THINKING CREATIVELY ABOUT WORK

43WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG NOVEMBER 3, 2008

MEMBERS OF THE CLASS of 2009 who will be looking for jobs in the coming year better get busy. Although it’s too early to say how the current financial crisis will af-fect employment in the coming months, job seek-ers should do all they can now to increase their mar-ketability, such as building up their professional net-works and making contacts with re-cruiters who visit their campuses.

For our annual story on employ-ment prospects,

Senior Editor Corinne A. Marasco spoke with company representatives and univer-sity department heads about their impres-sions of hiring for the coming year. All of

the company reps reported they are hiring, and depart-ment reps report-ed that recruiting is going forward, but everyone has adopted a “wait and see” position for next year.

The good news is that chemistry is a big field with numerous appli-cations, if you let your imagination

work for you. In this issue, C&EN examines how chemists are thinking creatively about work. First, Senior Editor Susan J. Ains-worth profiles women entrepreneurs who are building their businesses around their passion for science. Their experiences demonstrate the many paths that entrepre-neurs can follow.

Next, Associate Editor Linda Wang pro-files three chemists whose work has taken them from the heights of the Chilean Andes to the depths of oceans. What their work shows is that chemists aren’t limited by pre-conceived notions of “what chemists do.”

Finally, Assistant Editor Kenneth J. Moore surveys research opportunities abroad for chemistry and chemical engineering students. These experiences can be useful talking points on a résumé as the chemical industry becomes more globalized. ■

THINKING CREATIVELY ABOUT WORK

Economic turmoil points to a HAZY OUTLOOK; a little imagination can open up job opportunities

employment outlookOPPORTUNITIES FOR 2009 AND BEYOND

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CONTENTS

A TOUGH JOB MARKET LOOMS 44It’s business as usual; future is less certain.

BLAZING ENTREPRENEURIAL PATHS 50Women build businesses on their passion

for science.

EXTREME CHEMISTRY 55Science mixes with adventure in extreme

environments.

INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIPS 57Research abroad offers unique

opportunities for students.


THIS YEAR’S employment outlook ought to be labeled, “Caution: Unpredictable market ahead.”

Last year, when C&EN assessed the job prospects for graduates looking for jobs in 2008, the consensus among employers was that hiring was going to be up and the signs for job seekers were positive. “Chemical scientists and engineers looking for jobs in 2008 will be greeted with a job market that is stronger than it has been in years,” C&EN reported.

What a difference a year makes. Al-though the industrial representatives who spoke with C&EN this year report that their companies are hiring, they are doing so with a “wait and see” attitude toward a possibly weaker job market in 2009. The exception is chemical engineers, who con-tinue to be in high demand at all degree levels.

The chemical industry isn’t immune to economic downturns (C&EN, Oct. 6, pages 7 and 9), but it could take weeks, even months, for the Wall Street chaos to

have a measurable impact on employment. Take, for example, the number of jobs posted on the ACS Careers website (www.acs.org/careers) as one proxy measure. For the period Jan. 1 to Oct. 10, 1,033 jobs were posted. That’s only slightly fewer than the 1,045 jobs posted for the same time period in 2007, so the economic downturn is not yet affecting industry hiring.

This year also saw significant business deals, such as Dow’s announcement that it will acquire Rohm and Haas and Ashland’s pending acquisition of Hercules (C&EN, Aug. 25, page 23), as well as major R&D re-alignments, for example, at Pfizer (C&EN, Sept. 1, page 27). The full impact of those changes on hiring probably won’t show for some time, either.

RETIREMENT may be one likely casualty of the distressed economy. As C&EN re-ported in last year’s outlook, companies plan for generational turnover in their hir-ing projections, and that remains a factor this year. With drops in the stock market

corroding the value of pension plans, however, more workers may opt to delay retirement to attempt to recoup those losses.

“Which way are we going to move forward?” asks Nick Niko-laides, manager of doctoral re-cruiting and university relations for Procter & Gamble. “If lots of baby boomers retire, we’ll need an incredible influx of new tal-ent. If they’re not ready to retire given the economy, then we keep moving forward and prepare for whichever way things go.”

For now, Nikolaides doesn’t see a change in recruiting needs. The goal, he says, is to “maintain equilibrium despite the rocky economy.” Analytical chemistry remains a focus for P&G when recruiting Ph.D. chemists; how-ever, Ph.D. engineers—chemi-cal, mechanical, materials sci-

ence, and electrical—are being recruited in greater numbers at P&G across the board, from upstream R&D through manufactur-ing, he says.

Nikolaides adds that P&G’s sustain-ability focus helps attract talented can-didates. “Scientists can have pretty chal-lenging technical careers, particularly when you throw in the challenges that sustainability can provide. In addition, we’re looking for more well-rounded in-dividuals these days,” he says. “Not just solid technical skills but communication, collaboration, and similar skills people need to succeed.”

