Random occurrence in lab today got me reminiscing. We have a UPLC/MS-MS instrument (triple quad) sitting on one of those nice combination pump enclosure/instrument benches. The pump enclosure part pretty much silences the noise from the rough pump (which for some damned reason is a friggin' monster on this instrument) and keeps everything OSHA-compliant as far as 8 hour noise exposure. Now, this enclosure has a fan to keep the pump cool and, well, the fan failed.
In grad school, this would have meant scrounging a fan up from some closet somewhere, and if that failed, setting a box fan near it until a fan from cheapasscrap.com came in (and inevitably failed 2 weeks after the 60 day warranty). This would be an unacceptable delay in productivity, and since the OSHA noise requirements don't count in an academic lab, we just left the pumps out in the open. Which gets to the second part of today's tale. To keep the pump happy we propped the door to the enclosure open, and people kept closing it because of the noise. The LC/MS scientist eventually had to put a note on the door. It made me think back to the days when we shut down all the pumps (due to planned power outage or maintenance) and how much silence there was. It also made me remember the constant headaches and general edginess associated with that type of sound exposure. It also brings back the memory of observing zero/first years when they first entered the lab and saw/heard what lengths one must go to in order to maintain that amount of truly research grade mass spectrometers. Oh the power of those instruments, how I wish I still had some time on those beasts of Purdue.
One of the UG interns accidentally threw me into the breach today. I'm half-assed trained on one of the normal HPLC's, but even though it's ancient by industry standards (I think it's 2006ish), it's new compared to what I've used (I used the 2003 version of it with 2001 software at Dow, and a completely different brand on 1999 software at Purdue). So, I can run it, I can keep it alive, but I fumble around on the software pretty hardcore. Well, the intern came by asking where the column for rosemary analysis, I dig it out and hand it over and she just kinda stared at me. Turns out by "where's my column" she really meant "I've never set up any of this before." Long story short, nothing blew up, samples were run and I learned a lot about the software under a somewhat stressful situation. Nothing worse than the n00b Ph.D. struggling to help the undergrad, worse yet is I realized how far behind the software I am. At least my chromatography tricks are still current, I guess that's the whole point of the degree. The Science is the hard part, the software is just seat time.
Industry definitely tests your multitaskability (my word, patent pending). But I like that challenge.
-J
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Catching a breather.
Yeah, it's been a little while. Things have been crazy on a whole bunch of different levels recently, hopefully I'll get the hang of this.
Graduate school really does struggle to even remotely prepare a chemist for industrial life. Back in Dec. I was putting together a proposal to buy a couple spectrometers for my projects, and was told by the company I had 2.5 weeks to get a purchase order in to get the massive end of year savings. Well, my project is going to show up on the end of year expenditures as a significant figure, so 30% savings was attractive to the terrified first year employee. Well, to get the officers and the capital equipment committee to sign off on it I had to convince them. This convincing was two-fold. First, I needed to put together slides for a 5-10 min presentation to the board. Plus, I had to hand them to the CTO so he could present them. Second, I needed to calculate an IRR. Don't know what that is? It's an internal rate of return, basically it evaluates what the equivalent return on (for us) a 7yr basis for the expenditure. These are great for proposals that are going to make money (for example, buying a bigger pump for a vacuum distillation column is easy), however my project is one that saves QC time. This makes things harder because basically what I'm saying is that I can take X%/yr of workload off of QC, which means that when the company grows at Y% (Y>X), we won't become overwhelmed. Bad things happen when QC can't keep up with production, and increasing QC throughput is expensive.
Grad. school never prepared me for an IRR, because that kind of thing isn't a worry in basic research. The IRR of federally funded grants in Chemistry nationwide is probably -50%...for every dollar the federal gov't spends $0.50 of it is lost on the scale of 7 years. Now, it's still a good investment, because what you're generating is Ph.D.s and we will end up making money for the government over our careers. Another example of where IRR's shouldn't be applied (but finance people will try to apply them everywhere).
Now, a skill I learned in grad school that is winning the video game so far is reading. To people still in grad school, read read read. That's the skill that's doing the most for me right now. Read journals, find your favorites, and read them again. My job has basically developed into three priorities 1.) Process Analytical Technology, 2.) New method exploration and 3.) Random project bitch. That number 2 is basically continuing to read separation and MS journals along with ACHEM to try to see what's being developed. Ironically, number 3 may see my name on a patent application, it's funny how things filter out.
It's strangely rewarding working for such a small company (funny when a touch over 100M revenue is small). Work that my tiny little Analytical group is involved with has significant impacts on the entire company's bottom line. A $150k project is all of a sudden big friggin' news around here, unlike Dow or Merck where it was simply a rounding error. Now, I'll never be on a $1B patent here, but there's plenty of time for that in the future.
