The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 7 research/teaching positions and 8 teaching positions

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc or Daniyal Kiani) has 7 research/teaching positions and 8 teaching positions. 

Here is a link to the open thread for the year.

Biological weapons from AI?

Via Bloomberg, this article: 

Rocco Casagrande entered the White House grounds holding a black box slightly bigger than a Rubik’s Cube. Within it were a dozen test tubes with the ingredients that — if assembled correctly — had the potential to cause the next pandemic. An AI chatbot had given him the deadly recipe.

Casagrande, a biochemist and former United Nations weapons inspector, wasn’t planning to unleash a bioweapon in a room full of White House officials. He was there to brief them on the many ways artificial intelligence could teach users to make dangerous viruses. Tools like ChatGPT could help terrorists identify potent biological agents and secure the materials needed to make them, he told a room full of US officials in the spring of 2023. It wouldn’t be long before AI could not only help recreate existing pathogens, but also devise potentially more dangerous ones...

...Anthropic gave Casagrande free reign to brief the government on his findings. To get the point across to Biden administration officials, he turned to the MIT professor Esvelt to buy the synthetic DNA necessary to engineer one of the pathogens suggested by Claude. The materials, which aren’t infectious without technical lab work, weren’t hard to get. Claude even provided tips on how to purchase them.

Casagrande then assembled his black box of test tubes to carry into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, alongside the West Wing.

God it's easy to fool non-scientists. Synthetic DNA - eyeroll. You may as well have brought a raw steak or a strawberry plant and said that you could assemble your AI doom virus from that as well. 

Call me hopelessly naive, but I am genuinely unimpressed with AI systems as a force multiplier for those who wish to engineer new chemical or biological weapons. If you have the intent to make biological weapons, university libraries and obscure veterinary collections are probably a much larger source of useful information than chatGPT or whatever AI program needs a hit of publicity-via-alarmism. 

Maybe I'll eat my words when we are all dying from COVID-GPT but I doubt it.

Accidental discharge of 2500 gallons sodium bisulfite disrupts Oregon city's sewage treatment

Via the Salem Statesman Journal, this news: 

City of Salem workers disposing of unwanted chemicals Wednesday accidentally disrupted biological processes at the city’s sewage treatment plant, possibly increasing bacterial contamination in the Willamette River as a result, city officials said Friday.

City workers put about 2,500 gallons of sodium bisulfite into the city’s waste processing facility on Airport Road SE in Salem Wednesday morning, public works spokesman Trevor Smith said.

The chemical traveled to the Willow Lake Wastewater Treatment Facility in Keizer and began impacting processes by about 6 p.m. Wednesday.

For about 21 hours, until about 3 p.m. Thursday, the treatment plant’s discharge to the river potentially exceeded bacterial limits, Smith said.

“Public works staff believed that the chemical would be diluted as it entered the treatment system,” Smith said. “That assumption was incorrect, and we take full responsibility for the discharge and are working with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to address the issue and develop policies to prevent such incidents in the future.”

The city was disposing of sodium bisulfite that had been stored since 2019 at the Franzen Reservoir’s Chlorine Reduction Facility in Turner.

Sodium bisulfite is generally used to remove excess chlorine and lower the pH of treated water.

I would really like to understand who signed off on this idea as a good one. Here's hoping the city of Salem revises its approval procedures. 

Have a good weekend

Well, this week wasn't so bad. I hope that you had a good week, and that you have a great weekend. See you on Monday. 

AI in pesticide development?

Via the Wall Street Journal, this article about pesticide development and "AI": 

Bayer and rivals like Corteva and Syngenta say new AI systems are helping speed up the lengthy, complicated and costly process of bringing new chemicals to market. Their efforts include not only new herbicides for weeds but novel fungicides and insecticides as well. Syngenta estimates that AI will reduce the average time from discovery to commercialization by a third—to 10 years from 15 years—and likely decrease the number of lab and field tests by 30%.

