's Chemical and Engineering News, a pretty awful little story of an employee stealing trade secrets for their own. From the article by Marc Reisch: 

As at the larger companies, Frontier requires employees to sign confidentiality agreements when they start work. Mohapatra signed such an agreement when he joined Frontier in October 2009. The scientist’s profile on the business networking website LinkedIn shows that he came to Frontier with a Ph.D. in organic synthesis from Delhi University and had worked as a research scientist at India-based pharmaceutical maker Ranbaxy Laboratories. 

According to the complaint filed in Utah Federal District Court, in October 2011 a coworker witnessed Mohapatra call up the syntheses for 2,2´-dipyrromethane and Fe(III) meso-tetra [o-dichlorophenyl] porphine chloride on his company desktop computer and mail them through his personal e-mail account. Miller says the former compound is an intermediate for a drug now undergoing clinical studies, and the latter is a conductive compound in development for use in solar panels and batteries. 

After the coworker reported her observations to her superiors, the firm’s information technology manager reviewed the hard drive in Mohapatra’s computer and discovered he had e-mailed those two formulas as well as two others to the president of Medchemblox, a planned Indian fine chemicals company. The complaint identifies Medchemblox’ president as an official with Dr. Silviu Pharmachem, an India-based company specializing in porphyrins and porphyrin building-block compounds. The review also turned up an e-mail from the president of Medchemblox. It told Mohapatra that the information he provided would enable Medchemblox to make a six-month supply of the iron porphyrin complex for a competitor of Frontier’s based in Germany.

On Oct. 26, Frontier placed Mohapatra on administrative leave and revoked his access to company computers. The complaint notes that Mohapatra subsequently admitted to Frontier officials that he had a stake in Medchemblox, as did his brother-in-law. Mohapatra also sent an e-mail to Frontier’s chief operating officer in which he wrote, “I realize I may have done something wrong. … Even if you lay off me [sic] or put me in jail I will not do anything to hurt FSI. I will keep out all together for myself of Frontier’s business.” Frontier fired Mohapatra on Nov. 1.

According to Miller, Frontier has an internal security system that mandates rigorous data isolation and requires, for instance, the use of multiple passwords and user-names. “We were surprised this happened,” he says.

Yet another chemist that fell victim to MICE. I find it interesting that Frontier (best known by me for being in Utah) has better IT security (i.e. something) rather than the typical nothing. Corporate IT security needs to get better -- and companies need to think about whether they have trade secrets that need to be protected.

Perhaps this is buying trouble, but... the intelligence agencies during the Cold War were famous for their molehunts and their molehunters, with careers (and lives?) hanging in the balance. Is that in our future?

(Hey, what was that employee doing watching her colleague cut-and-paste (or whatever) and e-mail?)
(Did you know that ASDI went out of business? I sure didn't.)

Gastight syringes

A list of small, useful things (links):

• LabMonkey has a good number of chemistry positions in the UK. 
• Matt and Paul have great thoughts about lab safety post-Sheri Sangji. 
• Speaking of lab safety, be careful around azide transfer reagents. 
• SeeArrOh posts on HCV compounds. 
• David Perrey has an important tip for all Sharpie users. (if you'll pardon the pun) 
• And Derek Lowe's been blogging for ten years. 

Readers, did I miss anything? Have a good weekend and see you on Monday. 

Turn that recorder off!: the danger of recordable predictions

There's been a minor amount of giggling about the lack of concern on the economy expressed in just-released transcripts of dicussions of Federal Reserve's governing board in 2006. From the New York Times, a bit of a summary of the conversations:

The general consensus on the board, summarized by Mr. Geithner, was that problems in the housing market had few broader ramifications. “We just don’t see troubling signs yet of collateral damage, and we are not expecting much,” he said at the September meeting.  

Mr. Bernanke initially agreed, telling colleagues at his first meeting as chairman, in March, “I think we are unlikely to see growth being derailed by the housing market.” As the year rolled along, however, Mr. Bernanke increasingly took the view that his colleagues were too sanguine.” I don’t have quite as much confidence as some people around the table that there will be no spillover effect,” he said. 

Some Fed officials argued that a housing slowdown would be good for the broader economy. “I really believe that the drop in housing is actually on net going to make liquidity available for other sectors rather than being a drain going forward, and that will also get the growth rate more positive,” Ms. Bies told colleagues at the committee’s June meeting. Ms. Bies could not be reached for comment Thursday. 

And even Ms. Yellen did not believe that the problems in the housing market would have broader consequences. “Of course, housing is a relatively small sector of the economy, and its decline should be self-correcting,” she said.

I feel for these folks. They're top-level economists and they missed signs of the largest recession of our generation. It must be embarrassing to be so publicly (to an extent) wrong. People tend to defend themselves from these problems by not making hard-and-fast predictions unless they're really, really sure or not being on record with a prediction in the first place. That's smart.