Troy L. Vincent, vice president of global staffing and recruiting at W.R. Grace, agrees that the demand for technically skilled people is high, especially for chem-ists and chemical engineers, even though there might be “a slight softening” in the number of companies recruiting.

“Grace will be recruiting chemists and chemical engineers this year,” he says. “The chemists will be more at the Ph.D. and mas-ter’s levels, while the chemical engineering hires will be at the bachelor’s level.” As for specific fields, Grace is focused on inorgan-ic chemistry, followed by specialized areas tied to its businesses.

Grace’s recruiting is directed by the company’s strategic plans for growth as it prepares to emerge from Chapter 11 reor-ganization. Vincent says that although the company’s needs this year are the same as last year’s, the timing and number of hires

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

A TOUGH JOB MARKET LOOMS

It’s business as usual for now; THE FUTURE is less certainCORINNE A. MARASCO, C&EN WASHINGTON

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will be adjusted according to the economic climate. “The main thing to watch in the coming months is consolidation within the chemical industry and what that means for available talent as deals from the summer are finalized,” he says.

Meanwhile, business conditions have already affected the job market in the pharmaceutical industry, where hiring is down from historic norms, according to Steven D. Young, vice president of basic research at Merck Research Laboratories. Although Merck has just announced elimination of 12% of its positions world-wide (C&EN Online Latest News, Oct. 27), the company is recruiting for chemists at all degree levels at its West Point, Pa., and Rahway, N.J., research sites, in part due to Merck’s continuing interest in RNA interference. Merck will also be hiring B.S. and M.S. chemical and biochemical engineers in vaccines, therapeutic proteins, and sterile processing.

“Last year, our chemistry hiring was largely limited to replacement hires due to attri-tion,” Young says. “This year, we’re looking for organic chem-ists who have a background in synthesis and bioorganic chem-istry, as well as chemists with biopolymer expertise. We’re also interested in people with a chemical engineering or molecular biology back-ground who have experience in expressing, purifying, or characterizing recombinant proteins.”

Young adds that hiring in small-mol-ecule development and manufacturing during the past few years has been to fill critical gaps and has consisted mostly of experienced people. He anticipates that new skill sets will help drive new areas of therapeutic research in proteins, small molecules, and vaccines.

GlycoFi, a Merck subsidiary in New Hampshire, is recruiting fermentation and bioprocess engineers, molecular biologists,

and protein and analytical biochemists at all degree levels this year, according to Se-nior Director Natarajan Sethuraman.

Despite recent economic challenges, many opportunities still require chemists and chemical engineers, says Robin Lysek, a human resources central staffing man-ager for Air Products & Chemicals.

The company’s needs this year are very similar to last year’s, she says, and in some areas, “the need is greater due to growth in several business areas and due to the an-ticipated demographic changes.”

Lysek says Air Products is recruiting both chemists and chemical engineers at all degree levels for projects in materials science, physical chemistry, energy, elec-trochemistry, and process engineering. At the Ph.D. level the company tradition-ally recruits both chemists and chemical engineers, but because of business needs, they’re recruiting more Ph.D. chemical engineers this year. She adds that 90% of its job offers among new hires are accepted.

Chemical engineers will be “aggressively recruited” at Occidental Chemical in 2009, as well as mechanical and electrical engineers, according to company spokeswoman Stacey Crews. Students with strong academic per-formance and intern or co-op experience will be in demand as employers like OxyChem plan for the turnover associated with an aging

workforce, she says.“OxyChem’s recruiting

needs are indicative of a chang-ing workforce within the chemical industry as a whole,” she says. “As the baby boomers reach retirement age, the work-force is transitioning to a new generation.

“THE CHALLENGE for higher education is to graduate people who want to learn how to oper-ate complex chemical plants safely, responsibly, and ethical-ly. Our challenge is to locate and retain them in order to develop the next generation of experts and leaders,” she continues.

The petrochemical industry is also assessing the competi-tion for qualified chemical engineers. “Chemical engineers are being snapped up by lots of different companies,” says Cary W. Wilkins, director of recruit-ment for the Americas at Shell Chemicals. “Even within Shell they are very versatile and can

fit into many different slots, given their ex-cellent educational backgrounds.”

Wilkins characterizes the overall mar-ket as very good for chemical engineers at all degree levels and for Ph.D. chemists, groups that Shell is recruiting. He says candidates with a strong foundation in ca-talysis and nanotechnology are “the most sought after.” For chemists at the B.S. and M.S. levels, however, things are looking flat and are possibly declining, he adds.

Wilkins says Shell prefers to call the spots its candidates fill “talent positions” because “what we’re looking for always goes beyond just their technical knowledge and aptitudes” to broader achievements.

“The main thing to watch in the coming months is consolidation within the chemical industry

and what that means for available talent.”

