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Lyon posted:Want a new LIMS? I'll take that increased budget off your hands! Nope, that's informatics' call. But I got approved, hooray! It may be Pfizer, but La Jolla is a pretty legit place to work, smaller places like Tanabe or a CRO that seems to be all over the place which might be a great thing to investigate while you're at PFE.
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Aug 5, 2011 06:35
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I will know my fate by Tuesday next week. Blah to layoffs. (I think I'm safe, but when it's 50% of scientists getting laid off, who knows what will happen.)
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Aug 11, 2011 00:10
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Sundae posted:I will know my fate by Tuesday next week. Blah to layoffs. Your workplace sounds like some sort of mental and emotional torture chamber.
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Aug 11, 2011 00:35
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Because my supervisor didn't get his grant through, there's no discretionary funding for writing up my thesis. My local bar is advertising for a job, which would be perfect. Has anyone got any ideas for how to make "7 years of science" sound like "expert barman"?
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Aug 12, 2011 12:00
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Scientastic posted:Has anyone got any ideas for how to make "7 years of science" sound like "expert barman"? 7 years heavy drinking experience So I guess it's time to move in with your PI and write your thesis?
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Aug 12, 2011 17:05
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I just talked to a guy that does X-ray crystallography with a robot holding the crystal, holy poo poo.
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Aug 13, 2011 09:09
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Scientastic posted:Because my supervisor didn't get his grant through, there's no discretionary funding for writing up my thesis. My local bar is advertising for a job, which would be perfect. You have no idea (well, no, you have absolutely every idea) how much this pisses me off. Never mind that research is super-mega-important regardless of whether it is immediately applicable to any particular business venture! gently caress your funding! *eats catfood while saving the world* You, and researchers in general, should not have to beg for scraps just to do your work. 
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Aug 14, 2011 18:28
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Bastard Tetris posted:I just talked to a guy that does X-ray crystallography with a robot holding the crystal, holy poo poo. This is how almost all crystallography is done now btw. Remote access to control the robot over the Internet. It's nice to be able to collect data at 3am in your own place.
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Aug 14, 2011 18:44
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Sundae posted:I will know my fate by Tuesday next week. Blah to layoffs. Best of luck to you! I got really lucky with a job offer this past week, so I'm finally leaving my lovely lab. There is nothing better than quitting without notice.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:36
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Solkanar512 posted:Best of luck to you! Congratulations!!  Are you still in the same field? Having to move for it?
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Aug 15, 2011 15:39
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Sundae posted:Congratulations!! I don't need to move, but I'm now doing QA in the aviation industry. 
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Aug 15, 2011 16:47
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Appachai posted:This is how almost all crystallography is done now btw. Remote access to control the robot over the Internet. It's nice to be able to collect data at 3am in your own place. As it should be, I just had no idea it extended to crystallography. Grats on bouncing out of that crappy position, Solkanar.
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Aug 16, 2011 03:08
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Bastard Tetris posted:As it should be, I just had no idea it extended to crystallography. Thanks! It took me a year, but let's just say the process accelerated big time after getting help from this guy. Let's just hope Sundae gets a bit of luck tomorrow as well. By the way, anyone working at Dendreon these days? If so I hope you weather the storm, your product is genuinely awesome. I mean seriously, upgrading the firmware of your white blood cells to nail prostate cancer? That's loving amazing!
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Aug 16, 2011 04:06
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Bastard Tetris posted:As it should be, I just had no idea it extended to crystallography. Crystallography is extremely automated now. Setting up drops and imaging is automated. My lab is testing a robot that puts the crystals inside the loops using an xbox360 controller. It's slow and crappy but it's a start. We have access to ssrl, which has automated data collection. After the phases are solved if the resolution is 2.3 or so most atoms can be placed in the density automatically. For easy stuff crystallography is extremely easy.
