Process Wednesday: It's not just the organic chemists who have issues scaling up

Over at It's The Rheo Thing, a while back, John Spevacek talked about the issues with scaling up polymer manufacture:

Working with polymers at the lab bench is usually quite different than working with them at a larger scale (pilot plant, production, etc.). Benchtop versions of blown film lines, injection molders, extrusion lines...don't exist. Small extruders exist, but they don't have mass-loss feeders, custom screw elements and a whole host of other features that their big-boy versions have. 

And so at the benchtop we cheat. We use solvents to dissolve the polymers, which then allows us to easily stir in additives or other materials. We eventually have to get the solvent out, but that is usually pretty easy. Depending on the volatility of the solvent, a hood can work just fine. In other cases, an oven or a hot plate will do nicely. In short, the solvents make our lives much easier. 

In contrast, solvents at a large scale are generally avoided. Not only is flammability a concern (which then leads to higher capital equipment costs for the electrical equipment to make it non-sparking) but also the solvents need to be either recovered (more capital equipment) or oxidized (more capital equipment) which leads to CO2 emissions... [snip] 

...This difference in processing options with the size of the operation can lead to real nightmares in scaling up products. You can dissolve a newly-developed polyolefin in hot decalin and add in all the antioxidants you want, but you can't find out if it will make a nice blown film until you go to the pilot line. Even a cast film of the polyolefin will not provide meaningful samples as they would be completely lacking in the strength-inducing orientation that the blown-film line provides.

That's an interesting problem with the kind of chemistry that John participates in -- that the equipment itself provides the desired physical properties to be tested. (Any errors here are mine, not John's.)

For the most part, this doesn't seem to be the issue with classic old-skool chemical manufacturing; the physical properties of a compound are the same at bench scale or at plant scale. What we tend to worry about (and just like John, have difficulty simulating) is large quantities of your compound/reaction will interact with your equipment -- whether or not your agitator will stir, or your filtration will be effective, etc. Even then, the best-resourced among us have access to miniaturized versions of plant-scale equipment. Lucky us, I suppose. 

Where online should a Canadian be looking for a chemistry job?

A davenport chesterfield, I understand.

A reader writes in to ask -- if you're a Canadian, what websites should you be using to search for jobs?

I don't really know. As the reader noted, the CIC's site didn't seem to be very helpful. Anyone know?

What book should I be reading?

I've yet another gift card to Amazon -- what should I be reading? I like to read (surprise, surprise), so feel free to suggest any topic. 

"A 7-year postdoc"

A Harvard professor of computer science, Radhika Nagpal, writes about her process of getting tenure by pretending it was a 7-year postdoc:

Seven things I did during my first seven years at Harvard. Or, how I loved being a tenure-track faculty member, by deliberately trying not to be one.

• I decided that this is a 7-year postdoc.
• I stopped taking advice.
• I created a “feelgood” email folder.
• I work fixed hours and in fixed amounts.
• I try to be the best “whole” person I can.
• I found real friends.
• I have fun “now”.

I don't know what to think about it, but I am not in a position to have an informed opinion on the subject. But it's been zinging its way around the internet, so there you are. 

[Some of these ideas (especially the "real friends" part) seem really, really true. My problem with a lot of these sorts of "I beat the odds by not following the crowd!" essays is that everyone is the hero of their own story. It would mean more to me if I were to read an essay written by a 3rd party that said "Professor Nagpal is such an academic maverick!"; I am sure they exist.]

Daily Pump Trap: 7/23/13 edition

Good morning! Between July 18 and July 22, there were 81 new positions posted on C&EN Jobs. Of these, 10 (12%) were academically connected and 57 (70%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Surely, our long national #chemjobs nightmare is over: Pfizer is hunting for 1 (one) senior principal scientist for medicinal chemistry work. Ph.D. preferred, at least 5 years med chem experience desired (uhhhh -- don't you need a lot more than that at the R6 level?) You gotta love some of these qualities they desire:

Comfortable working in a highly innovative environment and can effectively cope with change. Responds well to scientific challenge and applies significant rigor to their own work.

Will scientifically challenge others in their group in a constructive manner and demonstrate exceptional team working skills (e.g. approachable and collaborative) to ensure the group as a whole is successful. 

Will proactively learn from scientists within the organization, assimilate and translate to success in their own areas. Equally, will look externally to build experience and internalize knowledge and techniques to maximum effect. Delivers new science and medicinal chemistry thinking into the department

Possesses a clear sense of urgency, recognizes potential problems and proactively acts to deliver solutions

Very strong influencing skills. 

Proactively! Influencing! Good luck.

Wareham, MA: Smithers Viscient is looking for a senior LC/MS chemist; M.S./Ph.D. with 10+ years experience desired.

Monroeville, PA: PPG Industries desires a B.S./M.S. chemist for QC work.

Edmonton, Alberta: Gilead Sciences desires a senior analytical chemist to lead a method development group; 12+ years experience in pharmaceutical industry needed. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/23/13 edition

Good morning! Between July 16 and July 22, there were 15 new academic positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. The numbers:

Postdocs: 1
Tenure-track: 10
Temporary faculty: 1
Lecturers: 0
Staff: 3
US/non-US: 13/2

Palo Alto, CA: Stanford is looking for a tenured professor of theoretical chemistry.

Camarillo, CA: CSU Channel Islands desires an assistant professor of chemistry.

Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah wishes to hire a synthetic chemistry postdoc for drug-protein conjugate research.  

Newberry, SC: Newberry College wishes to hire an assistant professor of chemistry; 46-48k offered. Well north of the 2000 census median household income of 27k.

Florence, AL: The University of North Alabama is hiring an assistant professor of chemistry; primary teaching responsibility is physical chemistry.

Bozeman, MT: Last minute lecturer time! Montana State is looking for non-tenure-track faculty to start teaching August 16, 2013 through next summer. Hurry! 

The RTP is not Detroit, Detroit is not the RTP

I don't really want to get into a big discussion on Detroit's bankruptcy -- you can go elsewhere for that sort of thing. That said, The Atlantic's James Fallows posted a reflection from a reader, and I found one aspect to be a bit silly (emphasis mine):

And yet, there is hope. Detroit has begun to reinvent itself, both in the city and in the metro area as a whole. SE Michigan does have a ton of engineers and a high level of R&D dollars being spent. While the bankruptcy is sad, just as GM's bankruptcy on 1 Jun 2009 was, it'll be far sadder if Detroit can't continue to reinvent itself as it has from the darkest days of 2008-9. The bankruptcy is payment for the sins of the past - but this purgatory should lead Detroit on a path to success. There's no reason that Detroit can't mirror what North Carolina's Research Triangle did in the '90s and '00s. And considering how much Detroit has made America look at herself over its history - I think we should all be rooting for the Motor City to rocket forward from here.

Not only can I not help but love Detroit - I can't help but believe in that city too.

Contra what your local economic development council tells you, you can't grow that kind of R&D focus overnight. There's probably plenty of reasons that Detroit can't turn itself into RTP, and not soon enough for it to make a difference -- a shame, to be sure.

[Seems to me that the main difference between Detroit and the RTP region is difference in economic focus of the regions: automobile manufacturing versus life sciences. Which one of those does America still have a relative comparative advantage in? I also wonder if there's a difference between the concentration of research-oriented universities in the RTP region and the Detroit area.]

