I'm not even in the region anymore, but, as this entry's title suggests, I'm still mad at myself for missing an opportunity at my last job in Small State University (SSU). The school is a Midwestern school not far from St. Louis and they have a weekly visiting talk schedule for the Chemistry department. I used to love going to those things, but I guess the fact that I wasn't actually doing any real chemistry sorta put me out of the mood of attending and I ended up never making a talk (I know...this was dumb of me and I regret it).
While there, I knew in the back of my mind, that Paul Bracher of ChemBark (I hope that he doesn't mind me linking here...or on the sidebar, for that matter!) wasn't far away, in SLU, and would probably make an interesting speaker. I even considered suggesting him to the schedulers, but eventually just didn't do it. Toward the end of the semester, a couple months before our recent move, I ended up checking the schedule out to see who was coming next, out of curiosity, and guess who I had just missed a month or so before: Paul Bracher.
So there you have it: KEEP UP WITH YOUR SCHEDULES! If I had just paid a little more attention and remained active with the easily-accessible talks scheduled by my own department, I'd have been able to meet a pretty important member of the chemistry blogging community. Hopefully that won't be my last opportunity to meet Dr. Bracher, but he has already taken part in teaching me a lesson, it seems. :(
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Homelab
I've never been an advocate of doing much chemistry at home and there are a variety of reasons that I don't, beyond the obvious danger of working with hazardous materials in an environment that may not have appropriate safety equipment available. I won't go into the reasons here and have generally learned to keep quiet whenever this comes up due to how many scientists (and particularly "would-be scientists") enjoy the romanticism of a wild-west research (chemopunk?) scenario. I can't say that I have never felt that feeling before, especially when it comes to doing a little analytical chemistry.
There would be a lot of opportunities if you had the right equipment and that equipment sitting in people's homes is exactly what I want to ask about. Do you know of anyone with old (or new!) instruments sitting in their homes? Do they run? Are they ever in use?
I've heard stories of people keeping older instruments in their garage after a company dissolves or when they leave a teaching job, since the instrument's owner wasn't actually the institution. I've actually been offered a couple of fringe instruments over the years but never thought that I had the room for them myself. I think that my wife would agree, particularly when we move! Maybe the most interesting story I was ever told was the two analytical chemists, one I had briefly worked with, had a functioning MALDI-TOF in their garage. The storyteller even claimed that they'd fired it up once or twice and verified that it worked, making their garage a temporary mass spec lab. Pretty cool, but I wouldn't want to deal with the upkeep, I'm sure.
Comment and tell me the stories you've heard or been a part of. I only have a low powered microscope at my house right now, but who knows, maybe I could work my way up to a spectrophotometer one day!
There would be a lot of opportunities if you had the right equipment and that equipment sitting in people's homes is exactly what I want to ask about. Do you know of anyone with old (or new!) instruments sitting in their homes? Do they run? Are they ever in use?
I've heard stories of people keeping older instruments in their garage after a company dissolves or when they leave a teaching job, since the instrument's owner wasn't actually the institution. I've actually been offered a couple of fringe instruments over the years but never thought that I had the room for them myself. I think that my wife would agree, particularly when we move! Maybe the most interesting story I was ever told was the two analytical chemists, one I had briefly worked with, had a functioning MALDI-TOF in their garage. The storyteller even claimed that they'd fired it up once or twice and verified that it worked, making their garage a temporary mass spec lab. Pretty cool, but I wouldn't want to deal with the upkeep, I'm sure.
Comment and tell me the stories you've heard or been a part of. I only have a low powered microscope at my house right now, but who knows, maybe I could work my way up to a spectrophotometer one day!
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Two Years in the Midwest
When I last posted to this blog, I was still working in the Southeast at a nonprofit research institute, maintaining about six LC-MS/MS and GC-MS instruments. Most of the work that I'd been doing, when I wasn't maintaining those instruments, was small molecule work. I worked with tobacco, some biologicals, bulk materials, and designer drug projects, the last being a pretty interesting Pyrolysis-GC-MS project. Then I left.
