Rewarding, I'll bet

Before I forget, a nice profile of Salvatore DiRosa, an Italian medicinal chemist in last week's C&EN (article by Andrea Widener), including finding a position after a site closure: 

2013: Surviving a company’s demise
 La Rosa had been at Siena [CJ's note: Siena Biotech, in Tuscany] for nine years when the company, which was owned by a bank, fell victim to the recent global financial crisis. “I was still there, but I knew what was happening. It was one of those situations where you say, ‘What am I doing here? I’m waiting for this situation to collapse.’ ” 

Today: Finding cures for children’s tumors
A former colleague offered La Rosa a job in New York City at the nonprofit Children’s Tumor Foundation, which supports research into neurofibromatosis, a benign tumor that can be debilitating. Now La Rosa is vice president for R&D. Working with patients and doctors is completely different from working in industry, he says. And he loves it. “There is a really strong drive to do something that is useful for patients today.”

Italian biotech companies can be owned by banks? Huh. 

Smart concept introduced in today's NYT on the STEM Ph.D. glut

It's a good day for scientists when the New York Times' Gina Kolata publishes on the glut of Ph.D.s in science: 

The United States is producing more research scientists than academia can handle. 

We have been told time and again that the United States needs more scientists, but when it comes to some of the most desirable science jobs — tenure-track professorships at universities, where much of the exciting work is done — there is such a surplus of Ph.D.s that in the most popular fields, like biomedicine, fewer than one in six has a chance of joining the club in the foreseeable future. 

While they try to get a foot in the door, many spend years after getting their Ph.D. as poorly paid foot soldiers in a system that can afford to exploit them. Even someone as brilliant as Emmanuelle Charpentier, who in 2015 became head of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology after a momentous discovery in gene editing, spent the previous 25 years moving through nine institutions in five countries.

The article goes on to talk about a good idea from operations researcher Richard C. Larson (at MIT):

Dr. Larson and his colleagues calculated R₀s for various science fields in academia. There, R₀ is the average number of Ph.D.s that a tenure-track professor will graduate over the course of his or her career, with an R₀ of one meaning each professor is replaced by one new Ph.D. The highest R₀ is in environmental engineering, at 19.0. It is lower — 6.3 — in biological and medical sciences combined, but that still means that for every new Ph.D. who gets a tenure-track academic job, 5.3 will be shut out. In other words, Dr. Larson said, 84 percent of new Ph.D.s in biomedicine “should be pursuing other opportunities” — jobs in industry or elsewhere, for example, that are not meant to lead to a professorship. 

Here's Professor Larson's paper, which I regret I had not heard about until now. For readers of this blog, it's mostly not new information, but it is still worth a read. Good stuff, too late. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/14/16 edition

A few of the academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs recently:

Champaign, IL: Someone in chemical engineering at UIUC is looking for a synthetic organometallic chemist for a postdoctoral position.

Last Minute Lecturer: Damien College (Amherst, NY) is looking for a visiting professor of chemistry, to begin in August 2016.

Daytona Beach, FL: I can't quite tell what this non-TT position at Embry-Riddle is, but it's laboratory coordinator like, even as it is called "assistant professor."

Boston, MA: Northeastern University is searching for a chair of its Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Wolfpack searching: North Carolina State University, also searching for chemistry chair.

Detroit, MI: Biochemistry/molecular biology-type postdoc at Wayne State University.

Next year, already?: Amherst (Amherst, MA) is looking for an assistant professor in analytical inorganic chemistry. The University of Portland (Portland, OR) is looking for an assistant professor in organic chemistry. Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA) is looking for two assistant professors, one in analytical chemistry, the other in biochemistry.

Anyone know anything about brain cancer treatment at Duke?

A reader would like to know about the reputation of the Tisch Brain Center at Duke University Hospital? (not for them, but for a friend) 

How does one evaluate hospitals and their effectiveness for treatment of life-threatening diseases, anyway? 

