Chemistry Bumper Cars, 2014-2015

'Tis the season for chemistry faculty to pack up their U-Hauls, distribute plane tickets to the post-docs, and relocate their labs halfway across the country. 2014's shaping up to be not much different from previous cycles.

For this year's moves, I'm adopting the ChemBark format, picking up roughly where he left off.

**Know of someone missing? Let me know in the comments!

Moves

Sarbajit Banerjee (SUNY-Buffalo to Texas A+M)
Timothy Bertram (UCSD to Wisconsin)
Carolyn Bertozzi (Berkeley to Stanford)
Christopher Bielawski (UT-Austin to UNIST)
Erin Carlson (Indiana to Minnesota)
John Clayden (Manchester to Bristol)
Andrew Cleland (UCSB to Chicago)
Vicki Colvin (Rice to Brown, admin)
James Dalton (industry to Michigan, admin)
Scott Daly (G. Washington to Iowa)
Darren Derksen (SFX to Calgary)
Thomas Dunning (NIAC to Washington)
Katherine Faber (Northwestern to Caltech)
Eric Ferreira (Colo State to Georgia)
Joseph Francisco (Purdue to UNL, admin)
Giulia Galli (UC Davis to Chicago)
Justin Gallivan (Emory to DARPA)
Richard Gross (NYU Poly to Rensselaer)
Michael Gross (Bucknell to Wake Forest)
Mei Hong (Iowa State to MIT)
Jeffrey Hubbell (EPFL to Chicago)
Ramesh Jasti (BU to Oregon)
William Kittleman (Birmingham-Southern to Millersville)
Angela Koehler (Broad to MIT)  thanks, Anon!
Yamuna Krishnan (NCBS-Bangalore to Chicago)
Igor Larrosa (QM to Manchester)
Marcus Lay (UGA to Cooper Union)
Wenbin Lin (UNC to Chicago)
Mi Hee Lim (Michigan to UNIST)
Andrew Lyon (GA Inst. Tech to Chapman, admin)   thanks, Anon!
Lane Martin (UIUC to Berkeley)
Jim Mayer (Washington to Yale)
Phil Messersmith (Northwestern to Berkeley)
Gerald Meyer (Hopkins to UNC)   thanks, Anon!
Dan Mindiola (Indiana University to Penn)
Nouri Neamati (USC to Michigan, 2013)
Andrew Phillips (Yale to Broad)
Eran Rabani (Tel Aviv to Berkeley)  thanks, Max!
Gayan Rubasinghege (St. Cloud to New Mexico Tech)
Elizabeth Rhoades (Yale to Penn)
Tobias Ritter (Harvard to Max Planck, 2015)  thanks, Anon!
Jan-Uwe Rohde (Iowa to UNIST)   thanks, Anon!
Peter Rossky (UT-Austin to Rice, admin)   thanks, Anon!
Alan Saghatelian (Harvard to Salk)
Klaus Schmidt-Rohr (Iowa State to Brandeis)   thanks, MJ!
Gregory Scholes (Toronto to Princeton)
Dionicio Siegel (UT-Austin to UCSD Pharmacy)
Melody Swartz (EPFL to Chicago)
Paul Thompson (Scripps to UMass Medical)
Kallie Willets (UT-Austin to Temple)
Bryan Wong (Drexel to UC-Riverside)
Damian Young (Broad to Baylor)