UPDATE: Lisa Jarvis and Celia Arnaud point out that the more likely places for a life sciences renaissance in Michigan would Ann Arbor or Kalamazoo. This actually reminds me of something that I meant to point out in the original post, which is the seeming annihilation of Michigan's pharmaceutical research centers during the 1990s/2000s. It would be interesting to know what percentage of Michigan resident life scientists ended up 1) leaving the region, but still working in pharma or 2) staying in Michigan, but leaving pharma.

What happens when a Ph.D. chemist gets a PET scan?

Th'Gaussling is undergoing chemotherapy and is having some fun with his PET scans. Click here to see his longer explanation of 18F-glucose and PET scans. 

Ain't that a kick in the gut

Also in this week's C&EN, Pfizer expanding manufacturing in Ireland (article by Alex Scott):

Pfizer is investing $100 million to increase manufacturing capacity at its facility for biologic drugs in Grange Castle, Ireland, and a further $30 million to add new capabilities, including continuous production of small-molecule drugs, in Ringaskiddy, Ireland. 

In Grange Castle, the firm will build an additional mammalian cell culture line for manufacturing the protein-based rheumatoid arthritis treatment Enbrel. To be completed by 2015, the project will double the plant’s productivity, Pfizer says, and allow the firm to use it to make other therapies currently under development...

But wait -- what's the news for Irish chemists?

...No new pharmaceutical jobs will be created by the projects, however, which is a disappointment for a country whose economy contracted 0.6% in the first quarter of the year and where 13.5% of the population is unemployed....

Oh, well.

C&EN: Water treatment as chemistry employment field

In this week's C&EN, Susan Ainsworth talks about a lesser-known aspect of the chemical manufacturing enterprise, water treatment chemicals:

College students frequently want to save the world. When the part they are interested in saving is water and they are studying at the University of Texas, Austin, they often approach chemical engineer Danny D. Reible for career advice. Most assume they can make the biggest difference in a developing country, working to remedy the shortage of clean drinking water, says Reible, a professor of environmental health and director of UT Austin’s Center for Research in Water Resources. 

However, Reible is quick to recommend another path. “I tell students that they are better off focusing their careers on the treatment and reuse of industrial wastewater, in both developing and developed nations.” This route offers them the best career opportunities and is “equally important to solving the potable water problem,” says Reible, who cochairs the International Society for Water Solutions, an American Institute of Chemical Engineers group founded in 2012 to focus on industrial water management.

I think this is interesting, in that it comments tangentially on Paul Hodges' opinion that chemists should be thinking about developing nations and their access to water as a place where chemists could do some good (and make some money.)

What are they looking for in their employees?

Chemistry and chemical engineering students who aspire to work in the field of industrial wastewater treatment and reuse should obtain a strong foundation in inorganic chemistry and also take water treatment technology courses that are typically offered within universities’ civil and environmental engineering departments, Reible says. Knowledge of technologies that use microbes, membranes, or specialized materials such as nanomaterials helps candidates stand out among other job seekers, he adds. 

Koon recommends that students looking to break into the industrial wastewater treatment field gain experience by working on projects with organizations such as Engineers Without Borders or through internships or short-term jobs. 

In addition, students should polish their interview skills. “They must be alert to the world around them and be able to carry on an interesting conversation in interviews,” Koon advises. They should be able to pro­ject the qualities that employers are looking for in entry-level employees. Companies are seeking people who “exhibit ethical behavior, can work effectively with others, and have the potential to become leaders within their organizations,” he explains.

The recommendation for inorganic courses and looking for training for other departments is useful, I think. 

Saturday #longread: the comeback of Marlin Steel

This story from Fast Company about a small wire basket manufacturing firm is pretty great:

The job that rescued Marlin Steel was small--20 baskets, a $500 order. Greenblatt was handling sales in 2003, so he took the call himself. "It was an engineer from Boeing," he says. "He didn't think I was in the bagel-basket business. He just needed custom wire baskets." The Boeing engineer, who had seen a Marlin ad in the Thomas Register, a pre-Internet manufacturing directory, wanted baskets to hold airplane parts and move them around the factory. He wanted them fast. And he wanted them made in a way Marlin wasn't used to--with astonishing precision. For bagel stores, says Greenblatt, "if the bagel didn't fall out between the wires, the quality was perfect." The Boeing engineer needed the basket's size to be within a sixty-fourth of an inch of his specifications. "I told him, 'I'll have to charge you $24 a basket,'" says Greenblatt. "He said, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever. No problem. When are you going to ship them?'"

What's kind of nice is that CJ favorite Megan McArdle covered this small firm in 2010; nice to see that they're doing all right now. (Also, read the article for some interaction between Marlin Steel and Pfizer/Zoetis manufacturing.)  

Physicians, prescribe this graduate student Nuvigil!

Parody of this Teva ad for Nuvigil

Or, actually, tell her to get some sleep.

(But no, if you're Teva, you want her to have some Nuvigil, apparently. Sigh.)

What to know what happened to Blog Syn?

Short answer: Life happened. If you want to help out Blog Syn, here's your chance. 

A very confused paragraph at U.S. News on pre-meds

On gender/racial diversity myths in STEM (emphasis mine):

It's common to hear sweeping generalizations among STEM advocates about the lack of diversity and interest across all STEM fields. One educator took aim at this idea in a Tuesday panel discussion at the U.S. News Stem Solutions 2013 conference. 

"Not all STEM fields are created equal," said Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College. "If I look at biology and chemistry classes, they are probably about 60 percent female, and there are a lot of students of color in those classes." 

That sounds like a great thing, but Klawe cautioned that there is not job market demand for all of those students once they graduate. "They all think they're going to be doctors and the vast majority of them will not become doctors," she said. 

While these students have advanced science skills, they may not command the same salary and employer interest as a computer programmer. Women and students of color are least represented in computer science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering, said Klawe.

One imagines that President Klawe was referring to the difficulty in achieving entry into medical school; the reporter seems to have missed that one.

[If I were cynical, I would note that a not-insignificant portion of chemical and biological academia is involved in training pre-meds who will not become physicians. It is not a wonder that the upper-level majors courses seem to be more desirable for faculty to teach, as opposed to Chemistry 201.]

I would not tell a group of pre-meds "Hey, if you don't make it into med school, go become a chemist!" However, I would tell a group of pre-meds, "hey, you should think about the computer skills of the future, and try to get some of them." Readers, how about you?  

Cass Sunstein is wrong on "the STEM crisis"

Thanks to my Thursday morning Wonkbook e-mail, I was subjected to a classic "STEM crisis" column by Harvard law professor and former White House staffer Cass Sunstein:

In recent years, a lot of people have been concerned about the relatively low numbers of science majors among American college students. The percentage of science and engineering graduates in the United States has been far below that in China and Japan. On various math and science tests, the performance of U.S. students has fallen below that of students in South Korea, Singapore, Japan, England, Finland, Israel, Australia and Russia. 

This is a real problem, because science majors can contribute to economic growth and because many of them end up with especially good jobs after graduation. In the employment market, students with degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) can be at a comparative advantage. The relatively low number of American graduates in these fields has created what some people call “the STEM crisis.” 

...In 2012, Obama lamented: “Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job. Think about that — openings at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work.” But while computer-science enrollments are increasing, the number of science majors remains disappointingly low. 

Why is this? Are young Americans uninterested in science?

I won't belabor this issue, because you, dear reader, are very, very tired of me repeating myself. Let's just remember that when presidents and law professors talk about "science and technology", especially with reference to jobs, they're talking about computers and IT. It's even in his own column ("But while computer-science enrollments are increasing, the number of science majors remains disappointingly low") and yet, the explanation (rising wages, growing job opportunities in computer-related fields) still escapes him.

