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“Get a job, Ken!” Part 6: Phone and On-site Interviews
In the “Get a job, Ken!” series, I’ve so far retold my experience coming up with research ideas, writing the ideas down as formal research proposals, assembling the different pieces of the faculty job application, [...]
Guest Post: The Periodic Table of T-Shirts.
Guest post by Dr Simon Norris a Chemistry teacher at a college in the UK. As his alter ego The Cycling Scientist he has visited primary schools with his science road show. His current interests are using [...]
“Get a job, Ken!” Part 5: Submitting and Waiting
In this blog post—the fifth in my eight-part “Get a job, Ken!” series—I share my experience submitting job application materials. This includes the research proposal (Part 3) and other materials like a cover letter, CV, [...]
Chemistry, fluid dynamics and an awful radioactive mess
When it comes to handling radioactive waste the Hanford site in western Washington state is the opposite of a role model. Ever since its reactors started producing the plutonium which was used in the Nagasaki bomb, Hanford has been generating waste with little foresight and responsibility. Show More Summary
On synthesis, design and chemistry's outstanding philosophical problems
Chemists need to move from designing structure - exemplified by this synthetic receptor - to designing function (Image: Max Planck Institute).
Yesterday I wrote a post about a perspective by multifaceted chemist George Whitesides in which he urged chemists to broaden the boundaries of their discipline and think of big picture problems. Show More Summary
“Get a job, Ken!” Part 4: Other Content
This blog posts continues my “Get a Job, Ken!” series. My last post focused on writing research proposals. This post describes the other pieces of the application package. There isn’t a standard, one-size-fits-all set of [...]
George Whitesides on the responsibility of chemists and the future of chemistry
Catching up on a few articles I had missed, I came across a characteristically deep and wide-ranging essay called "Assumptions" by George Whitesides about science, its future and our responsibility as scientists. It's a very generalShow More Summary
“Get a job, Ken!” Part 3: Proposal Format
Continuing my “Get a job, Ken!” series, this post builds upon the last by suggesting how to turn research ideas into written proposals. Strong proposals contain a competitive research idea (as discussed in my previous [...]
Splenda and - wait for it - DDT? You've got to be kidding me
Just when you think the perpetrators of chemophobia (actually this particular case makes chemophobia look like a knight in shining armor) cannot outdo themselves, someone seems to hit a new high. This time it's "alternative" "medicine" "physician" Joseph Mercola. Show More Summary
Polymers from Elemental Sulfur
This post is contributed by John Spevacek, an industrial polymer chemist and the author of the blog “It’s the Rheo Thing” While organic chemists are familiar with the elements, very seldom do we ever make [...]
Health and safety testing
Chemistry affects the public’s health and safety numerous times a day. Every product you use, drink, eat, take, touch, and smell has a chemical component to it. Public health and safety testing companies like NSF International, play a vital role to keep the public safer. Show More Summary
#ChemMovieCarnival: How to Kill a Werewolf in a Chemistry Lab
Here’s a late entry of the chemistry movie carnival. I hope there are a few people left in the theatre. I’ve been running a ‘Science on the Screen’ course with a local college. Over the [...]
“Get a job, Ken!” Part 2: Proposal Preparation
In my last post I describe the timeline for my faculty job search. In this post, the second in the “Get a job, Ken!” series, I share my strategy for creating and vetting research proposal [...]
Stephen Hawking's advice for twenty-first century grads: Embrace complexity
Charles Joseph Minard's famous graph showing the decreasing size of Napoleon's Grande Armée as it marches to Moscow; a classic in data visualization (Image: Wikipedia Commons) As the economy continues to chart its own tortuous, uncertain...Show More Summary
“Get a job, Ken!” Part 1: The Timeline
The application process for chemistry faculty positions can last several (grueling) months. The timeline below is my 2012 job search and serves as the first installment of my “Get a Job, Ken!” blog post series. [...]
Random thoughts on the events around Boston
We were enjoying a quiet evening of music and reading on Thursday when my wife alerted me to a message she got from the MIT emergency system that there had been a shooting somewhere on the campus. A while later we came to know that a police officer had been shot and killed right in front of my wife's department. Show More Summary
#ChemMovieCarnival: Criminal Minds
Criminal Minds is one of my favorite television shows. It follows a team of FBI agents in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. They examine the psychology of crime scenes and the choices of the criminal before, [...]
#ChemMovieCarnival: Testing Breaking Bad
I can’t believe that no one else has grabbed Breaking Bad for the Chemmoviecarnival. In case you don’t know its a show about a high school chemistry teacher, called Walt Whiteman, who turns his [...]
“Get a job, Ken!”
It has been several months since my last post, but I have (what I think is) a reasonable excuse: I’ve been trying to get a job. The demanding mantra endlessly looping in my brain for [...]
Chemical Nostalgia: My grandfather’s (lethal) legacy
Chembark and Seearroh have been indulging themselves in a bit of chemical nostalgia and so I thought I’d pitch in. My story doesn’t revolve around a conference or lab experiences, but instead its a tale [...]
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