Chemistry Bumper Cars, 2018

Multiple anonymous internet comments agree: Faculty moves still occur with rapidity and fluidity. Think of them like a "jobs plasma," flowing around major campuses every few years.

The 2017 list had grown like a wild blackberry bramble, so it needed a trim. If you hear of an impending 2018 move, please tell me in the comments, and I'll post in the "Pending Confirmation" section. Escape from this purgatory involves sending me a link or other documentation from the new institution. Happy speculating!

Moves

Nozomi Ando (Princeton to Cornell)  two sources
Alan Aspuru-Guzik (Harvard to Toronto)  three sources
Yimon Aye (Cornell to EPFL)
Mark Banaszak Holl (Michigan to Monash)
Christoph Bostedt (Northwestern to EPFL)
Kenneth Brown (Georgia Tech to Duke ECE)
Tim Cernak (Merck to Michigan)
Philip Cole (JHU to Harvard)
Qiang Cui (Wisconsin to BU)
Tanja Cuk (Berkeley to UC Boulder)
Li Deng (Brandeis to Westlake Inst, China)
Eilaf Egap (Emory to Rice)
Aaron Esser-Kahn (UCI to Chicago)
Fabien Gagosz (CNRS to Ottawa)
Sharon Hammes-Schiffer (UIUC to Yale)
Eva Harth (Vanderbilt to Houston)
Jen Heemstra (Utah to Emory) 
Ryan Hili (UGA to York)
Rong Huang (VCU to Purdue)  
Kami Hull (UIUC to UT Austin)
Tristan Lambert (Columbia to Cornell) 
Jared Lewis (Chicago to Indiana)
Fu-Sen Liang (UNM to CWRU)
Michael McGehee (Stanford to UC Boulder)
Brian McNaughton (CSU to Delaware)
Christian Melander (NC State to Notre Dame)
Pere Miro (UNF to South Dakota)  
Garrett Miyake (UC Boulder to Colorado State) 
Bill Morandi (Max Planck to ETH)
Peter Nemes (GWU to UMD - College Park)
Jens Norskov (Stanford to DTU)
Hien Nguyen (Iowa to Wayne State)
Rob Paton (Oxford to Colorado State)  
Christine Payne (Georgia Tech to Duke ME)
Poul Petersen (Cornell to RUB)
Scott Phillips (PSU to Boise State) 
Jen Pokorski (CWRU to UCSD)
Mario Rivera (Kansas to LSU)
Michael Rubenstein (UNC to Duke)
Jayaraman Sivaguru (North Dakota to BGSU)
Christine Thomas (Brandeis to Ohio State)
Bill Tolman (Minnesota to Washington U St. Louis)  thanks, Chemjobber and Bill!
Jeff Van Humbeck (MIT to Calgary)
Greg Verdine (Fog or LifeMine)
David Walt (Tufts to Wyss Institute) 
Ryan White (UMBC to Cincinnati) 
Elizabeth Young (Amherst to Lehigh)
Junrong Zheng (Rice to Peking) 

Pending Confirmation

Karena Chapman (Argonne to Stony Brook)
Ming Hammond (Berkeley to Utah)
Tom Mallouk (PSU to Penn)
Douglas Philip (St. Andrews to Northwestern)  two sources
Ian Webb (PNNL to IUPUI)

OK, it's an imperfect employment metaphor, but stellar profs *are* like mutant superheroes....right?

