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!

A Few More Thoughts on Faculty Moves

While looking back at the map I made for my earlier post today, I had a few "deeper thoughts" about the faculty moving process.

- Is it just me, or do all the moves seem to be to warmer places? Even funnier, some mention it in the press releases following their moves. Take this gem, from Greg Fu:

"...it does not hurt, [Fu] adds, that he gets to leave those cold Cambridge winters behind."

A future Prof practices
for his first faculty move

- Although I claim that the moves are often prestige-based, i.e. to move into a highly-ranked university, several of these moves buck the trend. Finn moved from Scripps (#7) to Georgia Tech (#26), and Woerpel from Irvine (#26) to NYU (#67). If Nicolaou does indeed move to Rice, he'll be moving from #7 to #33. Now, I realize there's other rankings in town (see Chronicle, Times), and the "big fish" mentality suggests these rankings will improve once the new recruit sets foot on campus. But I'd still argue that some of these were lateral moves at best.

- What's up with the Pacific Northwest? The South? The Rockies? How come nobody from these places seems to move around? Either everyone in these locations is completely satisfied with their lives, positions, and income, or there's some dynamics between the East and Left Coast that I haven't yet figured out. 

Readers, what do you think?

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.

I'm Not Dead Yet

Good guess, but not where we're going...

Hello, readers . . .you may have noticed a lot of down time around here lately. Truth be told, we're planning a wee bit of "geographical displacement" brought on by "employment improvement" (Translation: a multi-state move is in the works).

More posts after the jump, I promise!