[The rest of the column might be worth your time, in that it's an exploration of the recent study that showed that when students who thought they would do well in science classes don't, they leave. You don't say! He goes on to blame state and local governments, which is strange, in my opinion.] 

Daily Pump Trap: 7/18/13 edition

Between July 16 and July 17, there were 52 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 3 (8%) were academically connected and 37 (72%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Greenville, SC: Michelin is hiring for 3 positions; here's a senior polyurethane chemist position (10 years experience required.)

Chicago, IL: Abbvie is hiring a senior cheminformatician; Ph.D. desired. There's a weird "postdoc" label at the top, but I think it sounds more like a "senior scientist II" position.

Ewing, NJ: FMC is hiring an analytical chemist for methods development; Ph.D. with 1-5 years of industry experience desired. Analytically related fields will be considered.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 234, 970, 2599 and 19 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 132 positions for the job title "chemist", with 8 for "research chemist", 14 for "analytical chemist" and 3 for "organic chemist." 

That's a little oopsie

There are errors/accidents often enough in the C&EN Jobs database that I wonder if the employer interface is particularly clunky: 

For those who can't quite see, apparently the HR person at W.L. Gore who entered this M.S. analytical position (which sounds perfectly good, really) decided to leave their name in it. 

At the very least, you have a point of contact! 

More actual posts later. 

Has the US/world #chemjobs tipping point come? When will it?

An astute reader at a major research university has alerted me to a very interesting job opportunity; it's a partnership between a major US multinational firm and a smaller company located in India. They desire a M.S./Ph.D. in chemistry; the chemist would work for a year for the multinational firm in the United States; following that, they would go to work for the smaller company. Interestingly, the opportunity states that the candidate must be authorized to work in India (thus, presumably, shutting out anyone who is not an Indian citizen -- perhaps I am incorrect.)

I think this is very interesting -- I have heard of these sorts of opportunities, but I've never actually seen one "in the flesh", so to speak. I don't think it's particularly scandalous, for what it's worth. Seems to me that there's a perfectly legitimate reason for such a job to exist.

But it raises a very interesting question about the nature of the chemical enterprise in the United States, both industrial and academic. For generations now, graduate students have come to the United States (especially from developing countries) and gotten their technical training here and gone to work here. The vast majority have stayed in the US (or other Western nations), relatively few have gone back home, contra Mark Zuckerberg and half of Congress. The pay is better here, benefits might be better, etc., etc.

But over the past few years, as job opportunities in the US have become scarcer and jobs 'back home' have become more plentiful, I imagine the 'settlers'/'returners' ratio has begun to shift towards 'returners'. The job opportunity above is an indication of this changing ratio, but as I see it, most graduate students and postdocs from other countries still manage to find work in the US.

I have 3 questions for readers:

• For chemistry, what do you think the 'settlers'/'returners' ratio is? I suspect that it is currently 5:1, but I think it is definitely higher lower than 10 to 1. 
• Do you think the ratio is climbing or falling? When will it peak? 
• What would be the best way to measure this ratio for chemistry?

Thanks to the astute reader. 

Process Wednesday: the 5 ways to get a liquid into a reactor

Our mentor-by-literature, Neal Anderson, tells us about how to get liquid (reagents, solvents, etc.) into a reactor in Practical Process Research and Development (the first edition):

There are five means to transfer a liquid: by gravity, siphoning, pumping, pressuring, or suctioning. The rate of transfer by gravity and siphoning is limited by the height of the liquid above the receiving vessel. Siphoning may be used conveniently on scale to remove a supernatant if dense solids separate from a suspension. Pumping is a faster means to transfer a liquid, and one of the fastest methods is to pressurize a liquid into the vessel using an inert gas. Transfer may also be carried out by applying suction ("partial vacuum") on the receiving vessel and by allowing the liquid to be drawn into the vessel. Transferring reactive materials by suction may be inherently safer than transferring by pressure; care must be taken to ensure that volatile solvents in the receiver are not lost when suction is applied. 

I've definitely used gravity in the lab and the kilo lab -- who hasn't? Addition funnels are basically gravity... but it's harder when you have larger amounts of liquid. We have done it in the plant (using gravity), but it is not something that is commonly performed. It seems that pumping and pressuring are the most common means of getting liquids from reactor to reactor and from reactor to equipment.

Suction seems to be a very common means of getting solvent for reactions into the reactor -- the reactor is pumped down to 20 torr and then that vacuum is used to pull the requisite amount of solvent into the reactor. I'm surprised that Anderson didn't mention the added safety factor, which is that (if you do it right, and don't pull a bunch of air into the reactor when your drum gets empty) there won't be any oxygen in your reactor when you're done pulling solvent in (and you still have a little vacuum left.)

Daily Pump Trap: 7/16/13 edition

Good morning! Between July 11 and July 15, there were 114 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 13 (11%) were academically connected and 84 (74%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources. 

Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley is looking for a Ph.D. staff scientist for its synthetic actinides program.

Richmond, VA: Evonik is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. chemist to be an agrochemical formulations specialist; 3+ years industrial experience, preferably related to "formulation of actives and surfactants for agrochemical pesticides or  organic surfactants or silicon surfactants."

Birmingham, AL: The Southern Research Institute is looking for senior medicinal chemists:

The Drug Discovery Division of Southern Research Institute (SR) invites applications from senior organic/medicinal chemists with experience in drug discovery and lead optimization to join the Medicinal Chemistry Department... To be in a position to exploit these projects, as well as support several internal projects, we are looking to hire experienced medicinal chemists interested in participating in collaborative drug discovery projects. 

To be considered, applicants must possess a Ph.D. in organic or medicinal chemistry and should have an externally funded, grant-based research program or have demonstrated the ability to obtain external funding.

First, it would seem to me that this would be a great set of opportunities for senior industrial medicinal chemists -- but then there's the "external funding" requirement (SBIRs, maybe?)

I wonder how these fishing expeditions by Southern Research Institute have been, especially considering there's been about one advertisement a year. Hmmm.

Hercules, CA: Evans Analytical Group is looking for a chemist to conduct pesticide residue studies. GC/MS, LC/MS experience desired.

I don't see myself or others in this analysis

Over at Not the Lab, Vinylogous gave a stirring defense of why employers should hire chemists over English majors for general business positions. An editor at a chemistry department in the US wrote a long comment about chemists and their writing, which I thought was really dead on:

Chemists' bad writing isn't bad because it's blunt. I just finished reading The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz -- bluntness a-plenty in there, and it's a terrific book. No. Chemists' bad writing is bad because it's unaware audience exists, is inarticulate, hopeless with a narrative, jargon-ridden, lede-burying, resentful of the task, and mutely stolid. (Chemists' good writing is, of course, a beauty to behold.) English majors tend to have these things in their writing roundly abused, if not beaten into submission, by junior year. 

I hate to admit it, but I feel that's a fairly decent description of my scientific writing, and possibly some of the writing on this blog. However, this follow-on comment was equally interesting, yet much less accurate, I felt:

The problem, at university level, is the structure of chemical education, which has nothing but contempt for anything that eats minutes and dollars and does not produce a more useful bench scientist/grad slave. And that, frankly, is part of why I'd be less inclined to hire a chem major for a general-biz job than I would an English major. You guys produce hothouse flowers simply by not giving the kids opportunity to wander -- oh, sure, they can take a few electives, but they know where their time's supposed to be spent -- and the naivete outside these narrow bounds can be astonishing. The gender imbalance doesn't help, either; it's -- still, often -- as though there's no awareness of the macho/nationalist assumptions, which play *really poorly* in many parts of the world. I kid you not, I just sat through a meeting in which a chemist spent a good bit of time mocking a Chinese name in a bizarrely Archie-Bunkerish way. This...you can't do this. And he seemed utterly unaware. It's not rare.  

