Life Beyond Academia

So wrapped up in my new life. I originally wrote this post back in March when I first started the new job, but then I thought I’d finish it up… And the next thing you know, months have gone by.

Change is good. Generally I've embraced that, but as we get older and more set in our ways, it gets harder... But now I'm plunging headlong into all kinds of change. It makes me smile, to tell the truth. It feels good, even though it feels like this sort of change is so much more drastic now - it's not just about me anymore...

In January, I was hitting the 4-year mark on a somewhat productive postdoc. Having "grown up" through the academic ranks, I was actually feeling like I was finally overcoming a stagnation in my research, and was making some interesting inroads. I had funding and got along well with my PI and collaborators, but was certainly becoming disillusioned by the academic prospects. If you read earlier posts, you'll get a sense of this, I'm sure. And then a job opening came my way via a friend in the field. Good timing.

I got the offer, and took the job, and now I'm working in a large company. One of the biggest, in fact. And I've left cancer pharmacology to work on "products." I never imagined that in a million years. And even writing those words is a bit hard. I'm altruistic, idealistic, and against gross consumerism. I want to do good, I dream of anarchist utopias. And now I'm working for the man. And yet, nothing about it feels like "selling out." Is that another indicator that I'm getting old, caving on my principles? I really don't think so. I still feel like me. And I honestly think that they hired me so I could continue to be me. I stepped into this whole thing feeling pretty blind. When people asked me what I’d be doing, I honestly had to say I really didn’t know. During the interview, when I asked what I’d be doing day-to-day, I got a long non-specific answer that basically meant, “We want you to come here and be a part of the team. And you’re smart enough to figure out what you have to offer.”

I never knew that consumer products could be so science-driven. R&D really rocks it here, bringing new ideas to the rest of the company. And the science is real. Not fake claims just for labels. There is a real desire to be able to stand behind the efficacy and safety.

And the thing that has been really great is seeing how crucial it is that everyone is collaborative. And the ability to think in multiple ways, to be an interdisciplinarian make sense. Unlike academia, you can’t simply hide out in your own lab, working diligently away at your own project, ignoring everyone else, with an eye to papers, funding, and building your own personal empire of postdocs, students, and technicians. You won’t get anywhere in industry that way. What a relief!

Now it seems to me that the academy doesn't actually practice all that it preaches when it comes to things like research freedoms, the importance of multidisciplinary scientists, appreciation of radical thinking, etc. And industry (at least the company where I am) sees these things as vital to growth, innovation, and success. I’ve been a bench scientist for the last 11 years. Hands-on experimentalist. If I want to isolate a compound, figure out the chemical structure, work out the botanical chemotaxonomy, or see how a cancer cell responds to that compound, I essentially had only myself to rely on to get that work done. Now, if I can’t find someone on the team to help with a problem, then I look outside. And we can collaborate with anyone…

So far so good. I am getting to be a scientist in all sorts of ways, and I have to apply things I've learned in other parts of my life. It makes it seriously challenging and quite varied and more fun than I ever expected... Anyway, those are my impressions for now. More to come.

An aromatic progression of flowering trees of NYC

The blossoms of the early spring flowering trees - ash, maple, oak - are wind pollenated, and have no discernible scent; they release tons of pollen - and when inhaled by people, creates an immune response that leaves many miserable... until the spring rains wash it all away. The next batch of flowering trees are the "seminiferous" Rosaceae. Pears, crabs, cherries and other trees of the rose family are unfortunately not endowed with the lovely character of the traditional rose. Smelling like spunk, they bloom around the same time as the magnolias, which have an ancient terpenoid fragrance - not unpleasant, but not inspiring. Pretty soon the lilacs, which are really a shrub, fill the air with the scent of grandma. It's delicate & old-fashioned. Then, after the abundant spring rains, the sun comes out and the days heat up. That's when the black locust trees explode with cascading displays of white, pendulous curls of flower. The warm, humid, nighttime air fills with the wondrously sweet fragrance, ripe with the possibilities of summer. It's my favorite. It signals the end of the cold for good. Around this time, there's one tree (is it a Nyssa spp.?) that smells of cat urine. Then as spring officially moves into summer, the delicate linden trees remind us that summer has officially begun...