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Aug 16, 2011 04:07
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Hah, well a 360 controller is way more ergonomically nice than a Fanuc or Staubli pendant- you could knock a man out with those. Have you seen any of the automated crystallography platforms from Zinsser analytic? they seemed pretty nice.
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Aug 16, 2011 07:24
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11:15 is my meeting. So far, not pretty. Lots of good scientists getting canned today. Lovely day to come back to after a wedding, no? On a sciencey note, I just had the coolest tablet press yanked away from me. I had budget approval for $800,000 to get us a new tablet press since we're using dev presses from 1996 still, and I gave $25K deposit to Korsch for this beautiful, remote-functionality press with full instrumentation and nifty bi- / tri-layer feed frames. It was going to be great! I could even program all my stupid compression profiles and have built in tests to perform instead of having the 'calibrated hand' operator-driven approach where you pray the guy running it knows what the gently caress he's doing, because he'll wreck everything otherwise. Nope... funding yanked back. It's like going and test-driving a Ferrari and then going back to your Grand Marquis after you are done. Some day I'll get a department with modern equipment.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:54
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I'm gone. My entire line got cut, even the managers.  Any of you guys need formulation scientists?
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Aug 16, 2011 16:47
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Sundae posted:I'm gone. My entire line got cut, even the managers. gently caress dude, I'm really sorry to hear that
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Aug 16, 2011 16:52
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Sundae posted:I'm gone. My entire line got cut, even the managers. I'm so sorry. Did you get a good severance package at least?
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Aug 16, 2011 19:13
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Eh, it's okay. It was going to be a 50/50 thing based on what the organization decided to do. They were either going to kill the entire scientific formulations division from an actual "we do research" view, or they were going to keep it. If they kept it, I was 100% safe. (I saw my year-end rating; I was one of the best in the department, hands down.) They decided, instead, to let India- and China-based CRO/CDOs handle all the grunt work and just keep project managers, so they canned my entire line and kept the high-end scientists. It's typical Pfizer, basically. Might hurt in the short-term, but I'll be better off somewhere else overall. quote:I'm so sorry. Did you get a good severance package at least? Absolutely. I stay on for a bit over a month (mid-Sept departure), then 60 more days of pay to comply with the WARN Act, then my severance package is going to be about 20 weeks of salary plus 12 months of retaining my health insurance at my own rate (not the COBRA rate thank god) and an extra $5K "retraining bonus" to supposedly go and learn poo poo with, but realistically to stay alive with. All in all, I'll be walking away with about $35,000 plus my health insurance. The real kicker? This was my first day back after getting married on Saturday. The first thing I did in the morning was add my wife to my benefits package. She gets to keep it all for 12 months as well, because it went into effect before I got the layoff announcement.
Sundae fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 19:19
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Sundae posted:I'm gone. My entire line got cut, even the managers.  (This even goes for my old company, which was horribly mismanaged but still nothing like what you've described)And if you do like formulating lotions etc (I don't know your gender, tends to be a girl thing) all the better!
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Aug 16, 2011 21:41
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Sundae posted:Eh, it's okay. It was going to be a 50/50 thing based on what the organization decided to do. They were either going to kill the entire scientific formulations division from an actual "we do research" view, or they were going to keep it. If they kept it, I was 100% safe. (I saw my year-end rating; I was one of the best in the department, hands down.) They decided, instead, to let India- and China-based CRO/CDOs handle all the grunt work and just keep project managers, so they canned my entire line and kept the high-end scientists. At least it sounds like your wife has a portable career (ie she can move around).
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Aug 16, 2011 21:53
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Sundae posted:I'm gone. That sucks. Especially for a newly wed. At least you get some sort of severance pay, I guess.
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Aug 16, 2011 22:36
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Sundae posted:
Hell, at least you got away with healthcare for your new family.