Let me make the contrast this way: A highly successful fiction writer of my MFA year decided, while in the writing program, that he wanted to be a doctor, and more or less went AWOL from the program so he could get his prereqs for med school taken care of. The faculty were annoyed -- he was, after all, a very promising writer, no less an eminence than Saul Bellow admired his work and called it out for special attention -- but didn't throw him out. He did become a doctor; he's also regarded as one of the best youngish literary writers in America.
I cannot begin to imagine a grad student in chemistry being allowed the same freedom. And in the end it makes a difference. 

You guys loosen up on the path to chemist -- kill that German military model -- and we'll see what happens. 

First, I just disagree with a description of chemistry students (undergraduates and grad students) as hothouse flowers. I would like to know more what they meant, but the environment of chemical academia is probably harsher (work ethic, etc.) than the general business world (so far as I can tell.) I also think the author does not understand the difference between a grad student in chemistry (more-or-less a paid university employee, even if the lawyers don't think so) and a MFA student (a paying customer.)  The administrative flexibility and time offered are going to be different. Finally, we don't really have a German military model, did/do we? Surely, this is exaggeration on the author's part.

Nevertheless, a thought-provoking read. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/16/13 edition

Good morning! Between July 11 and July 15, there were 13 academic positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. The numbers:

Postdocs: 1
Tenure-track: 6
Temporary faculty: 4
Lecturers: 2
Staff: 0
US/non-US: 12/1

College Station, TX: Aw, someone here wants to apply to be department head at Texas A&M, right? Right?

Pullman, WA: Washington State is hiring an assistant professor of analytical chemistry for fall 2014.

Haverford, PA: Haverford College desires a postdoc for an advanced instructional lab class, to be co-taught with a senior faculty member. I am not sure how I feel about this; seems to me that titling it a postdoc is granting this position "training" that it may not have. Calling it "visiting very assistant professor" would probably be more appropriate.

Bryn Mawr, PA: Bryn Mawr is looking for an adjunct lecturer of inorganic chemistry to start in January 2014.

Tuscaloosa, AL: Time for another Last Minute Lecturer contribution at the University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa. M.S./Ph.D. desired, start date of August 15, 2013. 

What do structures look like when they're in lower-case?

Copyright: NASA

A couple of months ago, I was watching "The X-Files"* and I saw this image flash up on the screen -- turns out to be one of the pictures that's on "The Golden Record" that's on the Voyager spacecraft.

I thought there was something rather odd-looking about it, and what I note is both the unique font (with backwards serifs (is that the term?)) and lower-case structures.

I welcome our alien overlords, but if they're using lower-case letters in their structures, it will be cause for interstellar war.

*The excellent episode "Little Green Men". 

Hey, that's the wrong way!

From this week's C&EN, movement from East to West (article by Michael McCoy): 

In a reversal of the trend of moving ­pharmaceutical chemistry research to Asia, the drug discovery services firm Evotec has decided to close its laboratories in Thane, India, and conduct all chemistry research in Abingdon, ­England, instead. 

Evotec didn’t encounter performance or quality problems with the Indian staff, says Evotec Chief Operating Officer Mario Polywka. “They are the most amazing organic chemists.” 

Rather, Polywka says, the firm’s increasing focus on high-value collaborations—including with Harvard University and the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science—means that close involvement by the firm’s medicinal chemists with research partners is paramount. 

The Indian labs’ operations will wind down by the end of September, Evotec says, putting 120 people out of work. Employment in Abingdon, where about 180 medicinal and other chemists work now, will increase, Polywka adds, although he won’t give a number.

It's my assumption that this is a brief blip in the other direction and not a trend-setter at all. Brief bad news for Thane, I'm sure, good news for Abingdon, one hopes.

[Is anyone noting that it seems like the major pharmas are the ones that seem to be going to China, not India, for med chem? I wonder what that's about?]

Could be re-titled "Hundreds of chemists apply to Merck senior scientist position."

It's hard to beat "The Onion" when it comes to satire. Click on this link if you want the video version (that autoplays, ugh):

SAN FRANCISCO—Upon coming across the same job posting Monday for a full-time position at a local startup company, an estimated 1,400 people reportedly described the opening as “a perfect fit” for their qualifications, saying it was exactly the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. “I have all the skills they want, my experience matches up—I honestly don’t know if there’s anyone out there better suited for this job than me,” said unemployed man Charles Duncan, echoing the sentiments of 1,400 others, 900 of whom believe their facility with social media and knowledge of web design will definitely make their application “stand out from the rest of the pack.” “This position just makes so much sense for me. My résumé and cover letter might not get me the job outright, but once I go in for the interview they’ll see why I’m ideal for it.” Sources later confirmed a family friend of a top executive at the company had already accepted the position, which had been unofficially promised to him long before the job was even posted.

The part about the family friend is particularly galling. (Thanks to John Spevacek for the link.) 

Wisconsin researcher pleads guilty to computer tampering

Remember this sad story of a postdoc pilfering a compound from the Medical College of Wisconsin to take to China? He's pleading guilty to unauthorized access to a computer, and faces 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

How important is negotiation after receiving a job offer?

An astute reader has a question that I've reformulated as follows:

If you have an initial offer from a medium-sized company that includes an above-average salary (in the 50th to 75th percentile, according to the ACS Salary Comparator), how important is it that you negotiate with them for more? The self-help guides all say it's important -- is that right? 

Will it damage my reputation if I don't? And if I should negotiate, what should I use as my basis for a higher salary or more benefits when I don't have any data to back it up?

First, congratulations -- that's very exciting!

I think the self-help guides are correct, in that they would argue that your leverage will rarely be this high again -- so now is the time to make sure that you get everything you have. It seems to me that there are a number of other things to negotiate for: vacations, 401k/pensions, who will pay for health benefits, etc., etc.

As for damaging your reputation if you don't, it probably depends on who you are negotiating with. If it's a smallish company and you're negotiating with someone you'll be reporting to, it may be good to demonstrate that you're willing to use your leverage. (Certainly, if you take a low-ball offer, they may lose respect for you.) If it's a HR person, they may not care one whit either way.

As for what to use for data as backup, I frankly have no idea. Uh, Google? I dunno. Readers?

UPDATE: To calibrate, this sounds like an entry-level Ph.D. position. 

Daily Pump Trap: 7/11/13 edition

Good morning! Between July 2 and July 10, there have been 139 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 9 (6%) were academically connected and 113 (81%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources. 

Dude, you could not pay me enough: CalEnergy Generation is looking for an analytical/environmental chemist for its facility in Calpatria, California. Offering 64.6k to 83k. 2000 median household income of 60k (a lot higher than expected.) Living in the Imperial Valley? Um, no thanks.

Toronto, ON: The Structural Genomics Consortium is looking for a Ph.D. medicinal chemist to train graduate students and postdocs in medicinal chemistry while being a project manager for some sort of collaborative project. Sounds interesting, could be right for the right person...

