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By now, most people have heard that the average national unemployment rate has fallen from close to 9.0% to 8.6%—the lowest in almost three years. While this may be cause for celebration, a closer inspection of other statistical findings is necessary to get a real picture of American unemployment (notwithstanding the fact that unemployment rates for African Americans and Hispanics are in double digits).

The source of these revealing stats was an article by Phyllis Korkki published in the New York Times this past New Year’s Day entitled “The Year of the Multitaskers’ Revenge” According to Ms. Korkki, while the overall unemployment rate is 8.6%, the jobless rate for persons who earned a college degree is 4.4% while the rate for those with a high school diploma is 8.8%. The unemployment rate for those individuals who did not graduate from high school is a staggering 13.2%. However, a more troubling statistic offered by Ms. Korkki is that less than 30% of United States population of 25 years or older has a bachelors or higher degree. To make matters worse, 30% of jobless Americans have been unemployed for a year or more.

Ms. Korrki contends that large groups of American will continue to be unemployed or underemployed unless more training and educational opportunities become available to the public. Further she asserts that if the long term unemployed do not get some government help than this groups risks falling so far behind that it will never be able to catch up.

Most analysts predict that unemployment rates in the US will remain high for five years or more. Like Korkki, I believe that the only way to reduce unemployment among non-college graduates is to fund programs that are designed to retrain workers for jobs in emerging technologies. Further, bringing manufacturing jobs from overseas back to the US will also help!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!

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I mistakenly received the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) rather than the NY Times today and while I think that the WSJ is a great example of unabashedly biased journalism, there was an article in the publication about today’s job market that contained some interesting statistics.

The article entitled “Gloom Widespread As College Grads Face New Math” offered the following:

• Unemployment among college graduates is 4.2% vs. 9.7% for high school grads
• Eighty percent of recently-polled white male college grads believe the economy is heading in the wrong direction
• Wages for employees with four-year college degrees fell 8.6% between 2000 and 2010
• The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 10.7% as compared with an overall unemployment rate of approximately 9.1%
• More than 14% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 (ca. 5.9 million) are living with their parent and nearly 25% of them have college degrees

These are pretty sobering facts about the job market in the one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Is it any wonder why the Occupy Wall Street movement is gaining traction among American college age youths?   As recommended by the article’s author it may be time for Americans to follow the advice of the actor Peter Finch (Howard Beale) in the satirical 1976 movie Network

"I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs... And go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!"

If you truly feel like doing this maybe you ought to find your way down to the Occupy Wall Street protest!!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

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The recent article published in the NY Times about the decline of high school student participation in science fairs resulted in many letters to the editor. Many of them were from concerned citizens and a few were from university researchers decrying the lack of government funding for research and the funding of sports over science programs. Another railed against the Bush’s Administration’s poorly crafted and ill-advised No Child Left Behind Act. However, there was one letter that surprised me. It was written by John P. Holdren, President Obama’s science and technology adviser (see below)

To the Editor:

Your article points to deep budget challenges that many school districts are facing and problems with the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind law.

But it does not mention much of the Obama administration’s extraordinary agenda for improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in this country: for example, the commitment to prepare 100,000 new math and science teachers over the next 10 years, the $4 billion Race to the Top program’s support for innovation in teaching these important subjects, and the administration’s blueprint for updating the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year.

Recognizing that government alone cannot be the answer, moreover, the president has also called upon the business community, foundations, professional societies and others to do more. Already, the president’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign has attracted more than $700 million in nongovernmental financial and in-kind support for science and math programs.

And more than 100 chief executives have responded to the president’s “all hands on deck” call to action by launching “Change the Equation,” an unprecedented program to scale up effective models for improving STEM education.

John P. Holdren
Washington, Feb. 7, 2011

The writer is President Obama’s science and technology adviser.