STIFF COMPETITION Job seekers still outnumber job openings

at the ACS Career Fair

TOTAL CANDIDATES EMPLOYERS

POTENTIAL OPENINGS

INTERVIEWS SCHEDULED

2003New Orleans 1,151 96 305 1,751New York City 1,374 97 291 1,6732004Anaheim 1,281 121 271 1,605Philadelphiaa 1,494 107 303 1,602

2005San Diego 1,296 88 189 1,291Washington, D.C. 1,927 97 289 1,6852006Atlanta 1,256 72 197 1,199San Francisco 1,213 104 290 1,499

2007Chicago 1,456 73 683 1,139Boston 1,526 126 913 1,8392008New Orleansb 942 104 805 1,305Philadelphia 1,276 85 515 1,210

a The National Employment Clearing House became Chemjobs Career Center begin-ning with the Philadelphia national meeting. b Chemjobs Career Center became the ACS Career Fair beginning with the New Orleans national meeting. SOURCE: Ameri-can Chemical Society, Department of Career Management & Development

��WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG NOVEMBER 3, 2008

For example, is a candidate good at work-ing in groups? Can the candidate look at a task or a challenge with a broad perspec-tive, beyond the specifics?

Sue Sun-LaSovage, global university relations leader for Dow Chemical, also observes that competition is “fierce” for engineering graduates in the U.S. and Eu-rope. “The competition remains strong in the entry-level job market because of the smaller pool of candidates,” she says. “There is a more abundant supply in China and India.”

Dow is recruiting this year for bach-elor’s- and master’s-level chemical, me-chanical, and electrical engineers. The company is also recruiting Ph.D. chemists with expertise in analytical, inorganic, organic, and polymer chemistry, as well as materials science. Sun-LaSovage says Dow’s needs remain as strong as they have been during the past few years.

Since October, Dow recruiters have been interviewing on campuses of what the firm considers to be global strategic universities, Sun-LaSovage says. “The fi-nancial situation may be reflected more in next year’s hiring than this year’s, but it’s too early to tell,” she says. “We review our implementation plan on an annual basis

to reflect the business condition and eco-nomic environment.” She adds that hiring plans are typically finalized in May or June and executed between September and De-cember each year.

Last year was a successful recruiting year for Eastman Chemical, workforce

planning and staffing manager Sharon Cooper reports. She characterizes the market this year as “still good but not as strong” as in 2007. “We had many posi-tions to fill last year due to growth, and we did very well on campus due to the high demand for technical talent. Because we were able to hire in advance of the need, our focus is on a few entry-level positions and positions with specialized needs,” she says.

Eastman is looking to hire B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. chemical engineers and Ph.D. chem-ists, Cooper says, particularly in analytical and organic chemistry. Although the pri-mary focus is on recruiting chemical engi-neers, Eastman continues to have needs for mechanical and electrical engineers. She believes there is still a “significant demand for chemical engineers,” perhaps not so much in the pure chemical industry as in the oil and gas industry.

Cooper notes that the number of people retiring has been lower than Eastman’s workforce-planning models had predicted, “which is good from a knowledge manage-ment perspective.” She adds that she feels good about the firm’s ability to attract the talent it needs as evidenced by its recruit-ing in recent years.

John A. Larock, staffing manager for en-gineering and operations, and Emily Niu, Ph.D. and science staffing manager, both at DuPont, agree that the job market contin-ues to look good for new graduates. Larock says the company’s needs have increased overall for the past few years, primarily

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

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because of company growth and employee retirements. Together, those constitute the majority of positions that DuPont is trying to fill.

DuPont is actively looking for chemists and chemical engineers at all degree levels. Within R&D, the company is looking for expertise in polymer and organic chem-istry, materials science, and biosciences, according to Niu. DuPont is also recruiting bachelor’s and master’s degree chemists and biologists.

According to Larock, bachelor’s and master’s degree engineers are being re-cruited in process engineering, process development, and project engineering. “In-novation drives us and our products,” he says. “Each year, a large percentage of our products are new, and we need that tech-nological understanding and capability.” Niu adds that in addition to technical skills, DuPont looks for inventiveness and a drive for innovation.

How the economic challenges will play out is yet to be determined, but Larock says of the firm, “We’re moving ahead.”

THOSE ECONOMIC challenges, however, are starting to affect university chemical sciences departments. In light of volatile financial markets this past month, the Na-tional Association of Colleges & Employers (NACE) recently re-polled employers that had provided hiring projections in August. The result: Compared with their earlier projections, responding employers expect to decrease their hiring levels by 1.6%.

However, in comparison with their actual hires from the class of 2008, respondents expect to hire about 1.3% more graduates from the class of 2009.

“Overall, hiring looks flat for now, and some employers are indicating some move-ment to cut back,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “In August, ap-proximately one-third of employers said

they were going to trim their college hiring; in our current poll, however, 52% said they were going to adjust their college hiring downward.”