A few of my favorite (phyto)chemical things

Jumping on the bandwagon of chemistry "favorites" lists - mine comes from the perspective of a phytochemist... see also Chemjobber, LabMonkey4Hire, The Boiling Point, LJKBoerner, Sciencegeist, and others...

1. Realizing that the compound you finally isolated is, in fact, new
2. Realizing that your new compound is bioactive
3. Discovering that someone has synthesized a compound you discovered
4. Sephadex LH-20: the best stationary phase ever
5. Seeing liquid oxygen condension out of the atmosphere and dripping off the liquid helium port when doing a cryo fill for the NMR
6. Plant collection trips
7. Ion traps that fragment a compound just right & accurate mass when you need it.
8. Butanol and toluene when you need to evap water faster
9. Getting the solvent system right the first time - and nailing the pure compounds.
10. Training on a 300 MHz, and then moving on to a 500
11. a new HPLC column
12. fixing my own glassware

Untangling the web

Extracting myself from the lab is hard. So much stuff to do before leaving.

I was hoping to be done by the end of the day today, but now, at 3:30, it's not looking like I'll manage that. I've found all my raw electronic data from the various other labs and core facilities and copied it onto a harddrive. I've backed-up all my data from inside the lab. Cleaned out my bench, my desk, the -20 & -70 freezers, cold room, refrigerators, tissue culture room, etc. I've given away all the little goodies I've collected over the years, passed out primers, solutions, media, etc. I've put away all my specialized glassware, & even created several new storage drawers for stuff I used and no one else will use. Passed on passwords and given lessons in HPLC maintenance/operation. Written up (most) of the new protocols I brought to lab....

But I still need to label a few thigns that will go into storage. And write up materials and methods sections for 2 papers and hand off all the data, samples, and papers for my 2 main projects. Write a review paper (oy..)

But I'm close, so close. The  faster I finish, the more time I'll have before starting my new job to relax a bit. And I need that...

My million dollar training

The Republicans in the House are currently working on slashing science funding in shocking ways. I can't say I'm surprised. It was one of the first things I thought about when I watched the map go red on election night. I've always said they're anti-science. And I'm waiting for someone - anyone - to prove me wrong on that.

So tonight, as I was coming home from the lab, I started thinking about all the money that the government has invested in my training as a scientist. Right now, I'm wrapping up my 4-year postdoc and about to move into industry. I've basically spent the last 11 years doing cancer research on the  government dime, and now I'm going to take all that training and head into the private sector to work on something totally different. I can honestly say that the most recent election provided the final nails to hammer shut the coffin wherein I buried any last vestiges of a career in academia-based research. Not only are conservatives anti-science, but I think they're simply anti-education as well. They have enough money, apparently, to pay people to educate their children, so public education be damned. The part I can't understand is that they'll still get cancer at the same rate as everyone else, so by denying science, they aren't helping themselves...

But aside from all that, let's get down to numbers. My F32 fellowship: $150,000; T32 postdoc fellowship: $125,000; DoD postdoc fellowship $380,250. Then there was my heavily subsidized Public Univ tuition, which was paid in full by university fellowships before my F32, the salary I got as an adjunct lecturer as a grad student, and even some subsidized student loans... All told, we're looking at close to a million dollars, maybe. And that doesn't include the salaries of my professors at the Public Univ, or any of the Public Univ infrastructure that public funds supported. I'm mostly just thinking about money that went to supporting me, my family, and my research directly.

That's quite an investment. You would think that the country would want to keep me working on cancer pharmacology. After all, I know a lot more about it than when I started 11 years ago. Way more. In fact, I feel like I'm actually getting to the point where I could make some real contributions... But instead, the private sector is benefiting from all that public investment. The company I'm going to work for is getting a bargain. They can pay me well, but they're getting a trained scientist for their money. The US taxpayer, however, is losing my expertise. I'm off to make products!