Source: U-Haul.com

New Hires

Brett Fors (Cornell)
Neil Tomson (Penn)
Sophie Rousseaux (Toronto)
Tianning Diao (NYU)
Steve Townsend (Vanderbilt)
Jeffrey Rinehart (UCSD)
Jeff van Humbeck (MIT)
Alex Shalek (MIT)
Dave Martin (UC-Riverside)
De-en Jiang (UC-Riverside)
David Sarlah (Illinois)
Jessica Anna (Penn)
Sarah Slavoff (Yale)
Hailang Wang (Yale)
Ziad Ganim (Yale)
David Nagib (Ohio State)
Sergey Pronin (UC-Irvine)
Gerald Knizia (Penn State)
Jefferson Chan (Illinois)
Brett VanVeller (Iowa State)
Vincenzo Venditti (Iowa State)
Bryan Dickinson (Chicago)
Alexander Spokoyny (UCLA)
Matthew Cain (U. Hawaii)
Raymond Moellering (Chicago)
Nicole Becker (Iowa)
Heather Jaeger (Lehigh)
Tim Cook (U Buffalo)
Melanie Chiu (Stony Brook)
Christopher Johnson (Stony Brook)
Ignacio Franco (Rochester)
Nathan Jui (Emory)
Jacob Schwartz (Arizona)
Kateri DuBay (UVA)
Michelle Dolgos (Oregon State)
Dipankar Koley (Oregon State)
Sandra Loesgen (Oregon State)
Jesse Zalatan (Washington)
Cody Schlenker (Washington)
James Prell (Oregon)
Aaron Franklin (Duke)
Alex Grenning (Florida)    thanks, Rob!
Suri Vaikuntanathan (Chicago)   thanks, Andrew!
Sarah Wengryniuk (Temple)   thanks, Brando!
Graham Dobereiner (Temple)
Zac Hudson (UBC)   thanks, Anon!
Aaron Vannucci (South Carolina)    thanks, Anon!
Laina Geary (U. Nevada-Reno)  thanks, Anon!
Ryan Rafferty (Kansas State)     thanks, SupraChem!
Chen Zhou (Central Misssouri)    thanks, UCTDM!
Jonah Jurss (Ole Miss)
Brian Michel (U. Denver)
Michael Nippe (Texas A+M)
James Frederich (FSU)
Yan-Yan Hu (FSU)
Justin Kennemur (FSU)    thanks, Vastib!
Adam Duerfeldt (Oklahoma) thanks, Alex!
Gabriela Schlau-Cohen (MIT)
Stacy Smith (BYU)
David Michaelis (BYU)
Michael Ragusa (Dartmouth)
Derek Schipper (Waterloo)
Stephen Newman (Ottawa)
Jatinder Josan (VA Tech)
Avena Ross (Queens)
Nick Kuklinski (Furman)
Christina Vizcarra (Barnard)
Emily Derbyshire (Duke)
Anton Dubrovskiy [@SynthChem] (Houston Clear Lake)
Bill Morandi (Max Planck)
Feifei Li (New Mexico State)
Thomas Teets (U Houston)
Severin Schneebeli (Vermont)
Keith Reber (Towson)
Christine Caputo (New Hampshire)
Leila Deravi (New Hampshire)
Yftah Tal-Gan (Nevada-Reno)
Marco Caricato (Kansas)
Nozomi Ando (Princeton)
Elliott Hulley (Wyoming)
Andrew McNally (Colorado State)
Martin McCullagh (Colorado State)
Eilaf Ahmed (Emory)
Ronald Grimm (WPI)
Matthew Sheldon (Texas A+M)
Julio D'Arcy (Washington U - St. Louis)
Graham Griffin (DePaul)
Zhang Wang (Albany)
Luisa Whittaker-Brooks (Utah)
Michael Grunwald (Utah)
Douglas Genna (Youngstown St.)
Abhinav Nath (Washington)
Kevin Cash (Colorado Mines)
Rebecca Scheck (Tufts)
Robyn Biggs (Oklahoma)
Kenneth Graham (Kentucky)
Peter Kekenes-Huskey (Kentucky)
Anusree Mukherjee (Alabama-Huntsville)
Ku-Lung Hsu (Virginia)
Chad Risko (Kentucky)
Kara Stowers (BYU)
Ryan Baxter (UC Merced)
Ben Stokes (UC-Merced)
Carsten Milsmann (West Virginia)
Wei Xiong (UCSD)
Wei-Tsung Lee (Loyola Chicago)
Michal Szostak (Rutgers)
Mark Chen (Lehigh)
Lina Cui (New Mexico)
Joel Yuen-Zhou (UCSD)
Ampofo Darko (UT-Knoxville)
Sharani Roy (UT-Knoxville)
Anthony Appleton (Stetson)
Kyle Friend (Washington + Lee)
Eugene Pinkhassik (UConn)
Indrajeet Sharma (Oklahoma)
Scott Geyer (Wake Forest)

--
ChemBark's fantastic 2012-2013 roundup .
For earlier faculty moves, click here.

Chemistry Bumper Cars II

For Bumper Cars I, click here.

Well, I was holding off until Spring had officially sprung, but they're coming too fast and furious to wait any longer. Thanks to Paul for starting the engine on this season of thrilling, chilling chemistry faculty moves!

I'm a visual learner and amateur cartographer-in-training, so let's chart out Paul's confirmed moves (as of March 2013):

(click to embiggen)

Legend

1. John (Wedge)Wood, CSU to Baylor
2. Corey (Saffron) Stephenson, BU to Michgan
3. Sharon Hammes-(Silver)Schiffer, Penn State to Illinois
4. Kyoung-Shin (Cherry) Choi, Purdue to UW
5. Shih-Yuan (Lavender) Liu, Oregon to BC
6. Patrick (Yale Blue) Holland, Rochester to Yale
7. Andrei (Teal) Tokmakoff, MIT to Chicago
8. Xiaoyang (Green) Zhu, Austin to Columbia
9. Glenn (Orange) Micalizio, Scripps FL to Dartmouth
10. Thomas (Tan) Albrecht-Schmitt, Notre Dame to FSU
11. Phil (Purple) Castellano, Bowling Green to NCSU
12. Jer(Red)my Smith, NMSU to Indiana
13. Adam (Brown)schweig, NYU to Miami
14. Paul (Pink) Cremer, TAMU to Penn State
(Update 3/29)
15. Brian (Olive) Shoichet, UCSF to Toronto