New Hires

Netz Arroyo (JHU)
Bram Axelrod (Purdue)
Keriann Backus (UCLA Biochem)
Buz Barstow (Cornell)
Kwabena Bediako (Berkeley)
Elizabeth Bess (UCI)
Ambika Bhagi-Damodaran (Minnesota)
Aaron Bloomfield (Duquesne)
Zarko Boskovic (Kansas)
Jennifer Bridwell-Rabb (Michigan)
Carl Brozek (Oregon)
Carson Bruns (UC Boulder)
Jonathon Caranto (Central FL)
Amanda Cook (Oregon)
Luke Davis (Tufts)
Selvan Demir (MSU)
Megan Fieser (USC)
Joseph Fournier (Wash U St. Louis)
Stephen Fried (JHU)
Rebecca Gieseking (Brandeis)
Robert Gilliard (UVA)
Grace Han (Brandeis)
Hee-Sun Han (Illinois)
Scott Hansen (Oregon)
Jordan Harshman (Auburn)
Dugan Hayes (URI)
Mark Hedglin (Penn State)
Shabnam Hematian (UNCG)
Raul Hernandez Sanchez (Pitt)
Glen Hocky (NYU)
Scott Horowitz (University of Denver)
Ashlee Howarth (Concordia)
Ying Hu (UIC)
Tao Huan (UBC)
Michael Inkpen (USC)
Jiangbing Jiang (Cincinnatti)
Tim Johnstone (UCSC)
Rashad Karimov (Auburn)
Christopher Kelly (VCU)
Sarah King (Chicago)
Lydia Kisley (CWRU)
Abigail Knight (UNC Chapel Hill)
Joshua Kogot (Miss State)
Kevin Kou (UC Riverside)
Mike Larsen (Western Washington)
Steven Lopez (Northeastern)
Marek Majewski (Concordia)
Lara Malins (ANU)
Amanda Manhart (Temple)
Jeff Martell (Wisconsin)
Jarad Mason (Harvard)
Jesse McDaniel (Georgia Tech)
Quentin Michaudel (Texas A+M)
Jeff Mighion (Kent State)
Phillip Milner (Cornell)
Thomas Montgomery (Duquesne)
Shuming Nie (UIUC)
Lea Nienhaus (FSU)
Lisa Olshansky (UIUC)
Zachariah Page (UT Austin)
Malay Patra (TIFR)  
Amanda Patrick (Miss State)
Shauna Paradine (Rochester)
Joe Patterson (UCI)
Nicholas Race (Minnesota)
Monika Raj (Auburn)
Lindsay Repka (Middlebury)
Jon Rittle (Berkeley)
Anthony Rojas (Salisbury)
Sudeshna Roy (Ole Miss)
Michael Ruggiero (UVM)
Tomce Runcevski (SMU)
Joel Smith (FSU)
Rachel Steinhardt (Syracuse)
Troy Stich (Wake Forest)
Alexandra Strom (Smith)  two sources
John Swierk (Binghamton)
Sesha Vempati (IIT Bhilai)
Bess Vlaisavljevich (South Dakota) 
Wenjing Wang (Michigan)
Alison Wendlandt (MIT)
Sidney Wilkerson-Hill (UNC)
Xin Yan (Texas A+M)
Elizabeth Young (Lehigh)
Ran Zhao (Alberta)


Pending Confirmation

Robert Comito (Houston)
Scott Cushing (Caltech)
Ryan Hadt (Caltech)
Neel Shah (Columbia)


--

For 2017 moves, click here
For 2016 moves, click here
For 2015 moves, click here
For 2014 moves, click here.
For 2012-2013 moves, click here. 

Chemistry Bumper Cars, 2017

In the age of globalization, Reddit, DM, and coffee shops, it's surprising when you don't hear about a faculty move at least two months ahead of it becoming reality.

(Alert! Repurposed text to follow!)

Last year's list has grown ungainly, and so it's time for a new batch. Same rules apply: If you hear of a move, please tell me in the comments, and I'll post in the "Pending Confirmation" section. Escape from pending purgatory involves sending me a link or other documentation from the new institution. Happy speculating!

Update, May 2017: Are you a newly-minted prof? The stalwart reporting cadre of C&EN want to make you aware of a (private, exclusive) Facebook group to share stories and support your new role. Want in? Go here.