My wife got a tenure-track job at a small Midwestern liberal arts University and I decided that I would follow her if she wanted to pursue it. It took a little deliberation, but, ultimately, we did decide to head out. I leapt and, while I did look, I didn't know where I would land. I interviewed for a position preparing materials for the school's biology labs, but decided against taking the job after learning that I'd have to help run experiments with an animal colony. I don't have any ethical issues with it, but I didn't want to do that. I still wish that I had learned some microbiology techniques, but that's history now.
After turning down the job, I was told about an opening in Chemistry for a similar job, but without live animal work. I took the job and have been there since. I was able to help them out with a couple of instruments and even got to set up a student on a GC-MS for a research project. Beyond that, I was on the outside of the analytical chemistry bubble as far as my professional career was concerned. I kept up with my ASMS membership and kept my hopes up about being able to get back into the field later and it looks like I'm going to see exactly how possible that is in the near future.
My wife and I have known for a little while now that we wanted to move back to the Southeast, ideally near our common alma mater, but with both of us working at full-capacity, something that I was only sort of able to do in the Midwest (something that was not the university's fault; I will always be grateful for the opportunity that they provided for me). After surviving a white-knuckle academic hiring season, she wound up with a surprise opportunity at a great school in our target region and now we are nearly packed to move there and we are beyond excited. The new job puts us in a mid-sized city and will provide a lot more amenities than our small Midwestern town. I'll also be in my home state, something that I'm happy about, and analytical chemistry jobs will be available there.
I don't know exactly what type of job to expect after not really working in a professional lab for a couple of years. I do, however, already have an interview in a mass spec lab, so I'm optimistic. It's also spurred a great deal of renewed enthusiasm for analytical chemistry and science communication, so hopefully I can "ride the wave" a little and write more here. In any case, it feels good to know that the years of experience in my last lab weren't entirely wasted after leaving for a couple of years. Maybe that's some anecdotal data that a working chemist out there could benefit from. I'll try and remember to post the interview results as I get them.
My wife got a tenure-track job at a small Midwestern liberal arts University and I decided that I would follow her if she wanted to pursue it. It took a little deliberation, but, ultimately, we did decide to head out. I leapt and, while I did look, I didn't know where I would land. I interviewed for a position preparing materials for the school's biology labs, but decided against taking the job after learning that I'd have to help run experiments with an animal colony. I don't have any ethical issues with it, but I didn't want to do that. I still wish that I had learned some microbiology techniques, but that's history now.
After turning down the job, I was told about an opening in Chemistry for a similar job, but without live animal work. I took the job and have been there since. I was able to help them out with a couple of instruments and even got to set up a student on a GC-MS for a research project. Beyond that, I was on the outside of the analytical chemistry bubble as far as my professional career was concerned. I kept up with my ASMS membership and kept my hopes up about being able to get back into the field later and it looks like I'm going to see exactly how possible that is in the near future.
My wife and I have known for a little while now that we wanted to move back to the Southeast, ideally near our common alma mater, but with both of us working at full-capacity, something that I was only sort of able to do in the Midwest (something that was not the university's fault; I will always be grateful for the opportunity that they provided for me). After surviving a white-knuckle academic hiring season, she wound up with a surprise opportunity at a great school in our target region and now we are nearly packed to move there and we are beyond excited. The new job puts us in a mid-sized city and will provide a lot more amenities than our small Midwestern town. I'll also be in my home state, something that I'm happy about, and analytical chemistry jobs will be available there.
I don't know exactly what type of job to expect after not really working in a professional lab for a couple of years. I do, however, already have an interview in a mass spec lab, so I'm optimistic. It's also spurred a great deal of renewed enthusiasm for analytical chemistry and science communication, so hopefully I can "ride the wave" a little and write more here. In any case, it feels good to know that the years of experience in my last lab weren't entirely wasted after leaving for a couple of years. Maybe that's some anecdotal data that a working chemist out there could benefit from. I'll try and remember to post the interview results as I get them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)