Commentary: Most of the "action" seems constrained to the Eastern seaboard so far this season. In terms of overall distance, Prof. Liu takes the cake (3,000 miles), with runner-up (just added: Brian Shoichet, at 2,300 miles) Prof. Zhu (1,800) and Micalizio (1,400). This time around, there isn't so clear a trend of moving "up the ladder" rankings-wise or towards warmer climes; folks move everywhere! (Readers, if you spot a trend in this messy data, let me know in the comments)

Craziness: This only represents movement for the past seven months! Who knows what the rest of 2013 will bring? Tune in for the next exciting Chemistry Bumper Cars installment.

Thanks again to ChemBark for starting the conversation.

***
Update, 3/29 - Paul's site brought word of Shoichet, and Andre the Chemist aggregated and scored the moves based on U.S. News departmental rankings. Well done!

Chemistry Bumper Cars

By now, most folks on the chemblogosphere have heard the rumbles about K.C. Nicolaou's possible departure from Scripps. His landing spot looks to be Rice University, in Houston, aided by a generous multi-million dollar "golden parachute." Followup comments posted on Chemjobber and In the Pipeline saw speculation run rampant regarding other Scripps synthetic chemists, including M.G. Finn, Jin-Quan Yu, Phil Baran, and Dale Boger.

Wow. Does everyone have the moving bug?

I seem to recall Kyle over at The Chem Blog drawing us a convenient map a few years back, during another busy moving season (2005, I believe?). The past two years have proven quite busy as well, with no less than an entire ChemBark post entitled "Nocera to Harvard!" (vide infra).

Without further ado, I present my highly-researched, but definitely not-to-scale, map of synthetic faculty moves, 2011-2012.

Legend (Updated 9/20):
1.  Keith (purple) Woerpel, Irvine to NYU
2.  John (Berkeley blue) Hartwig, UIUC to Berkeley
3.  Vy (green) Dong, Toronto to Irvine
4.  Dan (crimson) Nocera, MIT to Harvard
5.  O(maroon) Yaghi, UCLA to Berkeley
6.  M.(Goldenrod) Finn, Scripps to Georgia Tech
7.  K.(Cyprus orange) Nicolaou, Scripps to Rice (confirmed!)
8.  Greg Fu(schia), MIT to Caltech
9.  (Rust)em Ismagilov, Chicago to Caltech
10. Paul (cyan) Chirik, Cornell to Princeton

I've been searching for a chemistry faculty movement metaphor. At the end of the NFL season, reporters write about the "coaching carousel," where coaches switch jobs circuitously, trapped on an employment merry-go-round. Well, that's not quite right here. Chemists usually move away for good, and there's clearly a directionality to the moves: towards more money, higher prestige, or warmer climes. Perhaps a Ferris wheel? Nah: it implies "up" or "down," a good view of the situation...and far too smooth a ride. Negative on the Gravitron, though grads and postdocs might feel like they're smashed by the pressing gravity* of an upcoming move.

I've got it: Bumper cars! Everyone starts out hesitantly, driving around in circles, hesitant to make first contact. After a few minutes, though, it's a free-for-all, everyone bouncing off each other, crashing, laughing, sparks flying off the ceiling. In the end, no one ends up where they started, and everyone has headaches. (Bear with me, it's a work in progress, doesn't yet have the oomph of a "Manifest Destiny" or "fiscal cliff.")

Faculty jostle for top spots like, well, you get it...

Credit: UK Telegraph

Are faculty moves unavoidable? It's true that the grass is always greener. But, if you're already a professor at a Top 20 institution, you likely receive the lion's share of grant monies, decent media coverage, and your pick from top-shelf graduate students. So why go? Some moves are nostalgia-driven - the Prof. wants to return home to a welcoming parade, having "done good." Some moves try to fix the two-body problem. Some happen because of missed tenure, or a feeling that it's "just time." Maybe in today's uncertain economy, it's just best to assume you won't be in any job longer than ten years...with a handful of exceptions.

Readers: Know of any more high-profile U-Hauls being loaded this academic season? If the "Chemistry Bumper Cars" trend persists, this might yet become an annual post.

P.S. Heard about a move I missed? Email me at seearroh_AT_gmail, and I'll add it here!

*I completely understand, having been involved with two moves in grad and postdoc.