Of course, most folks aren't very good at predictions. I'm on record with a very good friend of mine from graduate school saying that vorinostat wasn't likely to make it to market -- oops. I predicted a U6-like (part-time + postdoc + unemployed) rate for chemists at 12% in 2009; it was at 9.6%. Even the most powerful DOOOOOOOOOMers can be wrong in their time horizons.

I wonder what it would be like if every utterance in conference rooms about a biological target, a series of hawt lead compounds, the yield of a particular chemical step or the identity of an impurity were recorded and transcribed, only to be released 6 years later. I'm guessing meetings would be a lot shorter in those conference rooms and predictions would fall to zero. ("XYZ8675309? Yeah, that compound will make it through tox -- or it won't.")

What's the pharma version of "going out with the troops?"

"Who stole all our HPLC acetonitrile? I'm finding that SOB."
Credit: The Best Defense

From Tom Ricks' blog, here's a picture of the current Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces going on a training mission with a line unit. His commenters note that this is quite the photo op, in that he's easily recognizable, which he would not be, if he were wearing all the gear (helmet, body armor, etc.) that he would be if he were just one of the troops. The guest blogger, Mr. Williams, makes an interesting note about an Admiral Olsen, the former head of USSOCOM (the command over the US military's various special operations units):

While unlike Gantz he did not join a SEAL platoon doing exercises on San Clemente Island, he did frequently showed up at Coronado to join in doing free weights, long distance runs, and more gruelingly, swim out to the Point Loma buoy and back with the teams. Even at age 59 it was hard to beat him in the water.

From the comments come a smattering of stories of general officers doing field work, including stories of David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal participating in foot patrols and raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. I enjoyed this little story about a Lieutenant General (3-star) Lynch:

LTG Rick Lynch, when he was commander of III Corps and Fort Hood, was known to spontaneously join PT formations. I remember turning around and seeing his face and asking my buddy, "Who's the old guy?" Whoops. His CSM (Ciotolo) wore buck sergeant rank on his PT gear and was a common sight during PT. 

LTG Lynch would also go "undercover" and pose as a regular civilian to see how post services were serving Soldiers and the community.

I'm hard pressed to think about a pharma executive doing similar things in their time leading scientists. I think it would be silly to see ol' Jeff Kindler or Fred Hassan attempting to run a column. At the same time, I would think it would be helpful for a Ph.D. chemist at the director level to take a portion of her week/month and run a scale-up reaction or two, use the LC/MS, the NMR and the ELN and run a column on the Biotage. I presume that it would give the senior manager a perspective of the expected productivity of a bench scientist, the bottlenecks in research and the ability to observe their scientists in action.

I'm probably full of it. Readers? 

Daily Pump Trap: 1/12/12 edition

Good morning! Between January 10 and 11, there were 6 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 3 (50%) are academically connected and will be covered in next Tuesday's Ivory Filter Flask.

Spokane, WA: The mellifluously-named Jubilant HollisterStier is a sterile drug contract manufacturer. They're seeking a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist to run their QC laboratory. 5+ years experience is desired; supervisory experience also desired. The salary is nice and healthy, though -- but what will you do up there in Eastern Washington?

Plymouth, MN: Amerilab Technologies is a manufacturer of effervescent powders (a key component of every American's diet.) They're looking for a B.S. chemist to be an R&D manager, most likely for formulation research.  10+ years experience desired.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs show (respectively) 224, 576, 2753 and 45 positions for the search term "chemist."

A regional glance: The San Francisco Craigslist biotech/science section shows 6 positions for the search term "chemist", including a B.S./M.S. inorganic synthesis position and a Ph.D. organometallic chemist position. 

12 things your HPLC would say to you, if it could

1. Hey, look, it's sample 3 of 50 in an overnight run. Time to quit. 
2. I'm running out of mobile phase, dummy.
3. You need some key data? I want to talk about the pressure on this column. Who do you think's going to win this conversation? 
4. Would you quit cycling the carousels and just empty out all the old evaporated vials? 
5. I've seen you looking at that Agilent tramp. You'll quit it if you know what's good for you. 
6. I love the look on your face when you're seeing if there's another peak... and look, there it is! 
7. You think that muck's got your product in it? Dream on. 
8. Prayer won't get you a stable baseline, buddy. 
9. I'm making a funny noise so you'll PAY ATTENTION TO ME. Dammit, it never works. 
10. Did you syringe filter your sample? Oh, you're so sweet.
11. You're cute when you're enraged at me. 
12. ...And I'm out of mobile phase. Oh, well, guess I'll take a nap! 

Process Wednesday: foaming -- not just for beer

Apropos of nothing, here's our mentor-by-literature, Neal Anderson, in his book Practical Process Research and Development, on foaming issues in scale-up reactors:

To prepare for a run, it is essential to review a process and examine the detail of exactly how the operations will be carried out. Vessels must be selected so that the reactions can be stirred at the minimum volume of the reaction (V_min) and so that the reaction can be contamined (and usually stirred) at the maximum batch volume (V_max). 