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Aug 16, 2011 22:43
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So how bad is it for jobs in pharmacology? Ive been working in a lab for the last several years, and I really enjoy the research. I still do have time to go and change my major right now- I'm biochem at the moment, but I suppose I could switch to chemical engineering, or go to med school... I'm interested in medical science/medicine for the most part, but some of the engineering courses that Ive taken have been pretty neat too. I'm just trying to figure out when I get out of college and get a PhD, will I actually have a job? Honestly, I'm open to most things except academia, I have no desire to go into that particular hellhole.
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Aug 17, 2011 22:09
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Kinetica posted:So how bad is it for jobs in pharmacology? Ive been working in a lab for the last several years, and I really enjoy the research. I still do have time to go and change my major right now- I'm biochem at the moment, but I suppose I could switch to chemical engineering, or go to med school... PS, they also said pharmacy school is becoming the new law school (no jobs die alone) so unless ya REALLY want to be a pharmacist I wouldnt go that route. If youre interested in medical science there are four year programs in Clinical Lab Science that actually provide job training. My friend did one of those and is making 56k at a hospital (against my low 40k with my Chem degree) Job openings for newly minted PhDs are pretty scarce in any field. The schoolz just got greedy and cranked out too many of them. Careful with biochem. It limits the employable techniques you learn, a lot. My sister went for a PhD in computer science because she heard horror stories about unemployment among BCh PhDs. Sorry this is all anectodal evidence. I hope someone contradicts me and there are some fields hiring like mad out there right now. Congrats to you for thinking about this sort of stuff BEFORE graduating and being screwed
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Aug 17, 2011 22:38
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seacat posted:Job openings for newly minted PhDs are pretty scarce in any field. quote:I'm just trying to figure out when I get out of college and get a PhD, will I actually have a job?
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Aug 17, 2011 23:37
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Looking deeper into this, I'm kinda thinking at this point I want to drink myself into a stupor. I do like a bunch of the protein stuff I had worked on as well as a really interesting conference, which is why I was leaning to BioChem, but I never planned to go full bio as its even worse to find a job at that point. The interesting thing about that conference, is that every company that was there was hiring, and that was July of this year. The FDA was also there looking for people- but it may have been the grade of conference that I was at. Dr. Carpenter, who is evidently some sort of major protein deity/bigshot was there, and he suggested that if I were to call him he'd talk to me about jobs and such, so I wanna hear his opinions as well. I haven't ever had a doubt in my mind that I'd go to grad school or med school, the way things are now its rather silly not to. Looking more into it, there's no way at this point that a Pharmacy degree will work out considering how many people are doing it. I love the idea of making medicine, but at that salary its not all that great due to the massive amount of people going to it.  I have been looking in to some of the pharmaceutical sciences/ or other sorts of that discipline.I could go ahead and move into chemical engineering, or I could look at med school. I'm already considering moving just to chemistry, but ideally I need to figure out if I want to do engineering and start on that relatively soon. I dont know which would be best- My freshman GPA is a little low due to a major illness, but my grades improved tremendously at the end of the the year and I got all my scholarships back as well as notes from most of my teachers saying how much I improved. Although, this is only my sophomore year, so I dont think its a major problem-- However if I were to not get into med school, I would like to have a back up plan. I've got about 5 years of lab experience as I started in high school, so I got a job in a synthesis lab for the year, so hopefully said experience will help. I'm honestly wondering more and more if I have any hope outside of med school to go chemical engineering. Ugh, this is frustrating. I like science, and I want to do it, but I also want to have a job. Appachai posted:If you get a phd in the life sciences, you will almost always need to do a postdoc to be considered for "phd level" positions. I had heard from the guy that I worked with that he had job offers throughout his last year of grad school, but that could be due to the fact that he was in Material Science. Kinetica fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 18, 2011 |
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Aug 18, 2011 00:19
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Kinetica posted:I had heard from the guy that I worked with that he had job offers throughout his last year of grad school, but that could be due to the fact that he was in Material Science. Yeah Material Science isn't a life science.
