Neal
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Anyone go to university chemistry seminars? Or view chem department profiles?
This fall I been joining a public university in my city's chemistry seminars, where visiting professors/scientists come present their PowerPoint
presentations. From corporations such as Sigma-Aldrich and Merck. I'll try to attend from several universities in my city at once.
As well as other departments such as biology.
Anyone do stuff like that, as in when you're not an actual enrolled student in that university?
So the challenge is finding out which 1s allow for outsiders to come on, as in you don't need to swipe an ID to get in.
I also check out chemistry professor's websites across multiple universities, from U of C to Berkeley, CA. And sometimes in other departments. Some
other majors even physics the professors don't have their own mini website.
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Johanson
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Anyone go to university chemistry seminars?
Not interested! PowerPoint presentations by chemistry professors are for raising funds for semi-worthless projects - like zapping plastic bottles to
produce hydrogen gas at 10x the normal cost, or making ridiculous iron-iron batteries that don't work. They are a complete, utter, total, waste of
your time. If you're an institutional investor and have money to throw down a bottomless rat hole in search of "vanity" projects, then have at it! If
on the other hand you're looking for worthwhile investments, or finding engaging projects to work on yourself, it's a lot faster to search the
literature or YouTube for ideas, and vet them on your own.
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Texium
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Quote: Originally posted by Johanson  | | Not interested! PowerPoint presentations by chemistry professors are for raising funds for semi-worthless projects - like zapping plastic bottles to
produce hydrogen gas at 10x the normal cost, or making ridiculous iron-iron batteries that don't work. They are a complete, utter, total, waste of
your time. If you're an institutional investor and have money to throw down a bottomless rat hole in search of "vanity" projects, then have at it! If
on the other hand you're looking for worthwhile investments, or finding engaging projects to work on yourself, it's a lot faster to search the
literature or YouTube for ideas, and vet them on your own. |
That's an awfully pessimistic and dismissive
take... Sure, I've been to some seminars that felt like a boring waste of time, but the majority that I have attended are quite interesting, and I've
always learned something new. It's not productive for amateur chemists to take such an "us vs them" attitude towards academic chemists. And need I
remind you that this is science we're talking about? Not all research has to have an immediate practical application! It's already hard
enough to pursue research out of pure interest and curiosity without armchairs like you calling it "worthless!"
Your perspective on the purpose of the seminars is also hilariously wrong: these seminars aren't typically viewed by "investors" of any sort. They
certainly aren't for fundraising. The audience is almost always exclusively faculty and students from the university, who are there because they want
to learn something (and score some free snacks and coffee). The real purpose is sharing interesting science and networking with people from other
universities who might be doing similar research.
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Neal
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What about scientists from corporations?
Sometimes 1 that wants to learn about a corporation can ask employees for some insider feedback about the corporation. (But ask at the end of the
seminar, after the presentation questions.).
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Johanson
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Uhhggg.... to watch your words twisted by others!
Why do I need to be villianised in your response? If you want to network, Texium, you are free to do so. I am not an armchair. I took several minutes
out of my day to respond to the original poster, who had no feedback on his post. I'm an old guy with a career in engineering and finance, and I can
tell you with some certainty that most innovation isn't coming from academia right now.
Neal: Yeah, I think I'd be more interested in that. However... I can research corporations a lot faster using other methods.
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j_sum1
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I didn't know the question was a personal one. I certainly would not interpret responses that way.
I recall some really interesting presentations that I have attended. I also recall some that were as dry as burnt toast. Right where I am, i have
not had opportunity to attend anything at all and i would welcome it if the chance came up. I think an inspiring presentation can capture the
imagination and foster curiosity in a way that does not always happen through just reading. Especially if you have to find the thing to read first.
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Johanson
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Yeah, I wasn't intending to promote a siege mentality, as Texium implies. I just don't have time to hunt down and attend things like that in person.
As facile as it sounds, I rely a lot on certain Facebook groups and sites like this one for science-comradery and ideas.
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Texium
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@Johanson: I’m not trying to vilify you. My response was strongly worded because I attend chemistry seminars at my university nearly every week, and
from my perspective, your take was almost comically off-base. You were the one coming in hot to begin with, saying that seminars are a “complete,
utter, total waste of your time” without any qualifiers or exceptions. So, I don’t think my rebuttal was out of line or disproportionate.
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Metacelsus
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| Quote: Originally posted by Texium |
Your perspective on the purpose of the seminars is also hilariously wrong: these seminars aren't typically viewed by "investors" of any sort. They
certainly aren't for fundraising. The audience is almost always exclusively faculty and students from the university, who are there because they want
to learn something (and score some free snacks and coffee). The real purpose is sharing interesting science and networking with people from other
universities who might be doing similar research. |
I definitely agree. Especially about free snacks and coffee being a good motivator for grad students to show up 
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valeg96
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| Quote: Originally posted by Johanson | Anyone go to university chemistry seminars?