Emeryville, CA: What the business is going on with this position? Sandia is looking for an organic chemist to take a postdoctoral position in biomass conversion. Organometallic, Schlenk, dry box techniques, blah, blah... and then there's this:

Required  

Bachelor's degree in relevant discipline plus five or more years of experience; or Master's degree in relevant discipline plus two or more years of experience; or Doctorate in relevant discipline; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Rurr? I'm sure it's just pro forma language, but still.

Livermore, CA: Sandia National Laboratories is looking for a B.S./M.S. bioanalytical chemist to develop novel immunoassays.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 212, 1020, 2537 and 15 positions for the search term "chemist." (Big jump for Careerbuilder.) LinkedIn shows 124 positions for the job title "chemist", with 2 for "organic chemist", 7 for "research chemist" and 9 for "analytical chemist." 

What's your project ritual?

From a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, a look at silly (and not so silly) rituals in the office:

Salo LLC, a financial and human-resources staffing company in Minneapolis, incorporates rituals throughout its work cycle. When customer requests come in, they are posted on a wall-size whiteboard, and can only be recorded, altered or erased by the salesperson who landed the client. "That's their graffiti, their mark. You wouldn't alter someone else's graffiti. It would be bad luck," says Salo Managing Director Gwen Martin.... 

[snip] Salo employees prod transactions along with another ritual: "When we are about to lock a deal down, it's bad luck to high-five each other, because you might jinx it," Ms. Martin says. "So you do a 'pinkie-five' instead," tapping pinkie fingers. 

Once a deal is done, the salesperson rings a big brass gong on a bank of files in the center of the office. "People get up and cheer and clap," says Kelly Weight, a business development director. Other teams in the company have their own celebration rituals, such as chest bumps or victory dances.

At a previous employer, I always liked it when the marketing guy would walk up to our whiteboard and write down an order from a customer -- by the end of campaign, it became a rather fun thing for him to walk up to the whiteboard, pick up the red pen and announce (via writing) another large order. I kept telling him that we needed a bell next to the whiteboard, but him picking up the pen was just as good, really.

Academic groups have their interesting rituals. I've heard of bottles of champagne for every synthesized natural product or (via a member of the Doyle group) a coffee mug per publication. I've even heard of a week off (or was it two weeks) per publication? (Boy, that would be a good motivator.)

I think the ritual that I could do without would be the 'project beard':

...To speed up work on a stalled music-website project, Tony Kimberly and Matt Bernier, co-founders of a Kansas City, Kan., Web-development company called Spotted Koi, cooked up a ritual—vowing not to shave or cut their hair until they finished. In the next 2½ months, Mr. Bernier, who usually wears his hair cut short, says "I looked like I had lived on the streets for a couple of years." 

He adds, "Friends said, 'Seriously, are you ever going to shave?'  

Mr. Kimberly says his project beard was "tremendously itchy" with a "strange-looking" combination of brown and red hair. A few weeks into the ritual, his girlfriend asked, "So, when is this over?" The social pressure and his dislike for his beard "gave us motivation," he says. They finished the project and later repeated the ritual on another new product.

Uhhh, no thanks. 

Process Wednesday: when "old school" meant a bunker

How do you know when things might be a little dicey? When your operators have to get into a bunker to produce your desired intermediates.

From the compiled reviews [1] in the book Organometallics in Process Chemistry (emphasis mine), a look at the production of ethyl diazoacetate for the synthesis of the mixture of insecticidal compounds known as allethrins in the 1950s:

As mentioned previously, the generation and handling of ethyl diazoacetate on large scale is not a trivial operation. To mitigate the risk to human operators, early manufacturers were reported to conduct the cyclopropanation reaction by remote control from behind concrete barriers. 

Another creative processing approach to minimize the handling of and exposure to ethyl diazoacetate is embodied in a patent from ICI. They used a large excess of [the above diene] as the organic solvent to extract the EDA as it was generated. After removing the aqueous phase, copper was added as a catalyst and the mixture was heated to effect cyclopropanation. The excess diene was recycled into the process during the distillative isolation of the product. 

I think it is instructive to me how one of the ways to both maximize throughput and minimize operations is to run the reaction basically neat; that the cyclopropanation wouldn't run without copper present is probably an important aspect of the reaction as well.

Perhaps it is not a surprise that the review notes next that in 1975, another company patented a continuous process to generate the desired intermediate above. Good on them -- no one wants to run reactions from a bunker, I'll bet.

1. DelMonte, A.J.; Dowdy, E.D.; Watson, D.J. "Development of Transition Metal-Mediated Cyclopropanation Reactions." Topics Organomet. Chem. 2004, 6, 97-122. 

Morning links

Some morning links to tide you over:

• Are you a hiring manager? Andre asks that you please consider setting an appointment when checking references, instead of cold-calling. 
• Ash says that scientists need to hear from psychologists and sociologists to better understand how to frame issues to talk to the public. 
• Need a summer playlist? See Arr Oh has got you covered; Organometallica helps with a Spotify version as well. 

See you in a bit. 

Good luck, Barnes and Noble...

While I'm waiting for a moment to write up this week's IFF and DPT, a random comment by Matt Yglesias about Barnes and Noble:

Because Barnes & Noble is a very successful chain of bookstores, except the number of people who want to buy physical books is plummeting. A digital bookstore can stock a much larger inventory with almost no warehousing costs, and can deliver the book of your choice to you within seconds. What's more, a Kindle Paperwhite or a iPad Mini is lighter than a book and yet can contain many books, greatly facilitating travel. Even better, you can highlight passages of your digital books and annotate them and then have all your annotations available to you on all your digital devices. The only real value of physical books at this point is a kind of nostalgia-soaked experience, and people want to experience that at a friendly independently owned bookstore not an impersonal chain.

I like an independent bookstore, I really do. But growing up in suburbia, Barnes and Noble was the awesomest thing alive. I actually sat in Barnes and Noble on a comfy chair and read Executive Orders by Tom Clancy cover-to-cover when I was a teenager. Can't get away with that at the supermarket!

I'm pretty old fashioned, so I like to give books as gifts. I like to drive to my local independent bookstore (who am I kidding? -- it's basically the only one still open in my town), browse and wait for a moment of inspiration. My kids will probably never have that experience. 

The high-skilled immigration debate hits C&EN

This week, Andrea Widener and Linda Wang of C&EN tackle the high-skilled immigration debate. The 4 articles are definitely worth reading, if only to get a flavor of the statistics and scope of the debate. They are as follows:

• Ms. Widener's look at the debate amongst economists about STEM immigration. 
• Linda Wang's story on the variety of folks affected by the immigration debate, including a diary of one chemist from Pakistan. 
• A brief overview of the different kinds of visas, by Linda Wang. 

The statistics: A short overview from the Widener story:

• Just 2.2% of approved H1B visas for fiscal year 2011 were for "mathematical and physical sciences", which includes chemists. 
• The "pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing" sector accounted for 0.7% of H1B applications; by contrast, the computer systems design sector accounted for 39.5%. 
• Doctoral degree holders (from abroad) accounted for just 11% of total applications, with 83% holding just a bachelor's or a master's degree. 
• 64.8% of H1B visas holders were from either India (58%) or China (8.8%). 

I was surprised to see the story lead off with a reminder of the relatively high unemployment rate of ACS members for 2012 at 4.2%. 

Wouldn't it be nice to get some facts on STEM exits?: From a former university president, a comment about students who leave:

What is truly important is to have an immigration system that allows the best and brightest to come to the U.S. and stay here, says James Duderstadt, former University of Michigan president who has been on several National Academy of Sciences panels that recommend immigration reform. Most of the industrialized world has already made it easier for highly skilled scientists to immigrate, he says. The U.S. has not. 