What surprised me about the letter is that it took an article critical of the Obama Administration’s commitment to science education to provide the American public (at least part of it) with some insight into the government’s recognition of the problem and steps that it is taking to help to correct it. Perhaps the Obama administration needs to be a bit more proactive and publicly-vocal about its plans to improve American STEM education. This would go a long way to assuage some of the concerns about America's waning global competitiveness in science and technology.

Like Dr. Holdren, I believe that government alone cannot be the answer and American corporations must get actively involved by providing ideas on how to improve American science education and the financial support to implement them. While the CEO-endorsed program “Change the Equation” sounds great on paper, it is time for those CEOs to actually step up and do something about the problem. Many of these same CEOs have been complaining for decades about the lack of STEM preparedness of the American workforce. As somebody once said “Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words!”

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Teaching!!!!

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I am sure that many BioJobBlog readers have heard the old adage that money can’t buy happiness. The corollary to this statement is that it [money] sure helps! However, in a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, two Princeton University economists determined that there may indeed be something of a relationship between income and happiness. 

After analyzing more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization the authors concluded that:

When plotted against log income, life evaluation (thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it) rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ∼$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.

According to an article authored by Phyllis Korkki of the New York Times, Kahneman asserts that

“Many people want to make a lot of money, but the benefits of having a high income are ambiguous,” When you are wealthy you are able to buy more pleasures, he said, but a recent study suggests that wealthier people “seem to be less able to savor the small things in life.” He added, “Wanting money is not a recipe for disaster, but wanting money and not getting it — that’s a good recipe for disaster”

Many job and career counselors contend that working at a high paying but unsatisfying job may not be the best approach to life. For example, Korkki reported that Daniel Pink author and career advisor said that “Looking at lists of careers with the highest salaries tends to be a fool’s game.” Generally, people flourish when they’re doing something they like and what they’re good at” he added. Also, Nicholas Lore, a founder of a successful career coaching firm said “It all depends on priorities. Some people are willing to make lifestyle changes because the intrinsic rewards of following a passion or making a difference are more important than a high salary in an unenjoyable career.”

I think that the true relationship between money and happiness is best described by Lore when he said “Many people equate success with a high income, but, “How can someone say they’re successful if they’re not happy doing their work? To me, that’s not success.”

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

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Yesterday, I posted a piece on "hit'  throughput screening (see below).  At the time, I learned about  'hit" throughput screening, I mentioned that  I had never heard of "hit" throughput screening but I did know about high throughput screening.  As it turns out, there was a problem in translation and in fact, there is no such thing as hit throughput screening and it is actually high throughput screening.  Mea Culpa!  I apologize for the error and in the future I will be assiduous in my fact checking before I post (a lesson that the boneheads in the Obama administration learned the hard way in the recent Sherrod brouhaha)

The Growth of High Throughput Screening

No; this isn’t a typo! My colleagues at Meet the Boss sent me a press release today about efforts underway at Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline to redefine HTS to mean “hit” throughput screening rather than high throughput screening. As many of you may know, high throughput screening which began in the mid 1990s was supposed to revolutionize drug discovery and development—it did not! Nevertheless, after almost 15 years of refinement it appears that the technology may be paying off and can be used as an adjunctive tool to expedite and lower the cost of small molecule and protein-based drug discovery. While I don’t know much about this emerging technology, the press release presented below suggests that a meeting about HTS may be in the works. 

It is understood that huge amounts of money have been invested into drug discovery and the biggest problem faced by the industry is investing in drugs which may not make it onto the market. Europe has always been seen to trail behind the US when discussing drug discovery within the pharmaceutical industry, but with the biotechnology revolution they have begun to catch and becoming a driving force within the global industry.

The NGP EU committee has been celebrating the success of their pioneering roles in genome sequencing and the development of proteomic. Pfizer has recently announced to the NGP Drug Discovery committee that they plan to roll out a hit identification and screening file strategy. The process will offer a new flexible strategy for hit identification while sculpting a more reliable and efficient screening process. 