Gases evolved during processing, for instance during decarboxylation or neutralization of an acidic stream with NaHCO₃, may form foams; such reaction mixtures take up a larger portion of the vessel volume. A defoaming agent was added to a Lossen rearrangement to address these problems (Figure 14.7); however, assays may be needed to detect the presence of any defoaming agent in the product. For the safety of operators and to minimize risk of contamination, any key volumes should be measured without opening the vessels. If the addition of key reagents is to be controlled by temperature, a sensitive temperature probe must be positioned so that the temperature can be monitored at the start and the end of the addition. 

Incidentally, Anderson's figure shows the relevant defoamer to be Dow's Antifoam 2210, which is apparently a "10 percent active silicone-glycol emulsion". (Boy, you don't need much of it -- Dow suggests that you start at 50 ppm, or 66 ounces in a 1000 gallon reaction.) 

Uh-oh: BLS measures chemist unemployment at 6.1%

Last year, the Wall Street Journal published the Bureau of Labor Statistics' unemployment rate for chemists and material scientists at 3.1%. This year, the BLS number for chemist and material scientist unemployment was...

6.1 percent! That's really high, folks. That's not a very good sign.

It will be interesting to learn if the ACS salary survey for 2011 (whose results will be published sometime this year) will follow this trend for chemist unemployment.

If you look at Figure 1 here, you'll see that the ACS and BLS numbers more-or-less agree. This number, though, I'll bet there will be some disagreement. Oh dear. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 1/10/12 edition

Good morning! Between January 3 and January 10, there were 20 academic positions posted on the ACS Careers database. Let's do the numbers (TM Marketplace):

Total number of ads: 20
- Postdocs: 2
- Tenure-track faculty: 12+
- Temporary faculty: 3
- Lecturer positions: 3
- Staff positions: 1
- Ratio of US/non-US positions: 18/2

Huh: The University of Akron is looking for an assistant professor of bibliography for their technical libraries. I didn't know that you only (heh, only) needed a MLS for being hired for the librarian tenure track. Interesting.

Well, when you put it that way: A new breed of cat has popped up from the University of California, Merced: "Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment." (Isn't that every lecturer, emphasis on the word 'potential'?) UC-Merced deigns to disagree with me:

The Lecturer with Potential for Security of Employment (LPSOE) track closely parallels that of a tenure-track Assistant Professor, including membership in the Academic Senate, but with an emphasis on undergraduate education. This position will involve teaching primarily lower-division chemistry courses, coordinating various aspects of the undergraduate instructional program including oversight of instructional staff and training teaching assistants. Participation in education-related committees, student recruitment and outreach, and efforts to secure extramural funding for education program development is also expected.

Closely! Parallels!

Denver, CO: The University of Denver seeks a tenure-track professor of organic chemistry; specialization in bioorganic chemistry, chemical biology and medicinal chemistry is desired.

Good golly!: A postdoc in Bozeman, MT for 47,000 smackeroos. Ahhh, it's funded by the Navy. They're looking at corrosion problems related to biofuels -- sounds interesting. Bozeman (not Butte!) is a lovely town.

Centralia, WA: Centralia College is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. chemist for a tenure-track position in teaching general and organic chemistry. Centralia professors are AFT-represented!

Daily Pump Trap: 1/10/12 edition

Good morning! Between January 5 and January 10, 2012, there were 25 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 17 (68%) are academically connected and will be covered in the Ivory Filter Flask.

Extraction!: Infinity Pharmaceuticals is looking for a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. chemist or chemical engineer to run their program in isolation of natural products. "An ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of pharmaceutical unit operations, specifically in separation/purification fundamentals, as well as laboratory and manufacturing experience." Sounds like a good time.

Production!: Cambridge Isotopes is looking for a Ph.D. chemist to be their GMP production manager; 7+ years of experience desired. "Experience delivering APIs under cGMP regulations from gram to multi-kilogram scale within targeted deadlines and budget. Experience reviewing and revising batch records, SOPs and other relevant regulatory documentation. Demonstrated ability to effectively interact across departments. Experience optimizing existing and developing improved API production processes." Is there anything they don't want this person to be able to do?

Diffraction!: The International Centre for Diffraction Data is looking for a Ph.D. chemist to become a senior scientific editor of their database. Experience in crystallography is a must.

Pharmaceuticalation!: Aceto Corporation is looking for a sales manager for their API division; needs to have 5-7 years of experience in the field, preferably located in the New York City area. 

Should you trust ACS presidents on jobs? I don't think so.

It's a little unfair to ask ACS presidents to be completely versed in the data on chemistry jobs -- but just a little sensitivity might be called for. In a reddit thread on chemistry jobs advice ("What is the chemistry job market like in the US?"), a graduate student chimes in with a real winner:

The job market for PhD Chemists is really good. I had an opportunity to speak with a former president of the ACS not too long ago. He cited the fact that unemployment for PhD chemists did not really change much even during the Great Recession (unemployment stays pretty much around 3-4% for PhD chemists). (emphasis CJ's) All of my colleagues that have defended have gone on to terrific jobs in industry and government.  