Drug tests use cobalt thiocyanate?

I promise it's not Recreational Drug Week on the blog, but I did want to point out this long New York Times Magazine article about field tests for drugs, and how those field tests can give false positives (and how those false positives can ruin people's lives): 

The field tests seem simple, but a lot can go wrong. Some tests, including the one the Houston police officers used to analyze the crumb on the floor of Albritton’s car, use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners. Other tests use three tubes, which the officer can break in a specific order to rule out everything but the drug in question — but if the officer breaks the tubes in the wrong order, that, too, can invalidate the results. The environment can also present problems. Cold weather slows the color development; heat speeds it up, or sometimes prevents a color reaction from taking place at all. Poor lighting on the street — flashing police lights, sun glare, street lamps — often prevents officers from making the fine distinctions that could make the difference between an arrest and a release. 

There are no established error rates for the field tests, in part because their accuracy varies so widely depending on who is using them and how. In Las Vegas, authorities re-examined a sampling of cocaine field tests conducted between 2010 and 2013 and found that 33 percent of them were false positives.

(Later in the article, a pretty decent description of mass spectrometry.)

I'm surprised that there hasn't been a switch to an antibody-based test, but I am guessing there are both cost and technical issues there. 

Job posting: research scientist, Living Proof, Cambridge, MA

From the inbox, another full-time position at Living Proof:

This position requires the successful candidate to be an adept, hands-on chemist with extensive experience in materials and polymer, polymer materials modification and characterization, and formulation development. 

Fundamental understanding of material synthesis, characterization, structure-property relationships and utilization towards application development is also required. 

Ph.D. in Chemical engineering, Polymer science, Material Science, Chemistry or a related discipline. 2+ years industry or equivalent experience developing novel compounds or materials including polymers, solvents, drug delivery agents and formulations, polymeric systems, and related material development.

Full description here. Best wishes to those interested. 

Ask CJ: What if I like pot?

From the inbox, a question that I would have never thought about until now: 

I am a [redacted] year graduate student, hoping to get out of my institution with a PhD and obtain a job in industry in the next year. In my undergraduate and graduate years, I have always used marijuana responsibly. I enjoy pot, and its not something I want to give up. I understand that most industrial positions require an initial drug screening test, but my question is this: 

Do you know how regularly your average commercial company would test its chemists? Are there professionals in the chemistry field, who can smoke pot and survive? Do you know of any chemists who are open about their THC use (personally or professionally)? Have you heard of strict testing policies etc? 

Just looking to get some idea of how thorough companies' "no tolerance" policy actually are... Should I expect to give this up forever, or lose my job/become blacklisted... Or are there other chemists such as myself, who use pot responsibly, off the clock, under the radar?  

Thank you!
Your anonymous 420 friend.

Anon420, I honestly have no idea, having never used the stuff. I have been drug tested once (at an initial drug screening, when I worked for a Big Pharma briefly), and never tested again. I am positive that there are professionals who work in both the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, smoke pot and do just fine, but I haven't met any of them.

I haven't heard of strict or routine drug tests, but I am sure they exist as well. I presume that this is something where 1) if you get hired, you will be facing a drug test before long, and 2) it will be the only time during your career with that organization where you will be drug tested. Smaller companies, who knows? Larger companies, I suspect it's the one-and-done sort of thing.

Readers, surely you have more experience in these matters than I do. Your thoughts? 

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles from this week's issue of C&EN:

• Cover story: "The rise of organic LEDs" by Jean-François Tremblay
• Did not know iridium was $19/gram - yikes! 
• I really enjoyed this profile of the DEA efforts to track "designer drugs" by Erika Gebel Berg. 
• If you want to read different parts of the refrigerants industry dog one another (which is fun!), this Marc Reisch piece on ammonia refrigeration is a great start. 
• (Anyone ever notice how "chemical incident at grocery store" is always about ammonia leaking from the coolers?)
• Jeff Johnson covers a tempest over a PNAS paper about methane leaks around natural gas extraction sites. 
• ACS director-at-large Ingrid Montes, on gender disparities in STEM worldwide. 