“Turnout was small, compared to years past,” says Chris Smith, who handles re-cruiting for the chemistry and chemical engineering division at California Insti-tute of Technology. “This year, about five

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CHEMICAL ENGINEERSDownward trend continues in number of bachelor’s degrees while Ph.D.s increase

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companies came to recruit, which is fewer than the last several years.” Last year, most people who interviewed were able to find employment with the company they were interested in, she says.

Patricia L. Blum, director of career coun-seling and placement services in the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, says that al-though several companies have scheduled campus interviews that have not done so in the past, the number of companies inter-

viewing is down about one-third, and the number of students signing up for inter-views is also down in some areas.

Last year, she says, “hiring was strong early in the fall and then tapered off. Dur-ing that time, a few Ph.D. students decided to take postdocs instead of entering indus-try, but those who waited out the lag did eventually land good positions.”

Both Blum and Smith attribute some of that decline to the economy. Smith says many of the companies that usually

come through are not hiring this year. She adds that the division is short four faculty members in organic and inorganic chem-istry, which affects how many students are available on the job market. In Blum’s experience, several of the companies that normally recruit are in the middle of hir-ing freezes, are lowering hiring numbers, or are sending fewer recruiters than ini-tially planned.

Alix Lamia, chemistry program man-ager at Columbia University, has also

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

A Sept. 19 story on Business Week’s website declared that “a talent strategy is now as important as a marketing or finance strategy for corpora-tions operating in today’s multi-polar world.” That strategy must encompass re-cruiting and retaining not just high performers but the en-tire workforce. The corporate recruiters who talked with C&EN shared some strate-gies their companies use to enhance the overall success of their recruiting programs.

Recruiters visit campuses throughout the year, some-times making multiple trips. “We spend a lot of time on college campuses—career fairs, company presenta-tions, meeting with student organizations—because new graduates feed our talent pipeline,” says Robin Lysek of Air Products & Chemicals. She says the company visited about 40 campuses in North America this year. The compa-ny’s corporate headquarters is in Lehigh Valley, Pa., and the company recruits in Cali-fornia, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, close to its locations.

Emily Niu of DuPont says the company’s par-ticular needs determine which schools its recruiters visit. “The mix of schools may change, and we cast our nets

far and wide,” she says. “We also post our positions in schools that we may not visit.”

Companies recognize the need for sustainable programs on campus, Dow’s Sue Sun-LaSovage says. “Our leadership realized that if we have a strong pipeline, we can get the best talent who can fill more experienced-level jobs in the future. We’ve made a commitment to hire the best people from univer-sities and to create an em-ployer brand on campuses. We try to go not only when we need to hire.”

Internships play a major part in a company’s recruit-ing program, and it’s easy to see why. “Intern relationships help us attract and retain new college graduates,” as well as help students learn about and adjust to work-ing in industry, Occidental spokeswoman Stacey Crews says. The company plans to increase intern recruitment for 2009.

Air Products has a robust co-op and intern program that employs 100 to 150 stu-dents, Lysek says. “We hope that exposure to our culture will encourage them to work for us after they graduate.”

Converting co-ops and interns to full-time employ-ees has been a successful

strategy, Eastman’s Sharon Cooper says. She says the company also sends alumni to campuses to recruit, which has proven to be a great way to attract new employees.

A primary challenge for any company is retaining talent. Companies such as Shell, DuPont, Air Products, and Procter & Gamble have various career development opportunities to help new hires succeed. At Air Prod-ucts, for example, new gradu-ates have the opportunity to try different assignments in a rotational program. The pro-gram offers three one-year assignments in various areas to help young graduates de-cide where they would like to work within the company.

“We have a learning and development culture at Shell, so a new hire will actually con-tinue growing with us,” Cary W. Wilkins says. When some-one is assigned to a first posi-tion, the company has already assessed areas for improve-ment, and that information is used in the first year’s de-velopment plan crafted with that person’s supervisor. A new hire may have even been signed up for a course before the first day at work.

With 120 scientific disci-plines represented at Procter & Gamble, the company has

set up Communities of Prac-tice (CoPs) that are designed to leverage core competen-cies across its businesses. The mission of CoPs is to make connections for prob-lem solving, exploit techno-logical innovations more eas-ily across business units and R&D, stay on top of emerging technologies, and advance both individual and collective technical knowledge. In all, P&G has 22 CoPs in areas ranging from analytical sci-ence to wipes and substrate products.

“CoPs are a really effective tool to link up the organiza-tion,” says Nick Nikolaides, manager of doctoral recruit-ing and university relations for P&G. He adds that some CoPs have seminar series to bring in speakers or hold problem-solving and poster sessions to bring people to-gether, including people from P&G locations overseas.