-J
Graduate school really does struggle to even remotely prepare a chemist for industrial life. Back in Dec. I was putting together a proposal to buy a couple spectrometers for my projects, and was told by the company I had 2.5 weeks to get a purchase order in to get the massive end of year savings. Well, my project is going to show up on the end of year expenditures as a significant figure, so 30% savings was attractive to the terrified first year employee. Well, to get the officers and the capital equipment committee to sign off on it I had to convince them. This convincing was two-fold. First, I needed to put together slides for a 5-10 min presentation to the board. Plus, I had to hand them to the CTO so he could present them. Second, I needed to calculate an IRR. Don't know what that is? It's an internal rate of return, basically it evaluates what the equivalent return on (for us) a 7yr basis for the expenditure. These are great for proposals that are going to make money (for example, buying a bigger pump for a vacuum distillation column is easy), however my project is one that saves QC time. This makes things harder because basically what I'm saying is that I can take X%/yr of workload off of QC, which means that when the company grows at Y% (Y>X), we won't become overwhelmed. Bad things happen when QC can't keep up with production, and increasing QC throughput is expensive.
Grad. school never prepared me for an IRR, because that kind of thing isn't a worry in basic research. The IRR of federally funded grants in Chemistry nationwide is probably -50%...for every dollar the federal gov't spends $0.50 of it is lost on the scale of 7 years. Now, it's still a good investment, because what you're generating is Ph.D.s and we will end up making money for the government over our careers. Another example of where IRR's shouldn't be applied (but finance people will try to apply them everywhere).
Now, a skill I learned in grad school that is winning the video game so far is reading. To people still in grad school, read read read. That's the skill that's doing the most for me right now. Read journals, find your favorites, and read them again. My job has basically developed into three priorities 1.) Process Analytical Technology, 2.) New method exploration and 3.) Random project bitch. That number 2 is basically continuing to read separation and MS journals along with ACHEM to try to see what's being developed. Ironically, number 3 may see my name on a patent application, it's funny how things filter out.
It's strangely rewarding working for such a small company (funny when a touch over 100M revenue is small). Work that my tiny little Analytical group is involved with has significant impacts on the entire company's bottom line. A $150k project is all of a sudden big friggin' news around here, unlike Dow or Merck where it was simply a rounding error. Now, I'll never be on a $1B patent here, but there's plenty of time for that in the future.
-J
Thursday, November 7, 2013
New Blog: About me.
Most people who stumble across this will know about me, but maybe not why. So this post will take care of the both of those questions.
Who?
Why it's me. 2008 MSU Chemistry BS, 2013 Purdue Analytical Chemistry Ph.D. I worked throughout my undergrad to assemble as marketable a set of skills an analytical chemist (Achemist) could. High school Co-op, two undergrad labs, summer internship with Merck. Focuses ranging from HPLC, prep-HPLC, 1H and 13C-NMR, synthesis (briefly, not my thing), UPLC, and MS. Checked a lot of boxes there.
Then, grad school. I'm only a couple months out so I won't speak too much of it, but it was an interesting time. I fell in love with the idea of a project which was still that...an idea. It was a funded idea, and for the American system it was a WELL funded idea. The problem was that it was following in the footsteps of an instrument assembled in Switzerland...and that one was WELL funded in the Swiss system. The difference between well funded in the US and well funded in Switzerland for a fundamental Analytical/Physical chemistry instrument is an extra comma. I was a whee-wittle-baby BS chemist walking proud onto a Big 10 campus, I had no clue what that comma meant.
I'm still convinced the project was cursed too. I won't go into it in depth, but I'll just say that the project saw its fair share of students who left for various reasons. Some medical, some academic, some mental and some...well...some just quit the project but not the program. What was supposed to take 2 years on the outside took 4, which considering the obstacles (I'd say 75% of the difficulties could've been solved with that damned comma) I take as a huge victory.
Very long (150 pg) story short, I graduated, which brings me to the why.
Why this blog?
It's as simple as this. There are two main types of successful graduate students: Those who live for the research, these students adore the research they do with an almost unhealthy attachment, and those who live for the job, these are the students who want a Ph.D. in Chemistry and to go into industry. The reasoning behind these second type range from wanting money to wanting responsibility to not wanting to get bored with a single project. Me? I fit into the "I love solving the chemical measurement and then passing it off to QC to run 500 replicates" part of the spectrum. In graduate school we are subject to academia, which tends to be full of professors who fell into that first category. As such, they know all sorts of ways to make those of us wanting to graduate and move on from academia feel inadequate. Combine that with how the US government, State government, University, department, all treat us graduate students and things can get real dour real fast.
I escaped though! I graduated, and found a job that A.) I love, B.) intellectually challenges me and C.) is a great example to those still fighting the glorious battle.
I now work for a spice extraction company, have been for almost 2 months now. Going from a hardcore analytical/physical chemical instrumentation project to operating in a tiny lab for a tiny company has been an awesome experience. But here is the other part of the Why?
Why this blog pt II?