Academic chemistry in Venezuela not doing so hot?

Via the science web magazine Undark, sad stories from Venezuela (by Aleszu Bajak):

...“Theft has become routine,” said Gioconda San Blas, a biochemist and president of Venezuela’s Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, who recently wrote about the looting of Venezuela’s laboratories. “And they’re not only stealing things. They’re taking biological samples. How do you replace the biological heritage of a laboratory?” 

[snip]  

“The federal sources of science funding are practically paralyzed due to an absence of economic funds,” said Alberto Fernandez, a chemistry professor at the the Central University. “We’re living a tragedy.” 

Gabriel Fraute, a chemistry graduate student at the University of the Andes in the western city of Mérida, said he had to pick up a job at a restaurant to help support his family while he tries to finish his thesis. In the laboratory, he says, things are dire. Virtually no reagents are left in the country, making chemical experiments of any kind difficult, if not impossible. 

“We’re very behind in instruments. They’re very old, broken and difficult to repair,” he said. “It’s also difficult to access scientific journals.”

Yikes. I know things haven't looked so great for Venezuela in the post-Chavez area (and it's not like I presumed that Venezuelan academic science was particularly well-funded), but this sounds pretty dire. I wonder - where do Venezuela graduate students go to study? Brazil? The United States? Readers, what say you? 

The View from Your Hood: UIUC roof edition

Credit: Anonymous, "("The Precipice"?)"

An anonymous submission from the chemistry department at UIUC.

(got a View from Your Hood submission? Send it in (with a caption, please) at chemjobber@gmail.com; runs every other Friday.)

UCCLS: Static electricity, not a spark from a pressure gauge, triggered the UHawaii explosion

Last week, the University of Hawaii - Manoa released the University of California Center for Laboratory Safety's report on the explosion of a hydrogen/oxygen mixture. The link goes to the short news conference and the reports from UCCLS.) Jyllian Kemsley has written a blog post about it, as well as a short C&EN article that I quote from here (update: emphasis mine): 

An electrostatic discharge between postdoctoral researcher Thea Ekins-Coward and a gas storage tank containing hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide likely caused an explosion at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, in which Ekins-Coward lost one of her arms, according to a report by the University of California Center for Laboratory Safety (UCCLS). 

UH hired UCCLS to conduct an independent investigation of the March 16 accident and released the report on July 1. Another investigation by the Honolulu Fire Department, released in April, concluded that the cause was a spark from the pressure gauge. UCCLS dug deeper than the fire department and contracted with an outside laboratory to recreate and test the experimental setup. Those tests ruled out all causes other than a static discharge...

I have much more to say on this, but I wanted to note that the report has been released, and that the cause of the explosion was not the digital pressure gauge, as originally suspected by the Honolulu Fire Department.

UPDATE: Changed headline, adding bolding. 

Daily Pump Trap: 7/7/16 edition

A few of the positions posted on C&EN Jobs this week:

Cleveland, OH: Lubrizol, doing its traditional recruiting for 2 Ph.D. chemist positions; 90-95k offered.

London, UK: Nature, looking for a chemistry/chemical biology editor.

Fredonia, KS: Systech Environmental Corporation is looking for a laboratory manager; B.S. degree and 3-5 years experience in hazardous waste management desired.

Toronto Montreal, ON QC, Canada: The Structural Genomics Consortium is looking for a Ph.D. organic chemist to be a project manager; looks like an interesting position. 75-85k - how will that work out for you in Ontario?

(UPDATE: Interesting, the person who posted the ad at C&EN Jobs added an extra 5K to the bottom end of the salary, compared to the ad on the SGC's website.)

Burnaby, BC: Fibria Innovations is looking for an experienced (M.S./Ph.D.?) elastomer chemist. 