High throughput screening (HTS) has grown rapidly over the last ten years and Pfizer themselves noted the huge advances in both detection technology and laboratory automation. Pfizer believe that not only big Pharma but also smaller companies can implement HTS as well. By implementing HTS,  it can remove the indecision over which compunds will be profiles, many smaller companies agonize over the costs of conventional profiling sometimes only choosing between 10 and 20 compounds, this already removes other possibilities before true research can really begin. Pfizer among other members of the NGP EU Drug Discovery committee wish to discuss how they wish to implement large scale profiling at a lower cost, while maintaining the incredible biological, technological, and scientific advancements they are already demonstrating globally.

GSK have also joined Pfizer recently in encouraging the implementation of HTS. “We are now at a stage where we can exploit the benefits of cutting edge technology for increased quality, performance and capabilities. We also have the option to supply the same number of compounds, with the same level of quality at an affordable price”. 

Key to discussions will be representatives from AstraZeneca - Goran Wennberg, VP Discovery Information, Bayer Schering Pharma - Andreas Busch, Head of Global Drug Discovery & Member of the Board , Novartis - Olivier Grenet , Group Head of Genome Biology ,GlaxoSmithKline - Tino Rossi, VP of PreClinical Drug Discovery & Enabling Technologies and Pfizer - John Mathias, Head of High Through Put Screening all determined to firmly place Europe as the Drug Discovery capital.

The discovery and implementation of HTS not only offers an opportunity to smaller Pharma companies but also the consumer, if research and quality is increased and cost decreased this in turn will be passed onto the consumer.

Stay tuned for more details.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting

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Unlike others, life scientists have been slow to use social media to look for jobs or network to enhance career opportunities.  Many scientists  have  Facebook accounts but view it and other social media tools like Twitter simply as a means to stay in touch with family and friends.  However, social media can be a very powerful tool for scientists who are looking for jobs or the next big career move.

To that end, I presented a seminar at Experimental Biology this past weekend in New Orleans entitled "Social Media and Career Development for Life Sciences" that offer suggestions on how to use social media to land a job or jumpstart a career in the life sciences industry.  For those of you who may be interested, I posted the presentation below:

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I had many discussions with undergraduate students at the ABRCMS in Orlando last week who were interested in pursuing PhD degrees in the biomedical sciences. I felt that I had an ethical and moral responsibility as a former academic and career development professional to tell them that the job market for PhDs is not good and that it is likely to get worse over the next few years. These discussions prompted me to revisit the role and contributions of tenure to the lack of academic jobs in the US today.

As I stated in a previous post, systemic changes must be made to the current academic paradigm to increase the likelihood that PhDs will be able to find jobs at the end of their training. In that post, I suggested that abolishing tenure and replacing it with renewable, performance-based five year contracts may help to reduce the glut of jobless PhDs by freeing up a small percentage of new faculty positions every five years. While this approach has been tried at several academic institutions, it has been largely been deemed unsuccessful. That said, I came across a provocative article in today’s New York Times about a bold new tenure proposal put forth by Michelle Rhee, the new, 38-year old Chancellor of the Washington, DC school system.

Ms Rhee’s revolutionary proposal offers tenured teachers salaries raises of up to $40,000 per year to give up tenure. It is important to note she has not proposed to completely abolish tenure. Under her proposal, teachers would choose between two compensation options—the green or red plans. Salaries for teachers in the green plan would rise meteorically, nearly doubling by 2010, but they would have to give up tenure for one year, after which they would need a principal’s recommendation to keep their job or face dismissal. Teachers who choose the red plan would also get big pay raises but would lose seniority rights that allow them to bump more junior teachers if their school closes or is overhauled. Red plan teachers who are not hired by other schools would either have to take early retirement, a buyout or face eventual dismissal. I like her plan because poorly- or under performing teachers can opt to take the cash and then either drastically improve to keep their higher paying jobs or do nothing, get paid well for a year or two and then get fired.