I am a Ph.D. Analytical Chemist that has been thrust into a significant ingredient company in the food industry which has been ravaged by the upcoming implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). As such I have absorbed a lot of information regarding food safety, adulteration, labeling strategies that has shocked me somewhat, and I'm sure would shock the average consumer to a great deal. The main shock is in the fact that 90% of what I know I can tell you, because it isn't protected by non-disclosure, or pay-wall journals. It's out there, in the FDA, USDA, or food institute literature. Why don't people know about it? Ignorance, pure ignorance, on all levels. A lot of people in the food industry and scientific community don't know how to portray the situations in modern language that doesn't violate FDA/USDA regs. Yes, the second part of that sentence is right, there are limitations as to the explanatory language labels can include. There is also a consumer responsibility. When the ingredient companies replace "Ascorbic acid" with "Cherry powder," we aren't making the food safer. We are making the food sound safer. The cherry powder is a powder of a cherry where the flavor has already been extracted, and the remaining dried component is ~70% ascorbic acid by weight. The rest is color, a touch of fiber and assorted waxes and crap that the food manufacturer has to cancel out. The result? We took the scary chemical "ascorbic acid" (aka vitamin C) off the label, replaced it with something natural and raised the wholesale price $0.05 (MSRP goes up 0.10-0.15). That price increase isn't the food makers fault, or the ingredient makers fault, it is the consumers fault. If you're going to bitch and moan about a "chemical" on the ingredient label, first learn about the ingredient.
FSMA is coming, and it is going to change everything food in this country. Not always for the better, and in a lot of ways, for the worse.
-J
Who?
Why it's me. 2008 MSU Chemistry BS, 2013 Purdue Analytical Chemistry Ph.D. I worked throughout my undergrad to assemble as marketable a set of skills an analytical chemist (Achemist) could. High school Co-op, two undergrad labs, summer internship with Merck. Focuses ranging from HPLC, prep-HPLC, 1H and 13C-NMR, synthesis (briefly, not my thing), UPLC, and MS. Checked a lot of boxes there.
Then, grad school. I'm only a couple months out so I won't speak too much of it, but it was an interesting time. I fell in love with the idea of a project which was still that...an idea. It was a funded idea, and for the American system it was a WELL funded idea. The problem was that it was following in the footsteps of an instrument assembled in Switzerland...and that one was WELL funded in the Swiss system. The difference between well funded in the US and well funded in Switzerland for a fundamental Analytical/Physical chemistry instrument is an extra comma. I was a whee-wittle-baby BS chemist walking proud onto a Big 10 campus, I had no clue what that comma meant.
I'm still convinced the project was cursed too. I won't go into it in depth, but I'll just say that the project saw its fair share of students who left for various reasons. Some medical, some academic, some mental and some...well...some just quit the project but not the program. What was supposed to take 2 years on the outside took 4, which considering the obstacles (I'd say 75% of the difficulties could've been solved with that damned comma) I take as a huge victory.
Very long (150 pg) story short, I graduated, which brings me to the why.
Why this blog?
It's as simple as this. There are two main types of successful graduate students: Those who live for the research, these students adore the research they do with an almost unhealthy attachment, and those who live for the job, these are the students who want a Ph.D. in Chemistry and to go into industry. The reasoning behind these second type range from wanting money to wanting responsibility to not wanting to get bored with a single project. Me? I fit into the "I love solving the chemical measurement and then passing it off to QC to run 500 replicates" part of the spectrum. In graduate school we are subject to academia, which tends to be full of professors who fell into that first category. As such, they know all sorts of ways to make those of us wanting to graduate and move on from academia feel inadequate. Combine that with how the US government, State government, University, department, all treat us graduate students and things can get real dour real fast.
I escaped though! I graduated, and found a job that A.) I love, B.) intellectually challenges me and C.) is a great example to those still fighting the glorious battle.
I now work for a spice extraction company, have been for almost 2 months now. Going from a hardcore analytical/physical chemical instrumentation project to operating in a tiny lab for a tiny company has been an awesome experience. But here is the other part of the Why?
Why this blog pt II?
I am a Ph.D. Analytical Chemist that has been thrust into a significant ingredient company in the food industry which has been ravaged by the upcoming implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). As such I have absorbed a lot of information regarding food safety, adulteration, labeling strategies that has shocked me somewhat, and I'm sure would shock the average consumer to a great deal. The main shock is in the fact that 90% of what I know I can tell you, because it isn't protected by non-disclosure, or pay-wall journals. It's out there, in the FDA, USDA, or food institute literature. Why don't people know about it? Ignorance, pure ignorance, on all levels. A lot of people in the food industry and scientific community don't know how to portray the situations in modern language that doesn't violate FDA/USDA regs. Yes, the second part of that sentence is right, there are limitations as to the explanatory language labels can include. There is also a consumer responsibility. When the ingredient companies replace "Ascorbic acid" with "Cherry powder," we aren't making the food safer. We are making the food sound safer. The cherry powder is a powder of a cherry where the flavor has already been extracted, and the remaining dried component is ~70% ascorbic acid by weight. The rest is color, a touch of fiber and assorted waxes and crap that the food manufacturer has to cancel out. The result? We took the scary chemical "ascorbic acid" (aka vitamin C) off the label, replaced it with something natural and raised the wholesale price $0.05 (MSRP goes up 0.10-0.15). That price increase isn't the food makers fault, or the ingredient makers fault, it is the consumers fault. If you're going to bitch and moan about a "chemical" on the ingredient label, first learn about the ingredient.
FSMA is coming, and it is going to change everything food in this country. Not always for the better, and in a lot of ways, for the worse.
-J
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)