This is bonkers: people are buying generic sofosbuvir API and making their own?

I am rather skeptical about this report, but it is fascinating and terrifying to think about. From the Economic Times of India (via the Endpoints e-mail newsletter): 

Patients are buying the active ingredients that go into making the medicine off the internet and making their own capsules. The 'Chinese rat poison' that patients are gleeful about is a reference to the active pharmaceutical ingredients purchased in bulk from a Chinese manufacturer off the internet, which they are using to formulate their doses.  

"A year ago, we did not have the access to Sofosbuvir combination, because of which we would buy the API from China and India and formulate our own drugs. Now, we see in countries like the US, Romania, Canada and the UK, patients are buying the API and formulating the Hep C drugs. People are doing this because desperate times call for desperate measures. The drug is too expensive for people to buy, which is forcing them to resort to these measures," Dr James Freeman founder of the FixHepCBuyers Club in Australia told ET.

...Jefferys explains buying a 12-week treatment of Indian generic Harvoni to treat Hep C genotype 1 will cost about $1,400, including shipping. To buy the API equivalent would be less than $750. The API route has also become an easier way to deceive the customs who get suspicious looking at the larger parcels of medicines that are shipped in bottles... 

For what it is worth, there actually is a FixHepCBuyers club website; dunno anything about that.

So here's what I want to know - who is making generic sofosbuvir in India? Is it coming out of the licensed plants in India? And if you're making generic sofosbuvir, who are you selling to? (If you're rolling your own sofosbuvir tablets, how do you know you're getting the right dose? You doing QC on that stuff? How do you even know it's the right material?)

Assuming this is actually happening, it seems that we find out what happens when you have relatively poor patients, unethical generic manufacturers, a high price for a drug and a globalized industry. Hard to say what to do (and I'm not a direct Gilead shareholder*), but it seems to me that lowering the price of Sovaldi to the point at which these generic manufacturers are run out of business might be a good idea.

Other weird questions: Has this happened before? If you were Gilead, what could you do about it? (Should you go and bust the sellers in India? Can you, from a legal perspective?)

*I'm sure I own Gilead stock indirectly via index funds. 

ACS Council considering changing bylaws to extend unemployment dues waiver to 3 years

Also in this week's C&EN, a short article by the chair of the Committee for Membership Affairs, James Landis, listing the available benefits to unemployed ACS members and a proposal for another one: 

The Committee on Membership Affairs (MAC) is a standing committee of the ACS Council that is assigned to promote membership recruitment and retention in ACS while ensuring that present members receive membership benefits and services at the highest levels possible. Part of this involves proposing and maintaining the bylaws for categories of membership and dues for the society. One of these categories is “unemployed.” In times of unemployment, a member may contact the national office and request a waiver of their dues while they are looking for work. Currently, the bylaws of the society allow the member to have dues waived for up to two years. 

During periods of economic dislocation such as the Great Recession and the globalization of the chemical industry, a person’s job search may take a lot of time. The Committee on Economic & Professional Affairs (CEPA) suggested that ACS’s bylaws be changed to allow unemployed members of the society to remain as members without paying dues for a period of up to three years. 

In 2015, MAC examined this proposal and prepared a market data study in which unemployed members were informed that they could request a third-year dues waiver. As a result, MAC obtained the below data: 

Consecutive years unemployed
One year of unemployment: 882
Two years of unemployment: 331
Three years of unemployment: 179 

Expanding this benefit to a third year prevented 179 members from being ­removed from membership in the society. Although this is only a small portion of membership, MAC considers this to be a worthwhile change to the bylaws because it is “the right thing to do” for the members. 

As a result, MAC has prepared a petition to amend the ACS bylaws to make this a permanent change. This petition will be presented to the ACS Council at the ACS national meeting in Philadelphia in August. Please let your local section and division councilors know if you are also in favor of this change.