Bayer is using an AI system, internally named “CropKey,” to help match the protein structure of a weed with a chemical molecule that targets that structure by sifting through data faster than humans. Molecules selected with CropKey’s help could have a higher success rate during field testing than conventional research, Reiter says. It gives the company an edge—like counting cards in a game of blackjack—and is similar to how drug companies are using AI to speed up the search for molecules that target a particular disease.

Companies say an advantage of molecules selected with AI is that they can be screened during the process for toxicity to humans—a critical point for pesticides sprayed on crops people will eat—as well as environmental safety and cost. 

It'd be interesting to know how different this AI program is from whatever computational chemistry/molecular modeling program they had ten years ago was.

Job posting: senior chemist, ChemFinity Technologies, Brooklyn, New York

Via C&EN Jobs, this position: 

Our purpose as a company:  

Founded in late 2022 and spun out from UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry, ChemFinity Technologies is a Brooklyn, NY-based climate tech startup creating a more equitable future by eliminating pollution and circularizing natural resources. Our mission is to develop innovative recycling processes and materials for critical metal recovery, in ways that drastically reduce the environmental damage caused by competing methods. We are also advancing other separation technologies in water purification and gas separations. ChemFinity is supported by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Fellows program, ARPA-E, the U.S. EPA, the USDA, the USAID, and the U.S. DOE.  

What you can expect in your role:  

For this role, we are seeking a talented chemist who aligns with our team-based culture and problem-solving approach. You will be responsible for developing new methods in material synthesis and metal extraction from waste. This role will require you to work creatively with the co-founders and research team as we grow from the lab to the industrial scale. 

Research & Development   

• You will synthesize and characterize new materials using various techniques (e.g., organic and/or inorganic synthetic methods).  
• You will develop new chemical recycling and recovery methods for metal waste.  
• You will help characterize and understand complex mixtures of metal-containing waste. 

Skills we require for this role:  

• You are an outstanding scientist with experience in more than one of the following areas: organic, inorganic, or organometallic chemistry, sorbent-based separations, metal recycling, purification techniques, product scale-up, experimental documentation, and/or equipment maintenance.  
• You have a PhD degree in Chemistry or a related field, or a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree with at least 5+ years of directly relevant industrial chemistry experience. 
• You have a strong fundamental understanding of organic and inorganic chemistry. 
• You have hands-on experience in chemical synthesis, sorbent development, metal recovery processes, and/or industrial manufacturing.  

Full ad here. Posted salary range: $100,000 - $135,000. Best wishes to those interested. 

Reuters: "Fire at BASF chemicals plant in Germany extinguished; 14 hurt"

Via Reuters: 

BERLIN, July 29 (Reuters) - A fire that broke out at German chemicals giant BASF's plant in Ludwigshafen has been extinguished, a company spokesperson and police said on Monday.

Fourteen workers sustained minor injuries in the incident, which occurred when an explosion set off a blaze in a southern section of the company's headquarters, a BASF statement said.

The company did not provide details on whether there was any impact on production.

Best wishes for those injured. 

WXII: "Fire, gas leak at Cambrex manufacturing facility, High Point officials say"

 Via Google News: 

The scene at a Triad storage facility is under control after a fire became a hazmat situation, according to High Point officials.

On Tuesday, just after 9 a.m., officials received a call regarding a fire, at Cambrex High Point, located at 4180 Mendenhall Oaks Parkway. Crews found the fire in a storage facility and then found a liquid and gas leak.

I wonder if more incidents happen in warehouses than in the plants/reactor buildings themselves? 

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 57 research/teaching positions and 5 teaching positions

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 57 research/teaching positions and 5 teaching positions. 

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.

On August 1, 2023, the 2024 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 75 research/teaching positions and 4 teaching positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Go to the first open thread. 

Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread. 

Are you having problems accessing the Google Sheet because of a Google Documents error? Email me at chemjobber@gmail.com and I will send you an Excel download of the latest sheet. 

Postdoctoral opportunity: Gov Lab, Weizmann institute of Science, Tel Aviv, Israel

From the inbox: 

The Gov Lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science, led by Prof. Nir S. Gov, is seeking a dedicated postdoctoral researcher. We are developing theoretical models, based on physics and mathematics, to describe and explain a variety of fundamental phenomena from life sciences. These include how cells migrate in our bodies, during development and cancer, to how decisions are made by a single brain and by animal collectives.