Not interested! PowerPoint presentations by chemistry professors are for raising funds for semi-worthless projects - like zapping plastic bottles to
produce hydrogen gas at 10x the normal cost, or making ridiculous iron-iron batteries that don't work. They are a complete, utter, total, waste of
your time. If you're an institutional investor and have money to throw down a bottomless rat hole in search of "vanity" projects, then have at it! If
on the other hand you're looking for worthwhile investments, or finding engaging projects to work on yourself, it's a lot faster to search the
literature or YouTube for ideas, and vet them on your own. |
Here in Europe there are hundreds of seminars every year in most big universities, mostly because every time a professor has to travel to a place for
research or bureaucratic reasons, like
1) PhD defenses or PhD evaluation commissions
2) Commissions concerning academic funding
3) Visiting within an international research project
4) Meetings with external collaborators
5) Meetings for the chemical society
6) ...
Whoever is hosting the visiting professor or researcher will organize a conference in the department or institute so the guest can present themselves
and their work. Most attendees are curious university students, PhD students in the field, and faculty working on similar topics that may wish to have
a chat afterwards and possibly engage in a collaboration. Additionally, most of these conferences are scientific talks effectively recognized by the
doctoral school or whatever entity monitors PhDs as formative events.
Even I, as a PhD student, when I had to visit a collaborator in another university for some measures, was asked if I wanted to hold a public seminar
on my work at the chemistry institute. I refused because my host professor remembered at the last minute, and I did not have enough time to prepare
the seminar.
For example, in my university there is extensive and longstanding work carried out on optoelectronics with many researchers from Osaka and Kyoto.
These extensive collaborations always involve (at some point) a meeting in person, and next week a delegation of Japanese professors is coming to
discuss with local faculty and visit the facilities. The hosting faculty has organized a mini symposium on optoelectronics where all these japanese
professors will be publicly talking about their research, and some local faculty will announce their latest ongoing research. All this is unrelated to
funding and commissions, and is organized for networking and divulgation only. The real talks and discussions and commissions are behind closed doors.
And this happens on a weekly basis, in big universities.
Your response is indeed comically inaccurate... One cannot but wonder what the hell is going on in US universities if that is the case!
So yes! Conferences are 99% of the time open to anyone! Try to find from someone enrolled or a faculty member how to get into the internal mailing
lists that announce them and go to the ones that interest you! Nobody will kick you out if they find out you are just a curious student interested in
chemistry.
[Edited on 22-11-2023 by valeg96]
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Dr.Bob
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I used to go to many university seminars, as well as internal and external corporate ones, plus places like the ACS meetings, organic conferences, and
many area specific conferences. Now I don't get to as many, covid cancelled many and they are just finally gett back to normal in some places, and I
wish I could go to more, as that was were I learned many things outside of my area, but that might be useful to know one day. Learning should last
your lifetime, once you stop it, you brain will start atrophying.
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valeg96
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| Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob | | I used to go to many university seminars, as well as internal and external corporate ones, plus places like the ACS meetings, organic conferences, and
many area specific conferences. Now I don't get to as many, covid cancelled many and they are just finally gett back to normal in some places, and I
wish I could go to more, as that was were I learned many things outside of my area, but that might be useful to know one day. Learning should last
your lifetime, once you stop it, you brain will start atrophying. |
Besides, these seminars are the only chance for most people that don't regularly go to congresses or are not within the right circles to meet the
occasional Nobel Prize recipient or the insanely famous chemist that happens to be passing by their university for unrelated administrative or
research reasons.
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Johanson
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Texium: Calm down, the original question was aimed at non-students. I'm sorry my response got under your skin like that.
Here's an idea: Why not describe a couple of worthwhile presentations you've attended? Instead of viewing an objection as an attack, maybe view it as
an opportunity to explain and win over. I (and possibly others) could benefit from your experiences, and no cynicism is meant in that at all
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valeg96
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I'll chime in.
I've had the pleasure of listening twice to Prof. Joseph Moran, a chemist that has been working all his career on replicating very common enzymatic
metabolic reactions (such as the krebs cycle and the aminoacid metabolism) in simple controlled environments without enzymes and the same conditions
as the reducing earth. He has shown over the years that most simple metabilic reactions (synthesis of ketoacids, diacids, aminoacids, etc) can be
produced non-enzymatically with just water, hydrogen, and traces of Fe and Ni. He has even carried them out with meteorite powder to prove his point
that over time, complex molecules can eventually accumulate and could have produced local pockets of organic matter that may have eventually
aggregated in mycelles, as a first step of life. He is also very good at simplifying his presentations depending on the audience, and his best ones
are those for the general public. There is actually one of his presentations on youtube as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6XDcn5u24I .