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Aug 18, 2011 00:56
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It's really hard to predict how the job market will change over the time it takes to get a PhD. Also, if you really aren't passionate about your PhD subject, you're going to be miserable the whole time and once you graduate.
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Aug 18, 2011 02:02
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Appachai posted:Yeah Material Science isn't a life science. Kinetica posted:conference where everyone is hiring Call the gently caress out of Dr. Carpenter, and get his opinion on your situation. However also take that with a grain of salt because the science PhD SuperGods that make 6 figures publishing dozens of papers a year at universities love pushing people into their career tracks (because they think everyone can be as successful as they were, when in fact they are anomalies). If you love biochemistry, you'll probably hate chemical engineering and any sort of engineering. Engineering and science are closely linked and they're both very technical and difficult, but they are NOT the same. I started off in electrical engineering and ended up as a very happy chemist. I'm not bashing EE or ChemE at all, that stuff is awesome and those guys make more money than I do fo sho, it just wasn't for me. Check out http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3424239 as well, it has some interesting info, including content by me. I don't know enough about med school to tell you what your chances are but tanking your freshman year, even due to an illness, is a major black mark on a med school app. Sorry dude, I know that sucks, but there are going to be 500 applicants that got 4.0s their freshman year. If you do seriously decide on med school swap your major. There are 1,000,000,000 biochemistry majors applying to med school and all of them have done research and published papers, pick something that makes you stand out more. As far as SCIENCE (not engineering), I think that at the bachelor's level, chemistry is the most employable of the natural sciences (astronomy, physics, geology, biology, etc). Well, actually, materials is awesome, but I don't know of many uni's offering programs in material sciences. If you do swap for chem you'll definitely be a lab monkey for the first few years but assuming you don't suck there are lots of options after you do your time. Chemistry degrees are pretty much the same curriculum wherever you go, and there arn't many options, but this is actually a plus to employers: as long as you did reasonably well they know what knowledge they can expect you to have. Oh yeah, don't do synthesis. If you're concerned about jobs, do analytical chemistry, unless you absolutely dread it. I did undergrad research in organic synthesis for 2 years, was published, had an excellent gpa, the whole 9 yards. I tried hard to get a job making molecules. I failed miserably. Compared to the number of people who specialize in it, there are very few synthesis jobs outside of BigPharma (and for the state of that industry just check out the rest of this thread). Many jobs are being outsourced to China and India along with the rest of the USA manufacturing base.
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Aug 18, 2011 02:06
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seacat posted:~ So much awesome advice~ I really have been considering switching over to Chemistry for my major, and with one more Biology class I'll be able to take that one as a minor. I'm looking at all of it, and it may just be better for me to just switch to the chemistry BS now as when I start looking at grad school it gives me the same areas that I was looking at already. The med school is honestly a consideration, I still haven't decided if I even want to do it. First semester was a 2.7, second a 3.15 ( I got really sick october-mid march, in and out of the hospital) and for the last 2 tests second semester in G-Chem, Bio, and such I got high As. Got a bunch of documentation that I can show to maybe soften the blow, and this next year I can really pull it up. I've got a C and a B in Chem/Bio respectively and then a B- and B+ in Chem/Bio for the next semester. Only reason I bring this up, is while I know it doesn't look good for the med school, if I were to really pull it up this next year and in the years after, how bad would it hit me for a grad school? My real hope is that I can get it up enough that I have a choice between med school and grad school, simply because I'm not sure yet. I know for certain I want to do something with science, its just how I want to apply it. I should have mentioned that it was more polymer synthesis, not as much organic, but I do see your point on it. I'll start poking around in a bit about an analytical chemistry lab, however the professor that I'll be working with seems to be publishing quite a bit in several high impact journals. How much effect do these sort of journals, and the research tier of the school have? I did a bit of looking, but I couldnt see how much weight these things would carry with those receive my application. If it sounds like I'm giving too much info, its because I simply dont know how any of this comes into play, so I apologize. Kinetica fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Aug 18, 2011 |
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Aug 18, 2011 02:53
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Kinetica posted:Only reason I bring this up, is while I know it doesn't look good for the med school, if I were to really pull it up this next year and in the years after, how bad would it hit me for a grad school? The main problem is that med schools get so many applicants that it's pretty easy to just throw out all applications that aren't 4.0, or really close. All the documentation that you were sick might be good if you can get it in front of an actual decision maker, but it will be pretty hard to make it past the screening. With grad school, you have a better chance because application numbers are lower, and if you make good connections with your professors in undergrad, you can probably get them to speak to professors at the universities you are applying to.