Hiring today means keep-ing one eye on the future, according to recruiters. It means aligning hiring projec-tions with business needs and being dynamic enough to change as processes and technology do.

“These are not just jobs we’re filling,” Shell’s Wilkins says. “These are employees who will develop and grow to fill our business needs be-yond just their first few years, and, we hope, become lead-ers down the line.”

HUMAN CAPITAL

Talent Management Is Critical To Recruiting


noticed that recruiters are fewer than usual this year, even though recruiting and interviewing are progressing as usual. “The recruiters who did not participate mentioned they will not have job openings this year,” she says. “For example, one firm scheduled a visit and then canceled due to a major restructuring.”

At Columbia, 12 recruiters signed up this year, compared with an average of 19 in pre-vious years. Lamia attributes the changes she sees to the economy, which affects the number of available jobs, and low turnover, which further limits the number of job openings.

At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Michael T. Crimmins, chair-man of the chemistry department, reports that campus recruiting seems “about nor-mal” but that the number of jobs is lower and more are available in smaller, start-up companies.

The changes, he says, are a result of the “entire pharmaceutical industry in a pe-riod of major reorganization and general downsizing. A significant amount of their functions have been outsourced to China and India, creating many new jobs in those developing countries but reducing the op-portunities in the U.S. and Europe.”

IN CONTRAST, Timothy B. Luzader of Purdue University offers some better news. Luzader, director of the Center for Career Opportunities, reports that campus interviewing appears “as robust as it was this time last year. Our interview space is booked solid through late October. Early job fairs on campus were sold out,” and there were waiting lists of companies that wanted to participate.

In 2007–08, the number of employers recruiting on campus was steady com-pared with the previous year, whereas the number of interviews was slightly down, Luzader says. He attributes the decrease in interviews more to student selectivity than economic softening. “Many students feel that accepting a full-time offer from a com-pany where they interned is a reasonable option, so they’re likely to restrict their interviews only to companies that most strongly interest them,” he says.

In a May 2007 survey of all of Purdue’s bachelor’s degree recipients, Luzader reports that 94% had confirmed postgradu-ate plans for employment, further study, or other plans such as the Peace Corps. Among chemical engineering graduates, 96% had confirmed postgraduate plans.

For now, “campus recruiting belies concerns in the economy,” he says. “But history has shown on-campus recruit-ment does not taper off until six to nine months after an economic downturn. If that trend holds true, then the outlook will be a bit gloomier than it has been in the recent past.”

In any job market—down markets

included—the advice to graduates never changes. Be more flexible in the job search. Use resources and contacts that are avail-able on campus. Employers are still hiring, even if they aren’t coming on campus, so networking and direct contact are impor-tant. Know yourself well enough to find a company that is aligned with your goals and values. ■

CORPORATION


WHILE LAUNCHING the biopesticides firm Entotech for Novo Nordisk in 1990, Pamela G. Marrone got a taste of what it would be like to run her own company. Al-though she disliked the corporate politics and the bureaucracy that surrounded her role as Entotech president, she found she loved charting the course of a business in her dream field.

So five years later, when Entotech was sold, Marrone took the leap of faith to start AgraQuest, a company focused on discov-ering, developing, manufacturing, and mar-keting natural pest management products. And two years ago, she founded Marrone Organic Innovations, in Davis, Calif., to create a new pipeline of products aimed at the pest management market.

From the start, “I was driven by a vi-sion and a dream of what I wanted to accomplish—to change the world through pesticide products that are safer and ef-fective,” she says. “I didn’t think about the barriers or the problems or challenges. I only thought about the possibilities and vi-sualized the end game and the success.”

That kind of determination and passion is something common to many success-ful women entrepreneurs, including the nine contacted by C&EN. Each of them cites different motivations for delving into entrepreneurship. Some were looking for alternatives to unsatisfying careers, while others sought a means to better balance work and family responsibilities or a way to transfer promising technology from the lab to the marketplace.

Having started businesses in diverse areas, from biofuels to instrumentation to pharmaceutical consulting, these women share their experiences and highlight the many paths to entrepreneurship that oth-ers like them are increasingly carving out.

Between 2002 and 2008, the number of women-owned firms grew by 10% per year

compared with 9% for all privately held firms, according to estimates released in September by the center for Women’s Business Research.

Currently, there are 10.1 million firms in the U.S. that are at least 50% owned by a woman, the center says, adding that these firms represent 40% of all privately held firms. The center, which reports the data on women-owned businesses by major industry categories only, estimates that women own a majority stake in 1.4 million businesses in the professional, scientific, and technical services segment alone, says Sharon G. Hadary, the center’s executive director.

STILL, starting and sustaining a business is not always easy for women. To overcome the many challenges of entrepreneurship, women need to have a support system of contacts, employees, and advisers; solid business fundamentals; confidence in themselves; and a motivating vision, ac-cording to those profiled here.