Moves

Huiwang Ai (UC Riverside to UVA)
Adam Braunschweig (Miami to CUNY)
Brian Blagg (Kansas to Notre Dame)  five sources
Gong Chen (PSU to Nankai, 2016)
Qiang Cui (Wisconsin to Boston U)  thanks, SJE!
Mark Davis (Caltech to USC)  thanks, Maxxie!
Michael Fischbach (UCSF to Stanford ChEM-H)  thanks, Carolyn!
Nathan Gianneschi (UCSD to Northwestern)
Karen Goldberg (Washington to Penn)
Jim Heath (Caltech to ISB, admin)
Ryan Hili (UGA to York)
Yannis Kevrekidis (Princeton to Johns Hopkins)
Laura Kiessling (Wisconsin to MIT)
Ken Knappenberger (Florida State to PSU)
Kirill Kovnir (Iowa State)
Chenglong Li (OSU to Florida)
John MacMillan (UTSW to UCSC)
Christopher McCurdy (Mississippi to Florida)  thanks, Cunningham!
Pere Miro (UNF to South Dakota) thanks, Chemjobber!
Randall Peterson (Harvard MGH to Utah, admin)
Ronald Raines (Wisconsin to MIT)
Chris Scarborough (Emory to Syngenta)
Kirk Schanze (Florida to UT-San Antonio)
Daniel Seidel (Rutgers to Florida)
James Skinner (Wisconsin to Chicago)
Carlos Silva (Montreal to Georgia Tech)
Stavroula Sofou (Rutgers to Johns Hopkins)
Christine Thomas (Brandeis to Ohio State)
Greg Verdine (WaVe, WuXi Venture, Eleven, Fog)
Casey Wade (Brandeis to Ohio State)
Daniel Weix (Rochester to Wisconsin)
Michael Wolfe (Harvard Med to Kansas)
Roy Wollman (UCSD to UCLA)
Bill Wuest (Temple to Emory)
Chengguo Xing (Minnesota to Florida)  one source


Pending Confirmation

Aaron Esser-Kahn (UCI to Chicago) two sources
Jen Heemstra (Utah to Emory?) three sources
Rong Huang (VCU to Purdue?)  one source
Andreas Lendlein (HZG to Texas A+M?)  two sources
Rob Paton (Oxford to Colorado State?)  one source
Scott Phillips (PSU to Boise State?) one source
Jennifer Prescher (UCI to Minnesota)  one source
J. Fraser Stoddart (NW to Texas A&M?) conflicting sources...
David Walt (Tufts to HMS?)  one source
Junrong Zheng (Rice to Peking?)  one source

Very unlikely method - too much H2O gets into the deuterium oxide...

New Hires

Samuel Awuah (Kentucky)   thanks, Lippard lab!
Jean-Luc Ayitou (Illinois Institute of Tech)
Jeff Bandar (Colorado State)
Chris Barile (UN-Reno)
Eszter Boros (Stony Brook)
Carson Bruns (CU Boulder) thanks, Carson ?!?!
Andrew Buller (Wisconsin)  thanks, Chemjobber!
Justin Caram (UCLA)
Carlos Carrero (Auburn)  three sources
Matthew Chambers (LSU)
Craig Chapman (UNH)
Xi Chen (CUNY ASRC)
Saurabh Chitnis (Dalhousie, 2018)
Christopher Dares (FIU)  two sources
Laura Dassama (Stanford Chem-H)
Eric Detsi (UPenn)
Todd Doran (UMN)
Letian Dou (Purdue)
Elizabeth Elacqua (PSU)
Noemie Elgrishi (LSU)
Shirin Faraji (Gronigen)
Jeremy Feldblyum (SUNY Albany)
Thomas Gianetti (Arizona)
Todd Gingrich (Northwestern)
Samer Gozem (Georgia State)
Marie Heffern (UC Davis)
Christopher Hendon (Oregon)
Kristin Hutchins (Texas Tech)  thanks, Moore group!
Enver Izgu (Rutgers)
Meredith Jackrel (WU St. Louis)
Carlos Jimenez-Hoyos (Wesleyan)
Tim Johnstone (UCSC)
Matt Jones (Rice)
Evan Joslin (U of the South)  one source
Masha Kamenetska (Boston U)
Jessica Kramer (Utah Bioengineering)
Jiwoong Lee (Copenhagen)
Semin Lee (LSU)
Mark Lipke (Rutgers)
Ashley Longstreet (Tampa)   two sources
Justin Lopchuk (Moffitt)
Long Luo (Wayne State)
Tomoyasu Mani (UConn)
Megan Matthews (Penn)
Jamie Neely (Saint Louis U)  thanks, Paul!
Andrew Nieuwkoop (Rutgers)
Michael Norris (Richmond)  one source
Davit Potoyan (Iowa State)
Eric Price (Saskatchewan)
Rebecca Quardokus (UConn)
Madalyn Radlauer (San Jose State)  personal communication
Maxwell Robb (Caltech)
Andrew Roberts (Utah)
Jennifer Rupp (MIT)
Aaron Rury (Wayne State) from school Facebook page (?!?)
Brett Savoie (Purdue ChemE)
Kimberly See (Caltech)
Christo Sevov (Ohio State) thanks, Sanford Lab!
Benjamin Sherman (TCU)  two sources
James Shepherd (Iowa)
Alexey Silakov (Penn State)
Zachary Smith (MIT)
Alexander Sokolov (Ohio State)
Jamie Spangler (Johns Hopkins)
Mark Tibbitt (ETH)  one source
Pratyush Tiwary (Maryland)
Emily Tsui (Notre Dame)
Gael Ung (UConn)
Alexandra Velian (Washington)
Konstantinos Vogiatzis (Tennessee) one source
Yiming Wang (Pitt)  in department phone list
Zachary Wickens (Wisconsin)
Jingjie Wu (Cincinnatti)
Han Xiao (Rice)
Xingchen Ye (IUB)
Joseph Zadrozny (Colorado State)
Julia Zaikina (Iowa State)
Melissa Zastrow (Houston)
Jianyuan (Jason) Zhang (Rutgers)