“We end up paying a lot for foreign students’ graduate education and then we show them the door,” Duderstadt says. “These people with advanced skills are worth their weight in gold.”

I would really like to know if/how this happens. I know that qualified chemists end up going back to their countries of origin due to terrible immigration circumstances (I have seen it myself!), but it seems to be oft-rumored and relatively few sourced statistics exist. 

[If these people are worth their weight in gold, why are we paying so poorly for postdocs?] 

Bravely done, Air Products: I was surprised to see an actual chemical company decide to comment on the issue on the record, and here we are:

It is those highly skilled workers that the chemical company Air Products & Chemicals seeks out. “Our objective is to find the right talent and to be blind to the circumstances around them,” says Martha Collins, director of the Global Technology Centers at the company. And if the perfect employee happens to need a visa, the company will work with them to make that happen.

I see that Air Products did indeed hire a couple of senior research chemists at 95k via the H1B system back in 2009 (search here for "Air Products" and 2009, 2nd page of results); seems to me that it's a fair wage for Allentown, PA, but what do I know? 

An unexpected comment: Lamar Smith is better known for some of his more controversial statements about science and science funding. I hadn't heard about this one: 

And some degree fields don’t need more workers. The life sciences are one of the sectors where wages are falling in most analyses. Last year it was specifically excluded from a bill expanding H-1B visas offered by the Judiciary Committee chair at the time, Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas). The bill passed the House but was not taken up in the Senate and died at the end of 2012.

I would not have expected that. Can't say I disagree, really. 

Finally, the human toll: From Linda Wang's article, a sad comment about international Ph.D. students wanting to go home for a visit: 

And going home to visit? Forget it. Pius O. Adelani, a postdoc in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, who is from Nigeria, has not returned home since he arrived in the U.S. in 2007 to start a Ph.D. program. He knew there was a chance he could be denied a reentry visa, which would have meant that he’d have to terminate his Ph.D. training. “I didn’t want to take that risk,” he says. Now that he’s completed his Ph.D., he is hoping to visit his father and siblings in Nigeria soon.

There are a lot of sides to the STEM immigration debate; the corporations, the universities and the individual US worker all have their conflicting priorities. But it seems rather unkind of our system to seemingly deny students and postdoctoral fellows the ability to go home and see their family. I would really hope that there would be legislation or regulatory change to address this problem (why haven't the universities taken this up?). Surely, we can all agree that this, of all things, needs to change. 

All in all, a good effort from C&EN. Worth a read. 

This week's C&EN

Lots of interesting stuff in this week's C&EN:

• Looks like the Patent Office might escape sequestration, if Congress makes it happen. (by Glenn Hess)
• Carmen Drahl writes up the Charest v. Harvard/Myers story, with lots of great links to original documents (including Tetraphase's SEC filings.) 
• Non-classical carbocation captured via X-ray crystallography! (by Jyllian Kemsley)
• I enjoyed Carmen Drahl's writeup of the career development conference for chemical biologists held at UIUC recently. I think it is very interesting how they're addressing non-traditional jobs upfront. 
• UCLA's James Gibson disputing Dow/Banholzer's "Industry is 11 times safer than academia" stats in the letters section. Much as I might tend to hold CLS at arm's length, I think it's up to Dow to lay bare exactly how they derived their statistics. 
• An article on IP and cybersecurity by Glenn Hess has a small sidebar on how trade secrets can be tracked through TSCA and FOIA (emphasis mine): 

"Information not claimed as confidential can be made available to interested parties in a number of ways, including through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Most FOIA requests to EPA are made by companies, many of which are overseas, not curious members of the public, Newton points out. “In many cases, the confidentiality of chemical identity is all a specialty chemical producer has to remain in business,” he remarks. “The highly specialized nature of the chemistry performed by our sector makes our members particularly vulnerable.”

Count me a little skeptical (if the company wants to find out what's in your stuff, getting a sample and doing some testing seems to be more straightforward, no?). That said, an interesting point.

Unemployment rate flat, 195,000 non-farm payroll jobs added

Credit: Calculated Risk

Fresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the unemployment rate was unchanged in June, staying at 7.6%, with the broader U6 measurement of unemployment up 0.5% to 14.3%.

Chemical manufacturing employment was down slightly by 500 jobs to 794,500 employed.

The press is/will be focused on the payroll numbers, including the nice upwards revisions to April and May payroll numbers.

From the employment situation: "In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks
or more) was essentially unchanged at 4.3 million. These individuals accounted for 36.7 percent of the unemployed. Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed has declined by 1.0 million."

Both employment participation ratio and the labor force participation rate were flat, which is undesirable.

The unemployment rate ticked up slightly (0.1%) for college graduates to 3.9%, which is basically where it has been for quite some time (since February.) The unemployment rate dropped 0.4% for those who did not graduate from high school, down to 10.7%.

It strikes me that we've basically been on a flat trend with respect to employment (see the Calculated Risk graph above), with us crossing the 0.0% barrier sometime in late 2014. Yikes.

Thanks, as always, to Calculated Risk for the graph. 

An incredibly astute observation about Ph.D. chemists

From a long-time observer of Ph.D. chemists who is not a chemist:

"You guys like to one-up each other a lot and prove that you're smarter than the other guy. 'No, you can't use that to titrate the...' You [CJ] are smarter than that -- you should quit playing that game."

I have nothing to say to that really -- the observer is correct.  

Annoying high-tech unemployment tropes

There's a New York Times article from a few days ago about the recent immigration/technology kerfluffle that doesn't really have much new to offer the debate. There's the heart-rending stories of out-of-work older engineers and the constant protestations from the think tank community that yes, there isn't much direct evidence that high-skilled immigration hurts American employees -- if you've been reading about this issue, it's pretty standard (and in the case of the think tank papers, irritating).  I found a few things to be worth comment, though. From the article:

It is true that for certain categories of engineers, wages are not going up as sharply as one would expect if good engineering talent were indeed hard to find. But it is also true that engineers with certain specialties, like software development, are hard to find. 

Intel, for instance, which has more than 50,000 employees in the United States, said it has 1,000 openings. Motorola Solutions said it was scrambling for software engineers. And unemployment among technology professionals is generally about half the national average, buttressing the industry’s claims.

First, is anyone else annoyed by companies complaining about their numbers of openings? I don't really think it's indicative of very much; perhaps I am incorrect. I do believe in advertised openings, even though those can be tricky too -- there doesn't seem to be much incentive to spend money to advertise some position that doesn't really exist.* But I'm really crazed by this comparison of the high-tech community's unemployment rate versus the national average. That's a meaningless comparison by the New York Times -- are we really going to compare a group of people with highly in-demand skills and 85+% bachelor's degrees against a society where 30% have a bachelor's degree? (If you compare against all bachelor degree holders (linked helpfully by the Times themselves, 4th chart down), the gap between non-STEM B.S. holders (4.4%) and STEM/computer B.S. holders (3%) narrows to something more realistic.)

Finally, there's this gem from Intel in the article:

Already, the fight over high-skilled immigration has led to arguments and counterarguments on the Senate floor, with one side warning that jobs will go to workers from overseas and the other rallying for Americans first. 

But Ardine Williams, the vice president for human resources at Intel, said that hiring Americans is not always practical. Asked about hiring unemployed engineers in this country, she said, “I encounter those folks as well. They are skilled and have expertise outside of an area where we need engineers. In some cases they haven’t kept their skills current.”