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Aug 18, 2011 22:00
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Kinetica posted:This is just my two cents, but take as much applied math as you can fit in. It sounds like you're (rationally) worried about job prospects and you don't want to be stuck if you pick the wrong field. I did math/bio for my BS, and I want from doing calibration/QA work at a food safety lab to QA in the aerospace industry. The math was the thing that allowed me to hop from topic to topic when things got rough. It's not that I'm even doing mathematically intensive work, it's that it gets folks noticed and allows you to do specialized work that others aren't considered for. Look for stuff like statistics, modeling, that sort of thing. It's easy to apply those to what you're working on now, and whatever it is you'll be working on in the future. As an aside, I found out from a coworker that at the University of Washington, Biology/Microbiology/etc aren't required to take a ton of math - not even statistics is required. Is this the case at other schools or in fields like Chemistry? If so, then my advice is worth four cents. :p
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Aug 19, 2011 00:52
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Up to differential equations, and I think I'd have to take statistics.
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Aug 19, 2011 01:39
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Solkanar512 posted:As an aside, I found out from a coworker that at the University of Washington, Biology/Microbiology/etc aren't required to take a ton of math - not even statistics is required. Is this the case at other schools or in fields like Chemistry? If so, then my advice is worth four cents. :p The math requirement for undergrad bio/biochem majors at Northeastern University was similar. When I graduated in 2009 you only had to take calc 1 & 2 and no statistics. Chemistry majors were required to take several more math classes and their calc track was more rigorous from what I observed. I'm glad I took stats anyway because it came in really handy in my last few years working as a research technician.
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Aug 19, 2011 02:03
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Solkanar512 posted:As an aside, I found out from a coworker that at the University of Washington, Biology/Microbiology/etc aren't required to take a ton of math - not even statistics is required. Is this the case at other schools or in fields like Chemistry? If so, then my advice is worth four cents. :p The bio students I knew at my school (Cornell University) had three semesters of calculus, linear algebra, statistics, and then some separate course covering kinetic equations / modeling reactions mathematically. They had the same requirements as the engineering students in that regard, just different versions of the courses. I don't know if the content differed or not.
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Aug 19, 2011 02:57
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Sundae posted:The bio students I knew at my school (Cornell University) had three semesters of calculus, linear algebra, statistics, and then some separate course covering kinetic equations / modeling reactions mathematically. They had the same requirements as the engineering students in that regard, just different versions of the courses. I don't know if the content differed or not. This sounds similar to what I had to go through at Harvey Mudd, I was just surprised that this sort of thing wasn't required at the UW. The attitude I was told was that you'd just learn whatever math you needed during a given project/lab/etc. I just don't understand how stats isn't required in more places, that's crazy. Really I just chose the bio half of my degree because I sucked at the other majors :p
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Aug 19, 2011 03:08
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On the job math training sounds about right- we're doing a thing where about 10% of the R&D staff are being trained in Statistica this year, it sounds like it'll be really helpful.
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Aug 19, 2011 05:04
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At Georgia Tech we chem majors took 3 semesters of calculus, including a bit of linear algebra and multivariable/vector calc, but we didn't have to take diff eq. Bio majors (and I think biochem) took calc 1 and 2. We could take the Math/ECE statistics course as a tech elective, but I think the bio department has a biostat course of their own.
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