Starting salaries for PhD Chemists, especially those with an organic background, start around $80-90k and is highly dependent on region. For more information, you should visit the ASC [sic] website and read their annual reviews. There is a job security risk if you are in the industry, but the jobs in government and academia make less money and come with good security.

Good heavens. I think it's time to start asking ACS presidential candidates what the unemployment rates are for chemists, like asking US presidential candidates the price of a gallon of milk.

In a completely separate arena, longtime CJ favorite Virginia Postrel links to the blog in her article questioning urges to push college kids into the STEM arena:

The commentators excoriating today’s students for studying the wrong subjects are pursuing certainty where none exists. Like the health fanatics convinced that every case of cancer must be caused by smoking or a bad diet, they want to believe that good people, people like them, will always have good jobs and that today’s unemployed college grads are suffering because they were self-indulgent or stupid. But plenty of organic chemists can testify that the mere fact that you pursued a technical career that was practical two or three decades ago doesn’t mean you have job security today.

And in the comments, this gem:

organic chemistry is hardly skill based - mostly recall.

I think I need to go back to bed.

2012 outlook for domestic chemical firms: partly cloudy

From this week's Chemical and Engineering News, their World Chemical Outlook edition and a look at the domestic chemical manufacturing side:

Less expensive raw materials and good export opportunities will position the U.S. chemical industry to make the most of a bad economic situation this year. In the U.S., growth in chemical output, excluding pharmaceuticals, is expected to dip to 1.6% in 2012, compared with an estimated 3.8% gain in 2011, according to the American Chemistry Council. Basic chemicals, which rebounded early in the recovery in 2010 and then saw zero growth in 2011, will pick up a bit of speed with a 0.7% increase in output. 

The prognosis for specialty chemicals, 3.4% growth, is more robust, driven by demand from markets such as light vehicles and electronics, ACC says. Consumer products and synthetic rubber are also likely to grow faster than the average for chemicals. “A global soft patch has emerged and has been centered in manufacturing,” the primary customer base for chemistry, reports T. Kevin Swift, ACC’s chief economist. Still, Swift reports, “leading indicators of manufacturing activity are not yet pointing to a recession.” 

The fine chemicals sector was strong in 2011, with many companies claiming to have rebounded from losses incurred in 2009 and 2010. Producers remain optimistic about 2012 but mix, as usual, a good dose of caution with that optimism in a market that historically experiences sudden ups and downs.

Interesting how fine chemical manufacturing always seems to be waiting for the Chinese chemical manufacturing sector to screw up. Someday, they're going to get their act together. Then what?

The exit of major drug companies from manufacturing continues to drive business for fine chemicals makers. But Aslam Malik, president of Ampac Fine Chemicals, cautions that a rise in outsourced production of established or generic drugs may not mean increased business for Western API suppliers, since much of that production will go to China.  

A more solid upside, Malik says, lies in the uptick in drug approvals by FDA in 2011. The active ingredients in newer products are generally potent and complex, meaning lower volumes but more specialized manufacturing technology. More rigorous supply chain management on the part of pharmaceutical companies should benefit Western API makers, with drug companies instituting policies of establishing a Western backup to any key product manufactured in Asia. Some fine chemicals companies say business is coming back from China, in particular, because of quality concerns and Asia’s eroding cost advantage.

What the Sangji family is thinking

Over at The Pump Handle, a fairly detailed post on the worker safety aspects of the Sheri Sangji case. The most noteworthy thing, I feel, is a copy of the open letter from Naveen Sangji (Sheri Sangji's sister) to Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles district attorney.

This letter is one of the very few times where Naveen Sangji has spoken out about this case at an extensive length. If you want to know what she (and her family) are thinking and why the case has gotten as far as it has, you might want to read the whole thing. 

Some portions of the letter:

...What I know is that Harran as Sheri's direct supervisor and boss, and the leadership of UCLA, including safety officials Gibson and Wheatley, all had responsibility to Sheri - a legal responsibility, and a  professional, moral and social responsibility – to protect her and keep her safe.  All deliberately and knowingly violated the rules in place that would have kept her and others safe.   Nor was this the first such instance of a person being injured – a year before Sheri's death, a student was badly burned in this department.  

We believe that Harran should be held personally responsible for Sheri's death.  He admitted in his interview with UCLA Fire Marshals that he ordered Sheri to carry out an unsafe experiment, one that he himself would not do – a clear statement of how little he valued my sister's life and how willing he was to endanger students and staff researchers merely to further his own work.  He has not demonstrated the slightest bit of remorse for what he did to Sheri and for what my family has suffered.  His lab was still found to be unsafe after Sheri's horrific death, as documented by OSHA inspections. 