We are looking for motivated individuals with a PhD in physics/chemistry/math/computer science/engineering/biology who are passionate about advancing research in biological physics, to explain the physical principles underlying living-matter behavior.

Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested. 

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 4 research/teaching positions and 6 teaching positions

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc or Daniyal Kiani) has 4 research/teaching positions and 6 teaching positions. 

Here is a link to the open thread for the year.

Reuters tracks the fentanyl supply chain

Fascinating story by Reuters on the Chinese-to-Mexico-to-US fentanyl supply chain: 

A CARDBOARD BOX half the size of a loaf of bread bore a shipping label declaring its contents: “Adapter.” It was delivered in October to a Reuters reporter in Mexico City.

There was no adapter inside that package. Instead, sealed in a metallic Mylar bag was a plastic jar containing a kilogram of 1-boc-4-piperidone, a pale powder that’s a core ingredient of fentanyl. It was enough to produce 750,000 tablets of the deadly drug.

A Reuters reporter had ordered the chemical six weeks earlier from a seller in China. The sales assistant, “Jenny,” used a photo of a Chinese actress as her screen avatar. The price was $440, payable in Bitcoin, delivery by air freight included.

“We can ship safely to Mexico,” Jenny had written in Spanish on the encrypted message platform Telegram in July 2023, when the reporter first inquired about the chemical. “No one knows what we ship.”

I don't think I have any good policy responses to this. China is so vast and so integrated in the chemical supply chain that someone, somewhere in China will be willing to make a fast buck by selling this stuff overseas. Good article, read the whole thing. 

C&EN: "Dow’s second quarter is better than its first"

In this week's Chemical and Engineering News, this update (article by Alex Tullo): 

Blaming a stalling economy, Dow says earnings slipped in the second quarter from the same period a year ago. But the largest US chemical company says it made progress over the first quarter and notes signs that business conditions will improve.

Dow’s sales declined 4.4% from the year-ago quarter to $10.9 billion. Volume increased by 1%, but prices fell 4%. Earnings, excluding extraordinary items, dropped 10.2% to $482 million.

“The pace of the global economic recovery has decelerated slightly,” Dow’s chief financial officer, Jeffrey L. Tate, said in a July 25 conference call with analysts. “This was primarily led by China, where economic growth in the second quarter was lower than the market expected.”

Here's hoping things come back in the 3rd quarter! 

Have a good weekend

Relaxing week for me - I hope it was good for you as well. Hope you have a good weekend, and we'll see you on Monday. 

Job posting: Product Development Engineer – Adhesive, Green Bay Packaging Inc, Green Bay, WI

Via C&EN Jobs: 

Due to our continued growth, Green Bay Packaging Inc., Coated Products Operations is currently searching for a Product Development Engineer – Adhesive for our Green Bay Headquarters’ location.

Founded in 1933, Green Bay Packaging Inc. is a privately owned, vertically integrated company consisting of corrugated container plants, folding cartons, recycled and virgin linerboard mills, pressure-sensitive label rollstock, specialty converting operations, timberlands, and a sawmill facility.

Headquartered in Green Bay, Wis., Green Bay Packaging Inc. employs over 4,600 team members and operates 41 facilities in 14 states, each with a dedication to innovative development of its products and forestry resources, with a focus on safety, quality, sustainability, and continuous improvement. For more information about Green Bay Packaging Inc., visit www.gbp.com

The Product Development Engineer - Adhesives will be part of the Technical team, which consists of engineers, technicians, and analysts working in Research & Development, Technical Service, Process Improvement, and Quality roles.

Responsibilities will include:

• Partnering with Sales & Marketing to define gaps in GBP’s product portfolio and identify new growth opportunities within the pressure sensitive industry.
• Working directly with customers to understand and define their wants, needs, and associated value of new technologies.
• Developing new products that meet customer CTQs and are robust in design.

The ideal candidate will have:

• A minimum of 3 years of Technical/Product Development experience in a related industry.
• BS degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, or Material Science & Engineering.
• Background in adhesives and pressure sensitive products.

