The road less travelled

watch at your leisure

Patricia — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:52:31 +0000

From the AAAS comes a webinar that you can watch on demand – you need to register but that is a minor inconvenience o the path to a possible new career, eh?

Nontraditional Careers: Opportunities Away From the Bench
Now available on demand

April 28, 2009, 12 noon Eastern; 9 a.m. Pacific; 4 p.m. GMT
Illustration

Increasingly, Ph.D.-level scientists are becoming aware of other career opportunities beyond bench research. Not only are scientists interested in pursuing nonresearch-based careers, but the discord between the number of graduate students and postdocs, and the limited availability of tenure-track faculty positions means that these are no longer “alternative” career options. What sorts of opportunities can scientists pursue? What sorts of skills do they need to develop in order to succeed in nonresearch jobs? How can they find these sorts of positions?

This webinar will look at the various career options open to scientists across different sectors, strategies you can use to find positions, and the future of the scientific work force in nontraditional careers. Join us to learn more about exciting and rewarding careers outside of academic/industrial research.

bring science to the masses

Patricia — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:38:20 +0000

Toronto is hosting Science Rendezvous this Sat May 9th. It is a festival of science!!

elephants toothpaste

This is one wonderful way to get kids and older people too, interested in science and to see that scientists are not just lab slaves.
Volunteering at such an event can also help scientists or budding scientists see if an outreach role is for them – do they shine in a teaching/coaching role or does it make them want to slink back to the lab and hide under the lab bench?

showing kids around the lab

april scientiae – challenges!

Patricia — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:10:05 +0000

Overcoming challenges. Being challenged to overcome. This is the topic for April’s edition of Scientiae, and I received an overwhelming response of your varied tales of challenge and triumph. Further proof that all of us are capable of facing our problems head-on and growing into wiser, more competent people.

The carnival is based out of Candid Engineer’s blog : http://candidengineer.blogspot.com/2009/04/april-scientiae-we-rise-up.html

These carnivals are a wealth of inspiration and often thought-provoking – check them out! You may find some kindred souls….

get thee a mentor!

Patricia — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:44:35 +0000

The March Scientiae is on the subject of Role Models.
[Note: a Scientiae is what they call a blog carnival on Science Blogs - what is a blog carnival? well, it is a subject based set of blogs written by bloggers on their own blogs and the links to the various blogs is compiled by the organizer that month (organizers rotate the task)]
Back to regular programming…
So the March Scientiae is looking at role models that influenced the careers of the contributors. Made me think that the advice of a role model is a good place go to when you feel that your career needs a change. Even if they are dead people like say Madame Curie – the type of role model you choose/chose says something about your own dreams and aspirations! Listen to them!

wandering to a career

Patricia — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:42:22 +0000

Here is a new blog (All my faults are stress related) on Science Blogs from a structural geologist – in her “about me” description she tells of the winding path she took to get to this career:

I became a structural geologist by accident. I meant to study chemistry, but chemists spent too much time inside. Then I meant to be an environmental geochemist, but somewhere along the way I discovered that rocks are fascinating and gorgeous. So I decided to study metamorphic rocks, which still involves a lot of chemistry. But I got distracted by the question of how metamorphic rocks get buried and exhumed, and that led to studying how rocks get squashed.

What ever gets your rocks off!!

to stay or go…

Patricia — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:19:28 +0000

The South African Mail and Guardian Online just published another article on the “leaky pipeline”:
Leaving the lab
JESSICA SHEPHERD – Jan 29 2009
They note that women are still leaving the lab at a rate higher than men:

A study for the United Kingdom’s Royal Society of Chemistry has found that although 72% of the women surveyed intended to pursue a university career in the first year, by their third year this had slumped to 37%.

This was not the case for their male peers. The study found 61% of them wanted to pursue a university research career in their first year; this fell to 59% by their third year.

Some of the reasons are:

Two recently published studies investigate why these women are leaving. About 450 molecular bioscientists (all female) and 610 chemists (male and female) took part. All were either studying for PhDs or had just finished.