Failure to pursue felony criminal charges against Harran or allowing him to settle the case without our family being able to bring out what we believe occurred in front of a jury or in a report bearing on his sentence will be a grave injustice upon Sheri and upon our family...

Perk-a-licious: what are the best company perks?

I see (via SeeArrOh) that the American Snuff Company is hiring a chemist; do you think they give you all the tobacco products that you want to carry home? (I seem to recall that a benefit of working at the Jack Daniels distillery is a free case of Jack Daniels?) Other perks I've heard of:

• A family member is an employee of an electrical utility -- discounts on the electric bill. 
• When I worked at a major pharma, there was a company store with discounted consumer goods. That store is gone, of course. I got a T-shirt with a molecular model of V/ia/gra on it. 
• I hear that BMS (?) used (still does?) to give you free cases of formula when you had a baby. 
• One place I worked had all the free soda that you could drink and free peanut butter, jam and bread. Good enough for me!

What other perks have you heard of in your time in the chemical industry? Do petroleum refiners give away free gas? 

Unemployment rate at 8.5%, U6 unemployment at 15.2%.

Credit: Calculated Risk

Fresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the unemployment rate is down 0.1% to 8.5% for December. The broader U6 unemployment rate is down 0.4% to 15.2%. Apparently, the private sector employment numbers are pretty positive (200k); it will be interesting to see what the labor force participation numbers look like.

Good news? I hope so.

Thanks, as always, to Calculated Risk.

What are the ethical roles and responsibilities for chemical laboratory safety?

Janet Stemwedel is a current professor of philosophy; (updated*) before she moved into philosophy of science, she obtained a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. She asks a series of questions on ethics in laboratory safety, regarding the Sheri Sangji case: 

"So, who is ethically responsible for keeping an academic chemistry lab safe? And what exactly is the shape this responsibility takes — that is, what should he or she be doing to fulfill that obligation?

• What’s the responsibility of the principal investigator, the scientist leading the research project and, in most cases, heading the lab?
• What’s the responsibility of the staff research assistant or technician, doing necessary labor in the lab for a paycheck?
• What’s the responsibility of the graduate student in the research group, trying to learn how to do original research and to master the various skills he or she will need to become a PI someday? (It’s worth noting here that there’s a pretty big power differential between grad students and PIs, which may matter as far as how we apportion responsibility. Still, this doesn’t mean that those with less power have no ethical obligations pulling on them.)
• What’s the responsibility of the institution under whose auspices the lab is operating? When a safety inspection turns up problems and issues a list of issues that must be corrected, has that responsibility been discharged? When faculty members hire new staff research assistants, or technicians, or graduate students, does the institution have any specific obligations to them (as far as providing safety training, or a place to bring their safety concerns, or protective gear), or does this all fall to the PI?
• And, what kind of obligations do these parties have in the case that one of the other players falls down on some of his or her obligations?

If I were still working in a chemistry lab, thinking through ethical dimensions like these before anything bad happened would not strike me as a purely academic exercise. Rather, it would be essential to ensuring that everyone stays as safe as possible."

Here's how I would structure things (and how I have seen things structured in the past):

The principal investigator: The PI is ultimately responsible for running a safe lab. The best way to ensure that is to directly train the most senior members of the lab, to "train the trainer." From that point forward, the PI needs to ensure that senior graduate students and postdocs have a training and mentorship role in chemical safety and are properly executing that role. The PI should set up a safety/maintenance program, lay out the program and the responsbilities in clear, simple terms. The PI has the most prominent enforcement role; walking into their lab, they should spot safety problems and ask that they be corrected immediately. The PI has the most prominent foresight role; they should be able to see incoming safety problems from new chemistry, procedures or policy and be able to respond appropriately.

Postdocs and senior graduate students: Postdocs and senior graduate students (having been previously directly mentored by the PI) should be responsible for setting the day-to-day safety tone of the laboratory. They should be good examples and resources for newer lab members. While not directly responsible for the safety of younger graduate students, they should have a prominent advisory role and be willing to intervene (to the point of contacting the PI, if necessary) in order to keep lab members from doing egregiously unsafe things. They also have a foresight role, in that they should also be able to spot incoming safety issues and note them with the other group members.

Younger graduate students: They should be responsible for finding out and understanding the chemical safety risks they are taking on in their work. They are responsible for asking if they don't understand an issue and making sure that they don't proceed blindly. They also have the uncomfortable responsibility to question and/or dissent if they're being asked to do something unsafe.

The institution: The institution is ultimately (legally) responsible for the safety of its students; they're also the only administrative check on the power of the PI. If the PI cannot run a safe laboratory, they are the only people who can intervene. The institution has not discharged their responsibilities if they merely point out safety deficiencies without following up. The institution (via the EH&S office) has the responsibility to supply both basic chemical safety training (e.g. helping the PI develop a chemical hygiene plan) and for providing a 3rd party for graduate students and postdocs to turn to.