Another interesting one was meeting Prof. Fraser Stoddart, where he decided to talk more about his life and motivations, and less about his actual
research. It was a very heartfelt talk to a huge audience of students that overcrowded the room, and one I believe many will remember.
I also remember a conference by Hervé This, the inventor of molecular cuisine, who described to us his insanely detailed classification of food
matter according to its colloidal state, and his insane recipe ideas based on chemistry. He also tried to make a mousse on stage, which was not really
appetizing, I have to say...
Some months ago I saw a lecture by Prof. Philippe Walter, a chemist that works in art restoration and digitalization; for reference, he is the guy
that identified the layers of the Mona Lisa, and detected the different retouches and stages of the painting by a complex combination of XRD,
fluorimetry and other techniques. He is now focused on digitizing egyptian tombs to find out when they were truly built (apparently, many frescos of
people have been "updated" to recycle the funerary chambers, and you can detect older layers of painting with clothing and symbols from previous eras)
and on ancient tapestry to visualize what their real colours were meant to be.
One last example is that of Silvio Garattini, a very old italian chemist, many years ago now. I cannot fully remember what he talked about, as I only
recently started keeping a notebook with notes for every meeting and conference I attend, but I remember the energy he showed in telling us what his
ideas of good, useful and moral research are.
And then many others which either I can't recall right now, or they are less relevant, because when something is not from exactly your field, or the
speaker is completely clueless on how to engage with an audience, you struggle to remember it, even if it is curious and interesting.
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Dr.Bob
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I have been lucky enough to go to talks by many great scientists, from Nobel award winners to great hands on chemists, and some business minds in
chemistry. Examples are Sharpless of the chiral Sharpless epoxidation, which I have also done (not quite as well as he did it, I will note), Kishi,
Evans, Hitchings and Elion (worked near them for many years), and a few others. Even more interesting, I have attended many lectures from people who
worked under other famous scientists, and discovered that they, like most people in most jobs, were widely variable in their treatment of their
underlings. Even learned some chemistry during them.
Other scientists gave talks that explained how they found the real answers (often the simple story is not that simple) and often learned neat tricks.
Listened to the path to discovery of many drugs, if you want to do drug discovery, that is very helpful to understand how you try to optimize many
variables to get to an acceptable drug. Even talks on analytical, biochem, and other sciences have given me the info I needed many years later. the
key is not to memorize the talk, schemes and data, but to just remember that there sshort time, omeone who studied certain things, so you can refer
back to their papers later if you need to know. I have seen papers and talks on areas of interested, both 10-20 years before and after I have worked
on them. I have even seen papers that repeated work of mine, not all of which was published, so I can compare notes.
And lastly, meeting people like Alfred Bader (founder of Aldrich), Max Gergal (founder of Columbia Organics superfund site), Alfred Burger (medicinal
chemistry amazing resource) has inspired me greatly. I was lucky enought to listen to all three a couple times each and then get to chat with them,
and that was part of what made me decide to go into chemistry. I could have worked in microelectronics and computers, which I was also good at, but
while I was able to work at IBM for a short time (in their hayday), I never got to meet any inspiring people or learn muich about the details. I had
no mentors there to inspire me.
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Texium
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| Quote: Originally posted by Johanson | Texium: Calm down, the original question was aimed at non-students. I'm sorry my response got under your skin like that.
Here's an idea: Why not describe a couple of worthwhile presentations you've attended? Instead of viewing an objection as an attack, maybe view it as
an opportunity to explain and win over. I (and possibly others) could benefit from your experiences, and no cynicism is meant in that at all
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Ive been calm all along. I just have a low tolerance for people spreading misinformation that encourages
closed-mindedness. If you don’t want your post to be read as an attack, don’t use such harsh and inflammatory language. You say no cynicism was
meant, but your first post in this thread is dripping with it.
I think your objection has already been quite thoroughly dismissed, judging by the other replies in this thread, but I’m happy to give an example.
My PI invited professor Mark Levin (known for developing so-called “skeletal editing” techniques) to present since we do somewhat similar research
in our group. In addition to giving an excellent presentation, he met with my labmates and me to discuss our current work and share ideas about future
directions. It was a motivating and enriching experience. I think that even if I was an outsider who only saw the presentation, it would have still
been a worthwhile experience. Even though Levin’s chemistry uses reagents that are a bit out of reach for an amateur chemist, it’s still amazing
chemistry that makes completely unheard of organic synthesis routes possible. If a seminar can make you think about things from a new perspective, it
isn’t a waste of time. Maybe try attending one with the perspective of a scientist rather than that of an investor. You might find it more
enjoyable.
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