Posted salary: $80,000 - $120,000. Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested. 

Fun article about perfume (and an Italian perfumer)

 Sitting here on vacation, I came across this fun New York Times Magazine article about a perfumer in Parma, Italy: 

...The final bottle of perfume went around the table. This one, called Avatar, mimicked the experience of entering a gelateria. It was the most unnervingly evocative of the three lunch scents. At first spritz, it smelled like cold marble, polished glass, wiped surfaces. Ten minutes later, the scent was that of gelato: cream, egg yolks, white sugar. Later that evening, long after lunch was over, I sniffed my left wrist and nearly shrieked. The cold marble and sugared cream had vanished. In their place was a smell that didn’t exist earlier, that seemed to arise from nothing. It was the smell of freshly baked ice cream cones. What sorcery was this?

Not any kind of sorcery, actually, if you are a chemist. Smells are made of molecules, which come in different sizes and weights and levels of complexity. Some odor molecules are detectable by humans, but in order for us to smell one, it must evaporate from wherever it lives — a ripe nectarine, a gym bag — and physically enter the nose. Because the smelly molecules that make up a perfume come in various shapes and weights, they escape and fly into noses at different rates. Some zoom up there instantly; others stubbornly refuse to take wing until hours have passed.

When perfumers — or the promotional materials that accompany a perfume — refer to top notes, middle notes (or heart notes) and base notes, this is what they mean. The molecules that evaporate speediest are the first to reach your nose, as well as the first to disappear entirely. Top notes are ephemeral. If you buy a fragrance based on the top notes, you’ll be forever trying to write a check that chemistry can’t cash. After the coy top notes come the sturdier middle notes, which have a slower rate of evaporation. The base notes last longest, sometimes through several showers. If you know the rate at which each layer evaporates, you can program a fragrance like a piece of software...

I'm sure this is well-known to perfume chemists, but I wasn't aware. Cool article. 

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 45 research/teaching positions and 4 teaching positions

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 45 research/teaching positions and 4 teaching positions. 

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.

On July 25, 2023, the 2024 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 52 research/teaching positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Go to the first open thread. 

Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread. 

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List: 4 research/teaching positions and 6 teaching positions

The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List (by Heather LeClerc or Daniyal Kiani) has 4 research/teaching positions and 6 teaching positions. 

This will be the open thread for the year. 

Job posting: full-time lecturer, Department of Chemistry, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (general/organic/inorganic)

 From the inbox: 

We invite applications for a full-time lecturer position starting in Fall 2024. The appointment is for one year. We are seeking candidates that are committed to excellence in undergraduate teaching, mentoring and service. We are also seeking candidates that are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment.

Candidates with a PhD in chemistry and related fields who demonstrated excellence in teaching college- level chemistry courses in general chemistry, organic or inorganic chemistry are strongly encouraged to apply.

A normal teaching load for lecturers is two courses per semester. The expectation for these positions is to teach a combination of general chemistry, organic or inorganic chemistry lecture and laboratory courses with multiple sections.

To apply, please submit a letter of application, CV, summary of teaching experience, and three confidential letters of reference via Interfolio by July 29, 2024.

Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.

Job posting: full-time lecturer, Department of Chemistry, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (general/physical/organic/bioanalytical)

From the inbox: 

We invite applications for full-time lecturer positions starting in Fall 2024. Initial appointment is for one year with possible renewal for additional one-year terms. We are seeking candidates that are committed to excellence in undergraduate teaching, mentoring and service. We are also seeking candidates that are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment.

Candidates with a PhD in chemistry and related fields who demonstrated excellence in teaching college- level chemistry courses in general chemistry, physical, organic or bio-analytical chemistry are strongly encouraged to apply.

A normal teaching load for lecturers is two courses per semester. The expectation for these positions is to teach a combination of general chemistry, physical, organic or bio-analytical lecture and laboratory courses with multiple sections.

To apply, please submit a letter of application, CV, summary of teaching experience, and three confidential letters of reference via Interfolio by July 29, 2024.

Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.