Postdoctoral positions

Gerard Uhommet was born in 1945 in Paris (France). He obtained his M.Sc. from the University of Paris in 1969. He carried out his Ph.D. studies under the supervision of Profs Pierre Maitte and Henri Sliwa at UPMC (P. and M. Curie University), Paris between 1970 and 1975. After a postdoctoral position at the East Anglia University in Norwich, UK, with Prof A.R. Katritzky (1976-1977), he accepted a position as Assistant Professor at UPMC, Paris. In 1985, he became Full Professor at the same university. His research interests include the development of new strategies sparing chiral auxiliaries for use in asymmetric and natural product synthesis. 

When I finished my Ph.D., I applied for two postdoctoral positions. One famous chemist said come on but bring your own money, and another reputable chemist offered funding. I didn t have any money and my wife refused to go to the place with money. So, I took a job in academe. I really didn t know how important postdoctoral positions were until I arrived at work to discover that nearly everyone had done a postdoc. 

There appears to still be a shortage of natural product chemists. If more natural product chemists were available for postdoctoral positions, their appetites could be whetted for allelopathic research. 

Nobuhiro Sato was born in Niigata, Japan, in 1945. He received his B.Sc. degree from Yokohama City University in 1968 and his Ph.D. degree from Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1981. After a postdoctoral position with E. C. Taylor at Princeton University, he returned to japan, where he is now professor of chemistry at Yokohama City University. His research interests include synthesis and reactivity of heterocyclic compounds, particularly pyrazines and pteridines, as optically functional materials or bioactive products. 

Dr. Blatt was bom in Cincinnati, Ohio and received B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in 1923-1926. He held postdoctoral positions at the College de France in Paris, Harvard University, and the University of Buffalo before he joined the faculty at Howard University as an associate professor in 1932. He became a member of the newly-formed Queens College in 1939, where he was a professor, and stayed for 32 years. His academic pursuits were interrupted during World War II when he was a Science Liaison Officer, the London Mission, in the Office of Scientific Research and Development (1944-1945), and a Technical Aide to Division 8 during the latter year. 

There has been a significant increase in the number and duration of postdoctoral positions before taking up permanent positions. The average time spent doing postdoctoral research for the first 20 appointees in Table 2 is just under 2 years, while for the last 20 on the list the corresponding figure is about 4 years. 

Victor N. Nemykin was bom in 1968, received his M.S. in organic chemistry from Kiev State University, Kiev, Ukraine, in 1993, and his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, Kiev, Ukraine, in 1995. He was awarded a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship and worked in the laboratories of Professors N. Kobayashi and then K. Sakamoto at the Tohoku and Nihon Universities, Japan. He then accepted a postdoctoral position at Duquesne University in the research group of Professor P. Basu. Since fall 2004, he has been assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Minnesota Duluth. He has co-authored more than 60 publications including several patents. His research interests include the chemistry of porphyrins and phthalocyanines, bioinorganic chemistry of molybdenum, and computational chemistry. 

In other institutions such as the national labs, our group noted the excellent employment practice of screening postdocs for their suitability as future staff. I know this is difficult in academia, because you typically have one slot, and you may not want to hire someone from an academic postdoctoral position to do the same organic chemistry as the mentor. But screening is something that might be useful. 

Sir Frederick Charles Frank (1911-1998) received his Ph.D. in 1937 from Oxford University, followed by a postdoctoral position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut fiir Physik in Berlin. During World War II, Frank was involved with the British Chemical Defense Research Establishment, and because of his keen powers of observation and interpretation, he was later transferred to Scientific Intelligence at the British Air Ministry. In 1946, Frank joined the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol under its director, Nevill Mott, who encouraged him to look into problems concerned with crystal growth and the plastic deformation of metallic crystals. A stream of successes followed, establishing his scientific fame, as evidenced by many eponyms the Frank-Read source, the Frank dislocation, Frank s rule, Frank-Kasper phases. His theoretical work has been the foundation of research by innumerable scientists from around the world. Frank was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) Medal in 1946, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1954, and was knighted in 1977. 

Although I had to abandon the initial arrangement with Professor Eugene G. Rochow for a postdoctoral position, I was still keen to spend a year abroad and, if possible, at a university in the United States. Ernst Otto Fischer strongly supported my intention and recommended, inter alia, Caltech at Pasadena as a top place. One of his former students, Klaus Plesske, was already there and worked as a postdoc with Professor John H. Richards. 

D. Ronald Webb I am not sure I understand the question. P G hires postdocs in two different ways. First, we hire individuals at an entry-level position who are completing an academic postdoctoral position at a college or university. Second, we offer freshly minted doctoral students the opportunity to get postdoctoral training with us rather than with a university. Which of these two postdoctoral individuals are you talking about ... 

The modest peak at 1988 in Figure 1 was due in part to hiring by industry. And most of the growth since 1995 has been in industrial jobs. The rising demand for computational chemists reached a new high in 2000 when about three-quarters of the demand came from industry, principally pharmaceutical and biotechnology. In 2001, hiring by industry slowed a bit, which was offset by an increase in advertised academic positions. A few of the latter were for tenure-track faculty, but most of them were only postdoctoral positions, which tend to be short lived. 

Alexis Perry conducted his undergraduate studies at the University of Glasgow, where he obtained his MSci in 2001. He joined the research group of Prof. Adam Nelson at the University of Leeds, where he developed methodology for the synthesis of C-linked azasaccharides and obtained his PhD in 2005. After a year of postdoctoral research into porphyrin-based molecular memory with Prof Maxwell Crossley (University of Sydney), he accepted a further postdoctoral position in the research group of Prof Richard Taylor at the University of York, where he is involved in the development of tandem reactions and their application in natural product synthesis. 

It was hard to find a decent job in The Netherlands. I kept applying and they kept turning me down, so I came to the U.S. for a postdoctoral position. Then, while I was a post-doc, I got several job offers, all in the U.S., and accepted the one from NIH. I originally thought of it as a temporary position and that I would one day return to Europe. But more recently, when we had the option to go back, we first went for an extended visit with our two small children. They went into culture... 

Ivanova thanks the Belgian Program of Interuniversity Attraetion Poles (PAI), Haldor Topsoe A/S and Laboratory of Catalysis (FUNDP) for a research postdoctoral position. The authors thank Dr. V. Ivanov for characterization of the catalyst samples by FTIR and G. Daelen for his skillful technical assistance. 

David W. Oxtoby is a physical chemist who studies the statistical mechanics of liquids, including nucleation, phase transitions, and liquid-state reaction and relaxation. He received his B.A. (Chemistry and Physics) from Harvard University and his Ph.D. (Chemistry) from the University of California at Berkeley. After a postdoctoral position at the University of Paris, he joined the faculty at The University of Chicago, where he taught general chemistry, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics and served as Dean of Physical Sciences. Since 2003 he has been President and Professor of Chemistry at Pomona College in Claremont, California. 

Human resources are an essential component for leadership in chemistry. To conduct leading research, it is necessary to attract and retain the best and brightest S E students from the United States and abroad as they move from undergraduate to graduate school, from graduate school to postdoctoral work, and from postdoctoral positions to faculty and research positions in academe, industry, government, and the nonprofit sector. To provide a broad context, this section first examines trends and key characteristics of S E human resources. Then, salient features of the U.S. supply of chemists particularly at the graduate level are explored. 

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