Well, I find that supporting tax cuts for large profitable multi-national consumer electronics firms is getting less and less practical, myself. Perhaps we could come to some agreement, yes?

*I'm sure there are reasons, and that you'll tell me about them. 

Process Wednesday: nice to see quality driving a purchasing decision

While perusing the process literature, it was fun to see a group of chemists make a purchasing decision based on quality, not on cost. From an older Org. Process Res. Dev. article [1]

One other problem which we addressed was the quality of 8 (5-chloro-2-pentanone). All of our initial work had been carried out using the distilled ketone, since the commercial grade was only 85% pure and contained a large amount of black residue. Although the latter did not adversely affect the reaction, it was found that the impure material caused problems with the workup and isolation due to the presence of intractable impurities. Thus, we determined that the quality of the 5-chloro-2-pentanone (8) had a significant impact on the reaction in terms of the ease of purification of 2. Fortunately, we were able to locate a supplier of 8 who provided us with material of sufficient quality to be used “as is”.

One of the funny things about chemical manufacturing is learning about what matters and what doesn't; I wonder how long it took them to figure out that it was the impure material that was making their lives more difficult, and how they found a better supplier. (Specs! It's always the specs!)

1. Slade, J.; Parker, D.; Girgis, M.; Wu, R.; Joseph, S.; Repic, O. "Optimization and Scale-Up of the Grandberg Synthesis of 2-Methyltryptamine." Org. Process Res. Dev. 2007, 11, 721-725.

Daily Pump Trap: 7/2/13 edition

Good morning! Between June 17 and July 1, there were 50 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 11 (22%) are academically connected and 34 (68%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Sugar Land, TX: Fairmount Minerals is looking for a polymer research associate; M.S./Ph.D. desired, 3-5 years experience.

Sherbrooke, Quebec: Transzyme Pharma is looking for a Ph.D. medicinal chemist with 5+ years experience in the field.

New York, NY: D.E. Shaw Research is, once again, looking for computational chemists and the like. I would love to talk to people who know something about what their work is like...

No more kudos: GSK is once again advertising its ESPRIT managerial recruitment program for Ph.D. chemists. They seem to have changed a single word in their ad (emphasis mine):

It is heavily backed by our senior management team, and it will give you incredible standing as a chemist among your peers.

Let me be clear -- it will give you the envy of your peers as to your salary, but entering the business/management track will not give you "standing as a chemist."

[In all honesty, I think a program like this is admirable, in that I support all efforts of companies to train their employees and groom them for management positions. However, I think that it should be aimed at entry-level folks internally, not externally. Call me crazy.] 

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/2/13 edition

Good morning! Between June 25 and July 1, there were 6 academic positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. The numbers:

Postdocs: 1
Tenure-track: 2
Temporary faculty: 1
Lecturers: 1
Staff: 1
US/non-US: 6/0

Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota's Center for Drug Design is looking for a postdoc in medicinal chemistry for work on an anti-viral project; 36-38k offered.

Northfield, MN: Carleton College desires a chemistry stockroom manager. No educational requirements listed in their ad -- B.S./M.S.?

Huh: I'm pretty sure this director position is at some sort of fracking-related research institute at Penn State.

LML time: Well, friends, it's time for the Last Minute Lecturer! Our first entrant for the year is Case Western (Cleveland, OH), who's looking for a Instructor/Senior Instructor. Deadline for application is July 26, with teaching to start in the 2013/2014 school year.

Also, Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY) is looking for a 1-year visiting assistant professor in physical chemistry for the 2013/14 school year. 

Is a professor in a fiduciary relationship with a graduate student or postdoc?

In case you haven't heard, Paul at ChemBark has recently broken the story of Harvard chemistry professor Andrew Myers being sued for a lot of money by one of his former graduate students, Dr. Mark Charest -- upwards of tens of millions of dollars, it looks like.

Very long story, shortened: Charest and coworkers were grad students and postdocs of Andrew Myers. Collaboratively, they developed a new route to tetracycline antibiotics; this route was patented and published by Myers and coworkers and Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals was born from their work. When it came time to split royalties from the patent, Professor Myers announced (via the Harvard patent folks) that he was taking 50% of the royalties and the other students/postdocs would be free to split it as they saw fit. Mark Charest was unhappy with this arrangement, but was ultimately forced to agree to taking 18.75% of the royalties. He filed a lawsuit on this last Friday in federal court. (Lots more details are in the complaint.)

You can read Paul's comments here, the short Web article here and the complaint from Dr. Charest's lawyers here. I would also like to associate myself with Paul's comments about the vulnerability of graduate students by quoting it approvingly:

It will be interesting to see how this story plays out, but it would seem to be yet another cautionary tale that when you are a graduate student, you are in a position of incredible weakness. As is said, your advisor holds your paycheck in one hand and your letter of recommendation in the other. And in case you are naive, the chains don’t get unshackled just because you’ve graduated. You’re still going to need that letter of recommendation for future jobs, so if your old boss wants to take 50% of the royalties, what’s to stop him? 

Nothing.

I wish I could find something to argue with in there, but I can't. (Well, okay, I think that 5 years after you leave your PI, their words begin to lose a fair bit of weight, and they should begin dropping off your CV as a reference. (I mean, seriously, how much do they know about your current job performance?) Problem is, of course, is that the more prominent the professor, the more likely it is that they'll stay on your CV.) 

What I found interesting is one of the final statements by Dr. Charest's lawyers on page 35 of the document:

259. Dr. Myers was Dr. Charest’s PhD advisor.
260. Dr. Myers advised Dr. Charest and headed the lab in which he worked on the research that led to the Pioneering Tetracycline Patents.
261. Dr. Myers had a fiduciary duty to Dr. Charest.
262. Dr. Myers breached his fiduciary duty to Dr. Charest by using his position as a fiduciary to secure more royalties for himself to the detriment of Dr. Charest.

I was surprised to learn that, in the view of Dr. Charest's lawyers, his PI had a fiduciary duty to his student. That term is supposed to invoke quite a trusting relationship -- here's Wikipedia: 

Typically, a fiduciary prudently takes care of money for another person. One party, for example a corporate trust company or the trust department of a bank, acts in a fiduciary capacity to the other one, who for example has funds entrusted to it for investment. In a fiduciary relationship, one person, in a position of vulnerability, justifiably vests confidence, good faith, reliance and trust in another whose aid, advice or protection is sought in some matter. In such a relation good conscience requires the fiduciary to act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of the one who trusts.

It's easy for me to think of my (deep, loving, Boglehead-esque) relationship with the mutual fund company Vanguard as a fiduciary one. It's rather difficult for me to think of a professor as being in a fiduciary relationship with a student. However, a conversation with @NCharles on Twitter reveals two law articles which argue that the picture is murky, but in cases where intellectual property is in play, professors seem to be in a fiduciary role with their students and have found to be in breach of their fiduciary duties. From the 2nd link above, an interesting comment about a case of a biology grad student (Chou) and her adviser (Roizman) and some patents that the adviser filed for, without including her on them (emphases mine):

...From 1983 to 1996, Chou was a doctoral student and subsequently a post-doctoral research assistant at the University of Chicago’s Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. Roizman acted as chairman of this department and as Chou’s advisor. [snip] 

This dispute commenced in February of 1991, when Chou allegedly suggested to Roizman that her discoveries should be patented and he opposed the idea. At the time the discussion occurred, however, Roizman had already filed a patent application for the inventions, listing himself as the sole inventor. In 1996, Roizman asked Chou to resign, and told her if she did not resign, he would fire her.