What if things don't work well? That's a problem with the way I've structured things: this system works well when you have a good PI. If you don't, well, that's an issue. While the institution may have the legal and/or ethical responsibility to intervene, I have a difficult time imagining a situation in which they can or will.

I'm not sure this answers Professor Stemwedel's questions in a satisfactory manner, but it's definitely how I see things. Readers, am I crazy?

*Thanks for DM for the correction of grammar. 

#SheriSangji ripple effects: Universities adjusting to new realities

Interesting ripple effects from the charging of Professor Patrick Harran in the death of Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji at UCLA:

• A major R1 institution has instituted severe penalties for not wearing lab coats. 
• Rumblings of prominent professors instituting changes to lab protocols and reviewing procedures

Any other interesting responses from professors, groups and/or universities (or companies and supervisors) in reaction to the prosecution of Professor Harran is welcome at chemjobber -at- gmaildotcom or via DM on Twitter at @Chemjobber. 

Keeping people safe during the hazardous waste disposal process

There's a lot of human hands that move your waste
after you pour out your bum reaction.
(Credit: Heritage-WTI/C&EN)

When I was a kid, I was convinced that the toilet was a great way to dispose of anything; it seemed like, when you flushed the toilet, things just disappeared, as if they had left the universe. Sometimes, I think that's what chemists think when they pour their waste into a waste drum or a red waste can.

A recent statement from the Chemical Safety Board brings that thought process to mind:

Today as many people enjoy a holiday season spent with friends and family, I would like to call attention to a recent tragedy that occurred late last week in eastern Ohio. On December 17, 2011, a chemical fire occurred at Heritage-WTI, Inc. which resulted in two workers being seriously burned, one of whom succumbed to his injuries days later. Heritage-WTI, Inc, is hazardous waste storage and processing facility located in East Liverpool, Ohio. 

According to company officials a flash fire occurred when workers were splitting a large solid waste drum of hazardous flammable inorganic material into smaller storage drums. 

News reports talk about the contents of the drum:

Bailey and Bechak were in the process of separating products from a barrel when the material reacted, causing a small explosion, followed by a larger explosion, according to city fire department reports. The explosion caused a flash fire in which the men were burned. Fire reports indicated the barrel they were separating contained cutting oil, hafnium, niobium, water and zirconium, and according to Michael Parkes, head of community/employee relations, "We've split containers for years," and the men were doing a routine procedure.

 Jyllian Kemsley talks about why this is important to chemists:

A burden it might be, but accurate waste identification is critical to ensure that the people who handle the waste down the line don’t get hurt, whether it’s the person at your institution who packs the waste for transport, the driver who takes it away, or the people who handle it at an incinerator.

I'm sure that all Chemjobber readers would not want to feel even vaguely culpable for hurting someone with the waste that they generated. Accurately describing the characteristics of your waste (toxicity, ignitability), corrosivity, reactivity), quenching reactivity appropriately and segregating incompatible wastes is a big part of keeping hazardous waste workers safe.

Remember, there's a human on the other side of your lab pack or your waste drum.

Daily Pump Trap: 1/15/12 edition

Good morning! Between January 3 and 4, there were 19 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, there were 4 (21%) were academically connected and will be covered in next Tuesday's Ivory Filter Flask.

Sunnyvale, CA: Brave folks: Pharmacyclics appears to be a new pharma start-up in Sunnyvale, California. Pharmacyclics has apparently been around for a while. They're looking for a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. process chemist (10+ years experience) to help lead their process development team. GMP experience desired, as well as Mandarin fluency and a willingness to travel. (Thanks, Anon0752a!)

Durham, NC: Cormetech is a joint venture between Corning and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry; they're a company looking at NOx-emissions reduction technology. They're looking for a B.S./M.S. physical chemist with experience with nanopowders and/or coating metal oxides.

Brevard, NC: Once again, PharmAgra Labs is looking for qualified B.S./M.S./Ph.D. organic chemists. Best of luck.

Washington, D.C.: The American Institutes for Research are apparently some sort of educational testing outfit -- they're looking for a graduate student intern in chemistry to prepare exam questions from a high-stakes test. (Chem GRE?)

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 218, 594, 2,589 and 40 positions for the search term "chemist."

Metal bowls

A list of small, useful things (links):

• SeeArrOh on pharma R&D spending trends and their relationship to market cap. 
• Former chemist (and now polemicist) Josh Bloom on drug manufacture and life and death. 
• John talks about Patrick Harran and getting a jury of his peers. 
• John Borchardt has a very nice post on chemistry entrepreneurship in the Midwest. Good news, I think. 
• Th'Gaussling calls for more entrepreneurship in chemistry -- I'm tempted, a little. 
• Paul Hodges' Downturn Alert doesn't look all that great for 2011. 
• LabMonkey celebrates his first blog birthday!
• The Heterocyclist on an interesting Mitsunobu and indoline synthesis. 