Pending Confirmation

Jennifer Bridwell-Rabb (Michigan)
Scott Hansen (Oregon)
Dugan Hayes (URI)
Scott Horowitz (UC-Denver)
Rashad Karimov (Auburn)
Stephen Lopez (Northeastern)
Lara Malins (ANU)
Jarad Mason (Harvard)
Jeff Mighion (Kent State)
Jia Niu (Boston College)
Sudeshna Roy (Ole Miss)
Bess Vlaisavljevich (South Dakota)
Ran Zhao (Alberta)

--

For 2016 moves, click here
For 2015-2016 moves, click here

For 2014-2015 moves, click here.
For 2012-2013 moves, click here. 

Big Fish, New Ponds?

Have you kept your ear to the ground? Felt something on the breeze? Getting a "gut feeling"?

The most recent edition of Chemistry Bumper Cars - Faculty Moves, for the uninitiated - leans towards bigger deals and dramatic poaches as the Fall term looms over the Summer horizon. Here's the latest I've heard about, with my own opinion about whether the rumor holds water.

Dave MacMillan to leave Princeton, for...?
Odds: Low

I hear what you're saying: MacMillan has already moved twice (Berkeley -> Caltech -> Princeton), and we're talking about a researcher who averages an award every year and a new named professorship every four. However, he's fairly well settled into a tight relationship with Merck, who are local to NJ. He's also helped propel Princeton back up in the rankings over the past decade. I can think of only one university that sounds like any kind of a step up, and they have plenty of organic power at the moment.

Dirk Trauner to NYU
Odds: Medium

Though I've heard this more than once, I'm scratching my head about how it makes sense for Trauner. Part of his motivation in returning to LMU was to continue the Mulzer mystique: the powerhouse European natural products group that makes densely-functionalized products appear as if by magic. Then again, NYU seems to be aggressively searching for a certain kind of chemist; maybe Dirk is slated to be the new Phil Baran of the East Coast?*

Update: As seen in the comments, Dirk himself confirms. My gracious thanks to the Professor.

Tom Rovis to Columbia
Odds: Certain

Signed, sealed, and delivered to Columbia back in the Spring.

Dave Liu to Broad from Harvard
Odds: Low

First he was an undergraduate wunderkind with Corey, now one of the youngest Full Professors and an HHMI scholar, all before age 40. He's already a core faculty member with Broad while managing his Harvard group, and I see no reason for Harvard (or for Liu) to wish to terminate his current position. This may sound like wild speculation or stargazing, but I fully suspect Liu's name goes on a nomination for a Big Prize within ~5 yrs, and I think Harvard would do everything they could to keep him in the fold for that day.