Karen K. Gleason, an associate dean of engineering for research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says her entre-preneurial spirit was sparked by a desire to commercialize coating technology de-veloped in her lab. To accomplish that, she cofounded GVD Corp., which stands for Gleason Vapor Deposition, six years ago in Cambridge, Mass.

The company is built around tech-nology that enables ultrathin layers of polytetrafluoroethylene (trademarked as Teflon by DuPont) to be coated on micro- and nanosized substrates. Because the technology allows coatings to be applied at cooler temperatures, it can be used on organic materials such as polymers rather than only on inorganic materials such as silicon. The technology is poised to meet growing demand in markets for medical devices, membranes, and textiles.

By starting GVD, Gleason says she has been able to see the technology trans-formed from “a novelty” to something that can really make a difference in more ap-

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAILBLAZERS

Women build businesses around their PASSION FOR SCIENCESUSAN J. AINSWORTH, C&EN DALLAS

CREATIVE THINKERMarrone studies grape plants treated during a bioherbicide trial.

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“You have to be able to creatively knock down barriers that get in your

way. You can’t just wilt or give up.”


plications than she had imagined. Gleason benefited from the support of MIT, which encourages its faculty members to remain involved in the development of their own technology, she says.

Given her responsibilities at MIT, Glea-son must play a somewhat limited role in GVD. The company’s cofounder and presi-dent, Hilton G. Pryce Lewis, who earned a Ph.D. in Gleason’s MIT lab, runs the com-pany’s day-to-day operations. That leaves Gleason free to “ask the bigger questions and think about the more long-term is-sues,” she says.

Like Gleason, BioTools President Rina K. Dukor cofounded her company to com-mercialize a technology that originated in an academic lab. Studying vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) as a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, she came to appreciate the technique’s potential use for solving stereochemical problems, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. VCD is a measure of the differential absorption of circularly polarized infrared radiation by a chiral molecule, such as a small pharmaceutical or any biological, including a protein, sugar, or nucleic acid, Dukor says.

WHILE LISTENING to lectures on VCD at a conference, “I realized that everyone who had worked on the technology was on the verge of retiring, and if I didn’t commercialize it, it might never happen,” Dukor says. She immediately began creat-ing a business plan for the formation of BioTools, which she would later cofound with Laurence A. Nafie, a chemistry pro-fessor at Syracuse University (C&EN, July 18, 2005, page 32). Today, Jupiter, Fla.-based BioTools sells VCD spectrom-eters and provides services related to the conformational analysis and absolute con-

figuration of chiral-organic and protein-based drugs to pharmaceutical and bio-technology companies. In the beginning, “I wanted very much to see this technology commercialized, knowing that it would be extremely powerful later on. It was my calling. It drove me,” Dukor says.

Entrepreneur Pamela R. Contag sees starting a business as “one way to translate basic science into an application I believe in.” She founded the first of two com-panies, Xenogen in 1995 to pioneer bio-photonic imaging systems that expe-dite drug discovery and development. Contag, who has a Ph.D. in microbiol-ogy, sold the com-pany to Caliper Life Sciences in 2006.

In 2005, Contag founded Cobalt Technologies, in Mountain View, Calif., to develop biobutanol as a next-generation biofuel. By combining novel and patented microbiology, bioprocessing, and separation technologies, Cobalt aims to maximize the production of biobutanol, she says.

As Cobalt’s president and chief execu-tive officer, “I generally invent and devel-op technology and then take on investors who ultimately direct the company. I put all my energy into the demonstration of the technology and business model,” she says. For Contag, “Entrepreneurial spirit has to do with necessity,” she says. “The

job needed to be done, and I was in the right place at the right time.”

Serendipity also played a part in H. Stewart Parker’s move to found Targeted Genetics, a publicly traded Seattle biotechnology company spun off from Im-munex in 1992 to develop gene-based treatments for acquired and inherited disease. But there was more behind her decision to found Targeted Genetics, says the firm’s president

and CEO. “I was very passionate about the work, which is a requirement for anyone founding a company,” she says.

As one of Immunex’ first employees in 1981, Parker remembers that she “re-ally loved the early days at the company when we were so excited about taking on these new opportunities and curing so many diseases.” She had also learned

that her strengths lie “in looking at a scenario that is early and unformed and making order out of it.” When she was considering the offer to head Targeted Ge-netics, she knew that having that role “would restore the passion I needed to do the job and the passion I felt for the whole program and for biotech.”