Migration patterns within the United States and Canada

An interesting graph of moving patterns within the United States and Canada from a not-very-scientific sampling of customers of Atlas Van Lines, via Felix Salmon. (Red = balanced in-migration and out-migration, Yellow = net outmigration for 2011, Blue = net in-migration)

In 2011, I moved from an outbound state to a balanced state. Interesting how a lot of the pharma states (NJ, CT, MA) are net outbound. Also interesting how North Dakota is a net inbound state (Bakken Shale?), while Minnesota is a net outbound. I'm curious as to where North Dakota's new residents are coming from.

UPDATE: Anon0829a and @azmanam both point to this fascinating migration map. Apropos of nothing, here's Champaign County, IL. 

Process Wednesday: Kilomentor on 'split runs'

Kilomentor posts on splitting experimental batches for workup comparisons:

Split run does not appear to be a widely understood term; however, in my personal chemical process development experience it is a common term with a well defined meaning. Split runs are experiments done to test different work-up/isolation and/or purification procedures starting with equal portions from a single large reaction mixture. As a consequence, even if a reaction mixture is both complicated and uncharacterized, a chemist can compare different follow-on procedures for working it up without being concerned about reaction differences that may still exist from batch to batch because the reaction process itself has not yet been finalized and critical parameters completely controlled. 

In the general case, the isolated yield fraction, (which when expressed as a percentage is often called simply the percentage yield), is the product of the reaction yield fraction (determined by an assay of the crude reaction mixture before work-up)  multiplied by the isolation yield fraction (the fraction representing the effectiveness of the recovery of pure product from the crude reaction mixture). In the case of comparing split runs, the ratio of isolated split run yields is proportional to the ratio of the isolation yields because the pure reaction yield is the same for each, since they come from the same reaction batch. Thus, in comparing the recovered product from split runs, the difference represents only the effectiveness of the isolation protocols….it is independent of and not confounded by the exact details of the reaction conditions. In this way, even at an early stage in developing the particular reaction step, the development chemist can get some idea of the comparative effectiveness of different treatments of the crude reaction mixture. 

Of course it is not just the best isolation yield that is of interest and of importance to the process development chemist but also the relative purities of the two products and the amounts of different impurities within each.

I've found this to be a really useful technique; go and read the whole thing.

Older chemists face difficulty finding positions

From mid-December comes an WSJ unemployment story from an older academic chemist (which I find pretty unusual):

Many older Americans fear they will be working well into their 60s because they didn't save enough to retire. Millions more wish they were that lucky: Without full-time jobs, they are short of money and afraid of what lies ahead. 

Deborah Kallick was a professor of biomedical chemistry at the University of Minnesota until she ventured into the private sector in 2000 with a job in genome research. She is now one of more than four million Americans aged 55 to 64 who can't find full-time work. That number has nearly doubled in five years, according to U.S. Department of Labor figures in October.

Ms. Kallick, 60 years old, has been unemployed since 2007 and lives in the Northern California home of an ex-boyfriend. She has run out of unemployment insurance, used up most of her retirement savings and is indebted to relatives and credit-card companies. 

A good job could settle her accounts, she said. Until then, Ms. Kallick relies on generosity, occasional consulting work and the sale of sweaters, purses and other possessions on eBay.
"It is very hard to work through this and learn to be calm and happy day to day," said Ms. Kallick, who never married. "It has taken a lot of strength and courage to learn to do that."

A brief search of LinkedIn (with login) will reveal that she actually became a tenured professor and then left for the biotech field. One presumes that she may be regretting leaving a relatively secure position; I think she's to be commended for a gutsy call. The article goes on to describe that the average tenure of unemployment for people 55 to 64 is 56.6 weeks of unemployment. There's also a #chemjobs-aspect to this in that Ms. Kallick is in the 8.4% of chemists 60-69 (the highest age decile next to the 70+ group) who are listed as unemployed.

That's shocking. That also indicates that the typical advice for having an emergency fund of six months is probably 50% too small, especially for older people. (Although, one notes from the article, that for people older than 20 (that is, darn near everyone), the average length of unemployment is longer than 26 weeks. Uh-oh.)

Best wishes to us all.

Daily Pump Trap: 1/3/12 edition

Good morning! Between December 30 and January 3, there were 27 new positions posted on the ACS website. Of these, 24 (89%) are academically connected and are covered at the new Ivory Filter Flask.

Decatur, AL: Hexcel Corporation is looking for a Ph.D. polymer chemist with less than 5 years of experience. You'll be developing technology for the production of carbon fiber for their materials applications.

Lafayette, IN: Evonik is looking for a process R&D manager; M.S./Ph.D. degree with 5 to 10 years of experience desired. "Willingness to occasionally work odd hours to support 24/7 mfg operations" -- heh. That's sounds like a lot of fun.