It is not surprising that there are a very small number of unemployed members, compared to the number of domestic ACS members (80,000 or so.) I presume that many unemployed chemists do not bother to apply for a waiver and simply leave the ACS, so it's hard to imagine that they are included in these counts.

I favor keeping unemployed members within the Society, and helping them to find fulfilling work. Towards that end, I will be contacting my local section and divisional councilors, and I hope you will too. 

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles from this week's issue of C&EN:

• Cover: Deuterium drugs, by Bethany Halford
• I think the best part of the article was the scientist saying "people always come to me as if this is a new idea, and I have to warn them..." 
• Cheryl Hogue has a long article about the recent revision to TSCA.
• New helium field discovery (article by Marc Reisch)
• There's some media criticism to be done (not about C&EN!) about how this story played out in the scientific press. A lot of sites were just about straight copies of the press release, there were a couple of short articles that debunked the "helium shortage" narrative. 
• All of that said, I would really like to know what the overall helium industry thinks of this new discovery; I suspect it is not as world-shattering as the discoverers think, but we shall see! (I suspect they would say that it is the discovery method itself they are most pleased about.)
• The Charest settlement, covered by Jyllian Kemsley. 
• Don't miss the comment from the former director of med chem at the Broad Institute. 
• Bibiana Campos Seijo doesn't have happy things to say about Brexit.

Happy Independence Day!

It's Independence Day in the United States, which is a national holiday. We'll see you tomorrow!

Update: I've been looking for an opportunity to talk about this, and today seems appropriate. If you are a fan of American history (and musical theatre, and hiphop), you may enjoy the musical "Hamilton." A favorite song of mine on the album is "One More Time", which is probably the loveliest musical rendition of George Washington's Farewell Address to date. A lovely portion: 

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

Have a good Independence Day, folks. 

Bottle openers

Small useful things (links) (for a long weekend):

• Shane Caldwell writes on structural biology and antibiotic resistance.
• The latest from the Baran Lab.
• I enjoyed this career profile of chemist and small company CEO Jennifer Holmgren.
• Jyllian asks "When is an incident an accident?"
• I gotta say, an accident is something that happens in cars or with priceless family heirlooms. 
• A podcast on vitamin nomenclature from Chad Jones. 
• The latest from Stellen fuer Chemiker. 
• There's a lot to chew on in Derek's long post for the weekend. 
• I feel the same tension that Derek does; experts have their own agendas, but are usually more correct than not. (Is there an economic term for this? It's like the principal/agent problem, but not quite.)
• John's posting lots of good stuff - just keep scrolling.
• Pretty funny/interesting post on chemical structures and art from Mark Jones.
• Don't miss the video; NSFW-ish.
• Almost Like Science talks about Bill Gates and the business of microbiology.
• I really liked this post from Ash about Oppenheimer and his management style.
• Michelle Francl talks about chemistry in fiction. 

Have a great weekend! 

Astronaut sounds like a fun bench chemistry job

I really enjoyed Sarah Everts' interview in this week's C&EN with Helen Sharman, the first British citizen in space: 

What kinds of experiments did you do on Mir? 

We did a lot of agricultural experiments. They were very interested in growing food in space. And in the way magnetic fields affect plant growth. So how potato roots can be pulled in a certain direction if you have a strong enough magnetic field around them. We also had a miniature lemon tree. We wanted to see if we could keep it alive by supplying all the right gases. It was at the space station for three years but died eventually. We were also growing crystals of the protein luciferase. 

The experiments were fairly foolproof—I’d call us space technicians not scientists. Astronauts don’t invent the experiments. We don’t analyze the data, and by and large, we don’t make conclusions. We send the data down to Earth. But at least when we were carrying out the experiments, my chemistry degree made it easy for me to understand what was going on inside the boxes and what to do if there were problems. 

Can you explain why protein crystals grow better in space? 