Update: As noted in the comments, does appear Liu will have to be physically present on the Broad's campus.

Karen Goldberg to leave U. Washington
Odds: Low

I very much want to believe, especially since UW lost Jim Mayer a few years back, that they can retain Goldberg, a C-H activation and general OM superstar. She boasts a local Center and a named professorship, as well as a Department with plenty of talented young blood: Boydston, Bush, Cossairt, Fu, Lalic, Schlenker, Theberge, Zalatan, all hired in just the last 6 years, doubtless some drawn there through her influence. I'm sure she'd succeed at a Caltech or an MIT, but I really don't know enough about her motivations to say any more conclusively.

Greg Verdine leaves Harvard to run companies full-time 
Odds: High

It's said you can throw a rock in Cambridge these days and hit a VC. Seeing how much apparent fun and success Verdine has had with his previous ventures into the private sector, I'm betting he continues this line full-time and slowly winds down managing theses and group meetings.

--
*Today's ridiculous statistic: In the past 20 years, Baran and Trauner have authored a combined 372 research papers. That's 2-3 entire careers, and these are guys with 20+ years ahead of them. Damn.

How Long are Postdoctoral Fellowships? - Part 2

Following some interesting interactions with readers on Twitter and in the comments, it seems my initial post could have improved with 1) more data, and 2) break-down by gender. So, I spent some time this weekend digging through my last two Bumper Cars posts (2014-2015, 2015-2016) in order to provide a clearer picture.

How did we get here? Read the original post.

2015 - Random Trillium from a recent weekend hike

For starters, raw numbers - as of this writing, there are 194 confirmed new hires between the two lists. Of these, I was able to track down information about postdoctoral appointments for 132 (68%). Unfortunately, there's no consistent format for how candidates track their experience; I found myself cobbling it together from LinkedIn, university websites, ACS member profiles, and digital thesis repositories.

To keep myself honest, I'm pasting my assumptions below* this post, as before.

Now, to the numbers: First, the aggregate statistics - of the 132, here's the new mean/median/mode:

MEAN:	3.49 years
MODE:	3 years
MEDIAN	3 years

MIN:             0 year (no postdoc!)
MAX:            9 years

(n = 132)

So, roughly in line with what I had before. But what about the gender gap? Do men spend significantly less time as postdoctoral scholars?

First, it helps to clarify what the real split looks like: Of 132 candidates, 39 (29.5%) are female. This may be an admittedly small data set, but I see only a slight difference** in overall time: 

3.47 years for men (n = 93), 3.54 years for women (n = 39).

Edit (6/21): A good spot to insert a quote from a 2013 Beth Halford piece in C&EN:

"For one, although there are no hard numbers to point to, some say people are spending more time in postdoctoral positions. In chemistry, one to two years used to be the norm, but that time frame may be creeping up. Some chemists tell C&EN that they are spending five or more years doing postdoctoral studies."

Seems to be the case, at least to me.

Of course, the best way to make this data set relevant is to send in even more new names! Once I can figure out a good mechanism to capture pharma / gov't hires, I'll try to expand the analysis. Who knows? Maybe we'll get a real live database set up...

--

*These postdocs reflect faculty appointments; I'm clearly not counting those who went into government, pharmaceutical, industry, or left chemistry entirely. If someone has a good idea for how to capture that data, I'm all ears.

Counting time: If someone gave a graduation year - "Ph.D. 2009"-  I assumed a postdoctoral stint until their faculty start date. For example, 2015 start = 6 years a postdoc. If, however, they provided a range - "postdoc 2012-2014" - I assumed that they postdoc'd the difference of that time, or 2 years, despite the fact that, depending on start and end dates, that could reasonably be interpreted as any length of time between 13 months (Dec 2012-Jan 2014) and 36 months (Jan 2012-Dec 2014).