Ivory Filter Flask: 1/3/12 edition

Good morning! Welcome to the Ivory Filter Flask; there were 24 new academic positions posted on the ACS Careers website. It's not intended as a comprehensive look at the academic labor market (yet); it will focus on notable, desirable or oddball positions (much like the Daily Pump Trap). It's going to be primarily aimed at younger faculty members; I sincerely doubt I have much readership amongst tenured faculty.

Thoughts on structure and organization are very welcome at chemjobber -at- gmail/dot/com.

Below is a by-the-numbers look:

Total number of ads: 24
- Postdocs: 0
- Tenure-track faculty: 20
- Temporary faculty: 2
- Lecturer positions: 1
- Staff positions: 1
- Ratio of US/non-US positions: 19/5

Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University is searching for a senior faculty member in natural products chemistry, a.k.a. the Bill Gerwick chair (?).

Lancaster, PA: Franklin and Marshall College desires two visiting assistant professors; a 1-year contract for organic and general chemistry and a 3-year contract for general chemistry lecture duties.

Fairbanks, AK: The University of Alaska - Fairbanks is looking for a visiting professor for general chemistry lecture duties.

Fargo, ND: North Dakota State University is setting up "The Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST)"; they desire 10 scientists (including chemists) for senior scientist positions. Looks like computational and theoretical materials chemistry work is planned.

Boston area pharma company seeks M.S. medicinal chemist

Description: Looking for a synthetic chemist to prepare small-molecule organic targets for a proprietary drug-delivery platform. Background in polymer and/or materials chemistry is desired but not required. The selected candidate will be responsible for advancing a specified area of synthetic organic chemistry and will report to a project leader. The applicant should be well-versed in planning and executing multi-step synthesis and should possess the skills necessary to apply that knowledge to emerging technologies. The incumbent is also expected to regularly report progress in technical meetings.

Qualifications: Strongly prefer a MS with 6-10 yrs industry experience in synthetic organic chemistry. Will look at PhD  with 2 yrs industry experience.  MUST HAVE Hands-on experience with HPLC and solution NMR is required.

About the position: The job opening is for immediate hiring. The opening is for a full-time, contract assignment (6 months), with the possibility of extension or conversion to permanent employment

Location: 5 miles West of Boston.

Contact: Mark Flynn, Flynn Life Sciences Group LLC
(O)508-318-6507
(m)617-529-4029
(F)508-532-8735
mark -at- flynnlsg/dot/com

CJ Sheri Sangji roundup

For those of you who haven't been reading blogs over the last week, but rather have been uh, living life and spending time with family, here's what you've missed:

• Patrick Harran and the UC regents were charged with 3 felony counts in the death of Sheri Sangji last Tuesday. 
• A comment on 60 mL syringes
• Kevin Reed, UCLA's vice chancellor of legal affairs and their chief spokesperson on the case, lays out their PR approach

The best overall coverage is over at C&EN with Jyllian Kemsley's Safety Zone.

SOCMA wants more money for CSB?

I find it interesting that SOCMA wants the Chemical Safety Board's budget to increase. From Jeff Johnson's article in this week's C&EN:

The Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA), an industry trade organization, also worries about CSB’s budget. “There is no denying that financial and resource constraints limit the board’s ability to undertake any major new investigations, should they become necessary, which should concern industry and government,” says William E. Allmond IV, SOCMA vice president of government relations. “However, despite constraints, SOCMA has confidence that CSB will be able to carry out its statutory obligations.”

Maybe SOCMA would rather the CSB with only its ability to recommend, as opposed to an agency with more enforcement power? Who knows. 

ACS President appoints council to study graduate school

I know, I know, it's a "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative" sort of headline, isn't it? 

From ACS president Bassam Z. Shakhashiri's message to chemists in this week's C&EN:

ACS Presidential Commission On Graduate Education 

I have appointed a commission chaired by electrochemist Larry R. Faulkner, former president of the University of Texas, and comprised of some of the most prominent figures in the chemical sciences, both academic and industrial, to examine the purposes of graduate education and research in the chemical sciences and the needs and aspirations of graduate students (cenm.ag/task). The main charge of the commission is to address two specific questions: 

What are the purposes of graduate education in the chemical sciences?
What steps should be taken to ensure that important societal issues as well as the needs and aspirations of students are addressed in graduate schools? 

To find answers to these and other questions, the commission and its working groups will solicit input through listening sessions at ACS national and regional meetings and will obtain targeted feedback from graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, early-career faculty, underrepresented groups, business groups, institutions of higher education, professional and educational organizations, and international leaders in science and education. Contact the commission directly at graduatecommission@acs.org. 

The commission will develop actionable recommendations that can be adopted or adapted by a variety of graduate educational institutions, federal and state funding agencies, and business and industry. The recommendations are to propose radical changes that will help find ways to best use our country’s vast educational, industrial, and government resources to successfully prepare students for their professional careers to face changing human needs over the next 50 years.

Believe it or not, this is the only really #chemjobs-related item in his entire message. You'd never know that chemist unemployment is near a 20-year high. Sigh.