Unlike Parker, other women entrepre-neurs have started businesses to escape from unsatisfying careers. That was the case for Rita R. Boggs, CEO of American Re-search & Testing, the Gardena, Calif., con-sulting company she started 25 years ago. A former nun, Boggs left the convent in 1973 at the age of 35 after finishing a Ph.D. in chem-istry, opting to exchange her beloved role of teacher for a position that might compen-sate her for the many years in which she did not get paid. She accepted industrial posi-tions, first at Colgate Palmolive’s Research Center and then at the United States Testing Co. “Neither was satisfactory to me,” Boggs says. At a dead end, she followed the sug-

GROUND-BREAKINGChen started a pharma consulting firm to avoid relocating her family, shown here during a recent vacation in China

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gestion of friends and opened American Research & Testing, which provides services including product development, custom chemical analysis, materials testing, and contract research. “We consider ourselves consultants with a laboratory,” she says.

Elizabeth A. Armour, founder and presi-dent of the 15-year-old specialty chemical consulting firm Armour Associates, also started working in the chemical industry at a time when women’s opportunities in industry were even more limited than they are today. Having earned bachelor’s and

master’s degrees in biology and an M.B.A. in marketing and finance, Armour entered the workforce in the early 1980s and observed that “few women were being targeted for upper management roles,” she says.

Although Armour particularly loved her eight-year stint working in Europe, which included being part of Rhône-Poulenc’s specialty chemicals strategic planning team, “in the back of my mind, I knew that I would probably not continue in this large-company mentality forever,” she says.

Forming Armour Associates, an inter-national consulting firm with offices in Hendersonville, N.C., and Paris, allowed her to make that shift. “I always knew that I would find something that would allow me to better use my creativity and networking skills. I had a strong desire for more flex-ibility and to determine my own way.”

Finding a new career path was a necessi-

ty for Sharon V. Vercellotti, who was forced to leave a university research laboratory position when “the dean thought my pres-ence in the same department as my hus-band might be problematic.” Vercellotti, who had already earned a master’s degree in chemistry, enrolled in business classes and began to ponder starting her own busi-ness, she says. Shortly thereafter, in 1979, she and her husband founded V-Labs, a Covington, La.-based company that con-tinues to provide consulting, custom man-ufacturing, and analytical services focused

on carbohydrates and polysaccharides. In addition to carving out a new career, she also gained control over her schedule, which included her two small children, ages 10 and four at the time of V-Lab’s inception.

Balancing work and family responsibili-ties was the primary impetus behind Jinling Chen’s move to start Pharm Expedia, a pharmaceutical technology development and consulting firm, in August 2007 in Houston. After working for major drug companies including AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb for 15 years in posi-tions she found both “interesting and en-joyable,” she opted to follow her husband’s

job transfer from New Jersey to Texas. She then worked for a smaller pharmaceutical company, Encysive Pharmaceuticals, for five years, during which time she rose to the role of senior director of pharmaceutical sciences.

When Encysive closed its R&D facility as part of its acquisition by Pfizer, Chen was without a job. Instead of splitting her family and uprooting her 15- and 10-year old sons in a move to the East Coast where pharma jobs are plentiful, she decided to start Pharm Expedia.

With a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and broad project management experience, she says she has been able to address the chal-lenging drug development needs of clients. She has also developed and patented in-novative enabling technologies to enhance drug delivery and to improve the palatabil-ity of certain medicines, she says. Forming Pharm Expedia “has been a great way to take care of my career and take care of my family at the same time.”

WORK-LIFE FLEXIBILITY is especially important to many women. Dukor, who has two children, says she has benefited from the ability to set her own schedule. “Even with all my travels, I think I have not missed anything critical in my children’s lives. I volunteer for my children’s schools. I have done science demonstrations. I can even take time during the day to watch my son’s high school tennis matches.”

As head of her own company, Boggs was free to care for her parents before they died in the early 1990s, she says. “Shortly after that, I developed breast cancer. Fortunate-ly, because I had the business and the help of Barbara Belmont (now the firm’s presi-dent) I was able to manage all of this.”

Despite the benefits, entrepreneurship brings many challenges. Some entrepre-neurs report that they must wear many hats—from janitor to salesperson—and log extensive hours to meet customer needs. And there’s a huge learning curve, says Chen, who had to figure out how to apply for grants and handle tax issues, for example.

Would-be entrepreneurs must be men-tally prepared to take on the many risks that accompany this kind of work, Chen says. In smaller firms, in particular, the un-certainty of income can be a drawback. As a consultant or a contractor, “you may have good contracts for several months or even several years and then you may have noth-ing for a while.”

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

FRESH APPROACHGleason (back row, second from left) cofounded GVD Corp., which now boasts a reactor that is used for small-volume manufacture of commercial parts.

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To stay afloat in lean times, entrepre-neurs must start with a good business plan, Boggs says. “I sometimes look at the origi-nal business plan I put together and see a number of inadequacies. Thank God we succeeded anyway.”

Boning up on the financial side of busi-ness is equally critical for those entrepre-neurs with degrees in science. Knowing that entrepreneurship might be in her future, Marrone, who has a Ph.D. in ento-mology, took in-house management training and business courses offered by employers earlier in her career. Others have opted to hire people with that expertise. Help is also available through the U.S. Small Business Ad-ministration, which administers the Small Business Innovation Research grant program that encourages small businesses to explore their techno-logical potential.