Imagine crystallizing something on Earth. As bits of the solute move from the solution into the crystal, that local bit of solution becomes less dense—only very marginally. But it’s enough to effect convection currents in the solution. For strongly ionic solutions, convection doesn’t matter: The ionic bonds are so strong that convection currents don’t get in the way of forming nice ionic crystals. But proteins are big, floppy molecules, often with very weak interactions between the molecules that make up the crystal. Even very small convection currents create dislocations within protein crystals. Bits that aren’t quite right. 

In an orbiting space station, warm air doesn’t rise—you don’t get convection in anything. So there are no convection currents in a solution as crystals are crystallizing. You can grow protein crystals of a much higher quality at an orbiting space station, and you can grow them much bigger.

I wonder if there's ever been any efforts to launch a robotic crystallization laboratory? 

Daily Pump Trap: 6/30/16

A few of the positions posted on C&EN Jobs this past week: 

RTP, NC: AgBiome is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. formulation scientist. 

Non-profit process development?: About once or twice a year, there's a position like this one from the International Partnership for Microbicides; they're looking for an associate director of process chemistry to oversee CMO work on their commercial projects. Seems like that would be an interesting place for someone who had lots of pharma experience, and wanted to apply it to a different sector. 

Kennesaw, GA: Deerland Enzymes, Inc. is a leading specialty formulator and contract manufacturer of enzyme-based dietary supplements. They're looking for a M.S./Ph.D. research and development manager. 

(There are enzyme-based dietary supplements? How does that work?) 

New York City, NY: Not every day that you see two criminalist positions for the New York Medical Examiner's office. ($49k to $59k in New York City must not be easy; I wonder what that means, in terms of where you live and such.) 

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) "1000+", 415, 9004 and 25 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 2,174 positions for the job title "chemist", with 197 for "analytical chemist", 43 for "organic chemist", 31 for "research chemist", 33 for "medicinal chemist" and 7 for "synthetic chemist."

Beautiful Edmonton: Fair number of positions at Gilead in Edmonton in process development.

Pearl River, NY: I see Pfizer is hiring a Ph.D. analytical chemist to do nanoparticle/ADC research.

"Dow Announces Actions To Pee On Your Leg, Tell You It's Raining"

From the inbox, a truly remarkable press release from Dow: 

Dow Announces Actions to Drive Economic Growth in Great Lakes Bay Region 

MIDLAND, Mich. – June 28, 2016 – The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) announced today a series of actions it will take in collaboration with several state and local economic development and community organizations to spur local employment and bring additional economic development to the Great Lakes Bay Region (GLBR). These actions are intended to help offset the impacts from restructuring measures Dow will implement to enable faster and more efficient growth of Dow Corning’s Silicones business....

It's only down below that you get the gist of what they are saying (emphasis mine):

As a result of the Company’s global workforce reduction targets announced today, approximately 700 roles in the GLBR will be eliminated from the combined companies. These reductions will come from both Dow and Dow Corning, and are part of Dow’s overall cost reduction efforts related to the transaction. 

Notifications to affected employees in the Great Lakes Bay Region will start in the coming weeks, and will continue through the end of the third quarter of 2016. Roles will be eliminated on various timetables throughout the two-year integration period.

Here's press coverage from the Wall Street Journal and also C&EN's Alex Tullo. Here's a few other ways I could imagine rewording the headline for this press release:

1. Dow Announces Actions For Employees To Spend More Time With Their Children
2. Dow Announces Actions To Enrich Shareholders At All Costs
3. Dow Announces Actions For Scientists To Consider Bold New Alternative Careers
4. Dow Announces Actions To Help Employees Work For Themselves, Yay! 
5. Dow Announces Actions To Create Hundreds More Independent Chemicals Consultants
6. Dow Announces Actions To Reinvigorate Bored Michigan Area Unemployment Offices

Your turn! 

Can we just say for a moment how offensive it is that the press release can't even say "we're laying off 700 employees" or "we're firing 700 people", but "700 roles"? Corporate America has refined the euphemism to a Michelangelo-like artform.