Of the 77 new faculty starting in 2015 or 2016 (as of June 2015), I was only able to find bio-sketch information for half. The following people from my list are represented in the above statistics: Li, Engle, Hyster, Matson, Menard, Personick, Thoi, Tsui, Wasa, Blakemore, Browne, Devery, Gahlmann, Kempa, Limmer, Nelson, Sing, Thompson, Bantz, Hubbard, Garcia-Bosch, Huo, Wei Li, Mirica, Rossini, Seiple, Wu, Anand, Boudreau, Genereux, Jiang, Sletten, Theberge, Fu, Ke, Conley, Raston.

**One additional complicating factor? It's tough to tell who's a postdoc anymore. This study only includes candidates who list their experience as "postdoc", "postdoctoral fellow", "research associate", or something of that ilk. Senior researcher? NSF Fellow? Visiting researcher? Lab assistant? Are these postdoctoral positions, or not? Tough to tell, so I excluded them. Thus, I may be artificially shortening certain candidates' timelines.

Additionally, certain candidates had "gaps" of 1-2 years in their experience, and I could find no information for what they did. Took time off? Worked somewhere that didn't pan out? Had a child? I simply don't know.

Buried Treasure

Regular readers know that I've been collecting names of chemistry faculty moves for a while now. I had to chuckle at this particular announcement, by friend of the blog (and fellow Tweeter) Prof. Karl Gademann. From two clicks deep on his group's home page:

"Prof. Gademann's first professorial appointment was at the EPFL in Lausanne, and he currently holds a chair at the University of Basel as a full professor. He has been elected to the board of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and is affiliated to the National Centres of Competence in Research ‘Chemical Biology’ and ‘Molecular Systems Engineering’. Karl Gademann will move in Summer 2015 to the University of Zürich. His work has been recognized by a number of international awards, including the Latsis prize, the Novartis Early Career Award, the Ruzicka Medal, The Liebig Lecture by the German Chemical Society, and the European Young Investigator Award."

Thanks to an eagle-eyed commenter for the link.

Also, from both sites (UZH, BAS), it would appear that Dr. Gademann looks most professional when posed behind a rotovap condenser.

Best of luck in the new position, Karl - we'll add you to the list!

Chemistry Bumper Cars: What's Up at UNIST?

UNIST Distinguished Professor
Bartosz Grzybowski

We bloggers love to joke about the latest high-profile "poach" of a faculty member by prestigious universities. But what if the university in question has only existed for a handful of years?

Such is the case with UNIST, the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, which opened for business in 2009. Just a few hours' drive inland from the southeast coast of Korea, its shiny new research campus has attracted quite a few faculty moves in the past 2 years. The most recent hire - Bartosz Grzybowski, formerly of Northwestern - joins an interesting expat roster which includes a 30-year vet of UIUC and two former UT-Austin chemists.

Keep an eye on UNIST; talent often accretes around big hires, and Grzybowski's certainly one.

Chemistry Bumper Cars - Chris Walsh to Stanford?

Earlier tonight, while combing through the ASAPs, I came across an interesting situation:

This paper (http://t.co/VHLzS2HbOO) seems to suggest that Chris Walsh (http://t.co/JfvajzKoyH) is now at Stanford. Can anyone confirm? #move
— See Arr Oh (@SeeArrOh) November 11, 2014

Usually. the chemblogosphere catches major moves fairly fast, but have we missed this one? Perhaps this is a "courtesy appointment," though I can't find any mention on Stanford's site.

Anyone know anything?

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 - Bertrand Edition

A little birdie has written to tell me of another fairly high-profile move - Prof. Guy Bertrand, formerly of UC-Riverside, seems to have moved to UC-San Diego* as early as June 2012.

Not familiar? His research covers main group complexes of phosphorus and boron, metathesis, gold catalysis, and some really neat takes on the N-heterocyclic carbene ligand framework (P.S. It certainly doesn't hurt when you're averaging a Science paper every other year!)

No word on whether the move was precipitated in order to fill a "Nicolaou-sized" hole in the UCSD faculty...

Congrats, Prof. Bertrand! We'll add you to the new map next year.

*I may be the only one entertained by this, but Prof. Bertrand is listed in the UC-San Diego "new faculty" page as "Professor, Above Scale (Distinguished)." Which begs the question, UCSD - show me that scale!

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.