While Ms. Rhee’s proposal may work at the primary and secondary school levels, it likely would not be effective at the college and postgraduate levels, where salaries vary widely and are largely grant driven. Instead, I propose that tenure-for-life should remain intact at these institutions but be replaced with a “for cause” tenure review system. This system is tried and true and similar models have been successfully used for over 100 years by employers and labor unions. In this model, management and its unions agree upon the job responsibilities and performance metrics for individual that must be met each year, e.g. an annual performance review.  If a person is under performing or fails to meet his/her performance metrics, an employer can attempt to dismiss the employee “for cause” reasons.  However, before a dismissal for cause can occur, the employer must convince a judge or arbitrator in a hearing that the employee in question has violated the “dismissal for cause” provisions.  Because an employer must prove that an employee has violated the provisions that constitute for cause dismissal, the “for cause” claims against individual employees must be fastidiously documented and vigorously substantiated. This prevents employers from arbitrarily firing employees who are either outspoken troublesome or disruptive. According to my wife, who has been a union-side labor lawyer and union representative for 20 year, this system works well because the players (management and unions) all understand, abide by and play according to the rules of the game.

So what are some of the performance-based “for cause” metrics that I think ought to be considered for yearly evaluations of tenured professors? They are not much different than those currently used to adjudicate tenure decisions. That said, I propose the following five categories: 1) teaching, 2) publication record, 3) grant support, 4) institutional service and 5) commitment to innovation. In my opinion, adoption of the “for cause” tenure review model would help to do two things: improve the overall performance of tenured faculty members and provide newly minted PhDs and postdoctoral fellows with regularly occurring new job opportunities.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

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New Jersey-based Pharmacopeia, the first-ever combinatorial chemistry company, announced that it had agreed to be purchased by Ligand Pharmaceuticals in a stock deal worth about $70 million. Onetime a leader in combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening, Pharmacopeia has struggled of late after it jettisoned its profitable molecular modeling division several years ago. While the company was able to advance several of its lead compounds into early phase clinical testing, its  longtime business model, predicated on multiple, small discovery deals with large pharmaceutical companies, was unable to provide enough capital to continue to sustain operations.

Pharmacopeia was established in 1993 after its founders licensed from Columbia University several of the first issued combinatorial chemistry patents. The company was a pioneer in combinatorial chemistry (and subsequently high throughput screening) and was the first to publicly tout the virtues of combinatorial chemistry in drug discovery. By the mid-1990s, many pharmaceutical companies had embraced combinatorial chemistry as the “next big thing” and began eliminating traditional natural product and medicinal chemistry jobs. The industry’s love affair with combinatorial chemistry grew so strong that many companies (most notably Merck), completely eliminated their natural products discovery departments in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, the role of combinatorial chemistry in drug discovery never lived up to its promised potential and was largely abandoned in the early 2000s. Although combinatorial chemistry is now part of the modern day drug discovery paradigm, this onetime “shining star” has largely been relegated to a minor supporting role.

I first became acquainted with Pharmacopeia in 1994 after I took a job with Transcell Technologies, a now-defunct biotechnology company that was co-located with Pharmacopeia in a research facility in Monmouth Junction, NJ. While Transcell and Pharmacopeia shared a cafeteria and some common laboratory equipment, Pharmacopeia employees were strictly forbidden to talk with Transcell employees— lest they inadvertently divulge proprietary combinatorial chemistry concepts that might jeopardize the company’s future. Coincidentally, a guy who lived two doors down from my family and me turned out to be Pharmacopeia’s in-house intellectual property attorney. Although, Ron and I became good friends, he was also extremely tight-lipped about the “goings-on” at Pharmacopeia. Privately-held Pharmacopeia went public in 1995 and at one time, its market capitalization was almost $1.0 billion.

By any reckoning, a 15-year run is outstanding for a biopharmaceutical company. However, as the old adage goes, “All good things must come to an end.” At present, it is not clear, whether or not California-based Ligand will relocate the company or cut jobs. Nevertheless, Pharmacopeia’s impending demise sends a clear signal that the golden age of combinatorial chemistry has ended!

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!

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