More women than men had come to view academic careers as too solitary and the fight for permanent posts too competitive. One in 10 of the men felt “powerless to resolve significant issues” with their supervisors, whereas this was the case for 17% of the women.

More women than men felt isolated or excluded from, and sometimes even bullied by, their research group. When their experiments went wrong, the women were more likely to “internalise failure”. And more women than men were discouraged by the “all-consuming nature of science”.

However, one post-doc claims:

“I don’t see women leaving academia as a defect or as cowardice. I see it as wisdom. With a science PhD, it’s possible to do a host of other rewarding and important jobs. Women now feel they can give up gracefully and go on to do something more fun.”

let’s make lemonade out of the lemons…

more food chemistry!

Patricia — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:53:14 +0000

The Science section of the New York Times has an article on the science of cooking – take a look!
At the Stove, a Dash of Science, a Pinch of Folklore

I had invited Ms. Corriher [a biochemist] and her husband, Arch, who were in New York from Atlanta for a visit, to dinner to help answer some kitchen curiosities. Cookbooks bark out instructions like boot camp orders — Add oil to pasta water! Salt the eggplant! Brown meat to seal in juices! — and legions of home cooks obediently follow them.

I wondered how many of these truisms had a scientific underpinning and how many were but myths. Browning meat, for instance, does not seal in juices. The char adds flavor, though.

If you are about to braise a fish in tongue-searing chili sauce, what’s the point of soaking it in wine? The alcohol boils away, and the spiciness ought to obliterate any taste of the wine.

Ms. Corriher had an explanation. It was not the flavor of the wine that was important, but what it did. Alcohol is a solvent. “Some compounds dissolve in water,” she said. “Some dissolve in fat. But alcohol dissolves both fat-soluble compounds and water-soluble compounds. You’re pulling flavor compounds out of the fish so that they can contribute to the flavor in the sauce.”

Boy, I love this stuff – perhaps I need to start a blog on food and chemistry or is there already one out there???

glow in the dark jobs?

Patricia — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:12:29 +0000

Just kidding! I worked around the nuclear industry and I don’t glow (much)!
Here is a job that might lead to interesting careers:

Sellafield defies gloom by offering 60 jobs for graduates
Last updated 10:58, Tuesday, 16 December 2008
SELLAFIELD bosses are defying the gloom dogging the job market – by launching a recruitment campaign.

The firm responsible for running the sprawling West Cumbrian nuclear complex has revealed it wants to take on about 60 graduates in 2009.
Sellafield Limited said new recruits are vital to the future of the site, with jobs available ranging from those in design, construction and commissioning, to operations and decommissioning….
Of the posts available, 42 are engineering positions – chemical, mechanical, civil, electrical and electronic, material/metallurgy, manufacturing and project – and 16 in science, for graduates in chemistry, physics and applied mathematics.

These sorts of jobs give one an “in” to all sorts of career opportunities within the company.

Not your average chemical company….

ho ho ho – need a quick present?

Patricia — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:47:47 +0000

Here is a new book that sounds interesting – suitable for chemists and ex-chemists:
THE ALCHEMY OF AIR
A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
By Thomas Hager
Harmony Press. 316 pp. $24.95

Somehow fertilizer seems an unlikely subject for a Faustian tale about pride, vanity and ambition. Yet here it is: Chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch won Nobel Prizes for their contributions to humanity as young men and reached the pinnacle of German science, only to be brought low by their own, very human failings.

Haber and Bosch invented industrially made fertilizer during the first decade of the 20th century, developing a method of synthesizing and mass-producing ammonia from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen, hence the title of Thomas Hager’s book, The Alchemy of Air.

do it for the money…

Patricia — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:55:38 +0000

Some people choose careers based on financial rewards…or regular hours…or for the beauty.

Here are two different views:
“I do it for beauty”
“I do it for money”

My own at the moment is that I do it for the 9-5 hours because it fits my son’s school schedule…