...The appellate court upheld Chou’s claim against Roizman for breach of fiduciary duty, recognizing that “a fiduciary relationship may . . . arise from the special circumstances of the parties’ relationship, such as when one party justifiably places trust in another so that the latter gains superiority and influence over the former.” The rapport between Chou and Roizman suggests a fiduciary relationship between the two parties. For thirteen years, Roizman was Chou’s supervisor in the laboratory as well as her educational advisor. A long-term supervisory relationship such as this, especially during the initial development of a student’s career, should indicate a fiduciary duty on the part of the supervising professor. Further, the court specifically found certain factors present in the relationship indicating Roizman’s fiduciary duty to Chou. Specifically, the court determined that there was a disparity in the two parties’ experience and roles and that Roizman had the power to make decisions regarding the patenting of Chou’s inventions. 

Well, that was a bit of information that I was not aware of while in graduate school! I believed (and still do) that my adviser had, within reason, my best interests in mind. I did not extend that to the fair division of a crapton of money, which is the realm of the relevant Charest/Myers case (Tetraphase's initial funding was for $25 million.) Money unleashes people's greed -- and it always has. In this sense, this case is sad, but not surprising.

While I would really be interested to see documents from the discovery phase, or how a trial court or a trial jury might react to the very imbalanced relationship between adviser and student, I don't really expect anything to come out of this case, other than a quiet settlement. Readers, what do you think? 

C&EN: Chemical manufacturing employment flat in 2012

From this week's C&EN (article by the Business Department), the facts and figures of chemical industry employment for 2012 (which includes the pharmaceutical industry):

In 2012, the overall U.S. manufacturing sector saw a modest 1.6% increase in jobs, or 193,000 positions. The uptick did not reach the chemical industry, however, where payrolls were flat overall. And revised statistics from the Department of Labor show that chemical employment decreased by 3,000 workers in 2011 compared with 2010. [snip] 

...The chemical industry, which spent most of the 2000s boosting productivity, is now worried about slow global economic growth and is reluctant to hire. Still, in the U.S., the jobs climate has been more stable recently than during the past decade, which saw an average 1.7% yearly decrease in chemical employment. 

Meanwhile, the global pharmaceutical industry continued to lay off workers last year, including in R&D positions. Job cuts were announced at AstraZeneca, Novartis, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Johnson & Johnson, Human Genome Sciences, and Sanofi. Pink-slip deliveries can be difficult to track, however, and official U.S. statistics show that pharma employment was unchanged in 2012.

Good news all around, I see. Sigh. (Hopefully, next year's news is better?) 

By the way, is dentistry a STEM field?

How does the Senate immigration bill (that has passed the Senate) define "STEM"? (oh, how I hate that term.) Here's the section that I found (page 661):

INCREASE IN ALLOCATION FOR STEM NON-IMMIGRANTS.—Section 214(g)(5)(C) (8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(5)(C)) is amended to read as follows:  

‘‘(C) has earned a master’s or higher, in a field  of science, technology, engineering, or math included in the Department of Education’s Classification of Instructional Programs taxonomy within the summary groups of computer and information sciences and support services, engineering, mathematics and statistics, and physical sciences, from a United States institution of higher education (as defined in section 101(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1001(a)) until the number of aliens who are exempted from such numerical limitation during 4 such year exceed 25,000.’’

In reading the Issa*/House Judiciary committee (?) version of the STEM green card bill, a slightly different version in a definitions section (page 6):

The term ‘field of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics’ means a field included in the Department of Education’s Classification of Instructional Programs taxonomy within the summary groups of computer and information sciences and support services, engineering, biological and biomedical sciences, mathematics and statistics, physical sciences, and the series geography and cartography (series 45.07), advanced/graduate dentistry and oral sciences (series 51.05) and nursing (series 51.16).

Is dentistry a STEM field? Nursing? Yes, they require a deep understanding of Science and Mathematics, but it is not what I consider Science, or Technology, or Engineering or Mathematics. Health care is its own field, with its own terminology (and its own immigration issues, I might note). It's all very exasperating to me.

This is why this term is so appallingly stupid -- for some reason, it means A Good Thing, and so all sorts of things get shoehorned into STEM.

[Hey, what happened to the biomedical sciences section in the Senate version? I gotta understand this stuff better.]

*Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), member of the House Judiciary Committee

There's probably going to be a STEM green card bill signed by the president

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, a little factlet that's being lost in the news about the Senate passing the immigration reform bill:

Foreigners who earned Ph.D.'s at American universities would be eligible for green cards, while foreign students who completed master's degrees or Ph.D.'s in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (the STEM fields) could petition for a card. 

"The real game changer in the bill for universities is in the green-card section, where advanced-degree graduates for STEM fields have green cards stapled to their diplomas," said Craig Lindwarm, assistant director for international issues and Congressional and governmental affairs at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.

Immigration reform is headed over to the House of Representatives. Very few people believe that the House has the inclination (or the organization, for that matter) to pass the Senate bill. It is my vague understanding that they're much more likely to do this in piecemeal fashion. And what do I see coming out of the House Judiciary Committee? (via The Hill):

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday passed a tech-backed immigration bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on a 20 to 14 vote. 

The bill would increase the number of H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, as well as make 55,000 green cards available to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced technical degrees. But to offset making those green cards available, the bill would eliminate the diversity visa and siblings of U.S. citizens.

The House bill (or at least, the Issa version) is here; the Senate bill that has been voted on is here. I have no idea whether or not the House will consider low-skill immigration, but I think it's quite likely that some form of high-skill immigration (i.e. expansion of H-1B visas, green cards for international students who graduate with Ph.D.s and M.S.s) will make it through the House and the Senate and be signed by the President. I should note that I am neither an immigration legislation specialist, or a Congressional expert.

Gee, I hope this works out for everyone involved. Certainly, the tech companies will get what they want (and, seeing as how they're the source of much future economic growth, perhaps they should be at the front of the line?) But at what cost?

Best wishes to all of us. 

Posing with hands

Busy day today, but a couple of posts coming this weekend, I hope. Via the National Meeting e-mail (tempted to click unsubscribe...), check out Alan Alda and Alton Brown, who will both be attending the Fall ACS conference in Indianapolis.

Hands -- it's what makes a face. 

I love these sorts of ads

Via LinkedIn, a human resources person that got really bored at Chromatic Technologies in Colorado Springs: 

We are looking for another genius to add to our team who is capable of becoming an expert in: 

1. Microencapsulation, 2. Ink formulation, 3. Coating formulation, 4. Desire to work in research laboratory, 5. Project management, 6. Comfortable testing products in the field with customers, 7. Smart materials, 8. Organic Chemistry

We need a person who has: 1. Passion, 2. Solid work ethic, 3. A capacity to work tirelessly to help the team, 4. A value for personal relationships, 5. Willingness to work overtime to complete tasks, 6. Solution mentality, 7. A unique perspective, 8. Serious drive to innovate, 9. Intellectual curiosity, 10. A positive attitude to solving hard problems, 11. A love for creating things, 12. Resilience to set-backs, 13. Tack [sic] record of success 

Desired Skills & Experience: PhD or Masters in Organic Chemistry - but someone who is blindingly intelligent, innovative, passionate, and willing to commit themselves to a fantastic company are welcome to apply! 

Company Description: World's leader in innovation. The best - and still not satisfied. Experts in thermochromic inks and coatings.

Uh, wow.