For her part, Dukor worked for roughly 10 years for a medical diag-nostics division of Amoco until she could save enough to start BioTools. She and Nafie then raised about $200,000, partly through the sale of Dukor’s home, giving them enough to get started.

Looking back, however, Dukor says she regrets that she didn’t raise capital, something she didn’t under-stand how to do at the time. “Raising capital would have given us the funds not only to make the first prototype spectrometer, but also to educate the market,” she says. “Money from an angel investor would have given us a much-needed jump-start and would have put less strain on family finances.”

When approaching investors, Contag advises would-be women entrepreneurs to “choose your venture investors based on their track record with other female founders and their treatment of founders in general.”

In addition, it’s important to “build a per-sonal board of directors or board of advis-ers to advise you over the life cycle of your company,” Contag says. “Your company will go through many stages. Plan how you want your role to develop so that it fits you

and sustains the success of the company.”At least in the earliest stages of start-

ing a business, an entrepreneur’s job is to remain optimistic in the face of the many challenges that will arise, Marrone says. “You have to be able to creatively knock down barriers that get in your way. You can’t just wilt or give up. That attitude is really critical.”

When Marrone started AgraQuest, she says, “I was ahead of the market; the

biopesticides products I was developing were seen as snake oils, and I had to work to change the market perception.” For example, the company integrated biopesticides into con-ventional pest manage-ment programs and went to farms to show growers that they could get good or better results compared with conventional programs, she says.

In another barrier-busting move, Mar-rone says she helped start a biopesticide industry alliance of small biopesticide firms

that joined with larger companies to support the passage of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act. That piece of legislation makes the Environmental Protection Agen-cy’s approval process more predictable, she says, thereby making it easier for companies to raise money through investors.

SUBTLE GENDER BIAS from customers, investors, or potential collaborators is an-other hindrance with which some women

entrepreneurs have had to contend. “Sometimes I feel like people are surprised when they meet me,” Glea-son says. “They have not necessarily clued in to the fact that I am going to be female, and they sometimes as-sume that I am somebody’s secretary. You realize that you are always still overcoming other people’s percep-tions of you before they are going to listen to what you have to say. But I try not to dwell on that so that I don’t end up with a chip on my shoulder.” Instead, she adds, “I focus on com-municating my ideas to make sure that they are taken seriously.”

That can be a challenge, she con-cedes, as women are not well rep-resented in venture capital firms or in the companies to which Gleason pitches her technology. “Most of the people judging you are not women, something I am used to dealing with in the environment we have at MIT.”

Marrone says she faces a similar situation in the agrochemical busi-ness, where relatively few women hold management positions. The dynamics of a meeting change dra-matically when there is more than one woman in a room, however. “Generally, in a group made up of no more than one woman, the men will defer to the most powerful man in the room, and then you can’t get a lot of things done,” she says. “But when you have at least two or three women in a group, you can actually get down

to work.” In response, Marrone says she strives to build diversity into her manage-ment team, which is made up of more women than men.

ONE-STOP SHOPVercellotti assaying samples of polysaccharides at V-Labs, the company she and her husband started to provide consulting, custom manufacturing, and analytical services.

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“Responsibility can be the most exhilarating thing in the world or it can keep you up at night. I find

both to be true, depending on the week.”


to reach out to male and female CEOs, many of whom are eager to help those who want to follow in their footsteps.

Although building networks comes naturally to community-oriented women, developing and maintaining a business network is not a skill that we all have,” Contag says. However, “it is crucial to our business.” Vercellotti, for example, has benefited from being a member of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Small Chemical Businesses.

Building good relation-ships with employees is equally important, Dukor says. “I’ve learned to be totally open and honest with my employees,” shar-ing successes and com-municating problems such as a temporary need for a delayed payroll, says Dukor, who adds that she feels ac-countable “for the lives of every employee.”

At the same time, Dukor says she has always taken on “responsibility for the success of every single customer who has put their trust in me.” Especially when BioTools was new, she wanted to make sure that clients benefited immediately by applying the company’s technology to their targeted applications. “Their success became my success,” she says.

Even as head of a publicly traded compa-ny, Parker admits that she feels the weight of increased responsibility to employees, other shareholders, clients, and patients who take the drugs developed by Targeted

Genetics. “That responsibility can be the most exhilarating thing in the world or it can keep you up at night. I find both to be true, depending on the week,” she says. “I don’t mind telling people that it tears me up when we have had to do layoffs here. And we had a patient death on a clinical trial last year that turned out to be unrelated to one

of our drugs, but it was a horrible event and a very emotional event for me.”

Other entrepre-neurs are particularly burdened by their responsibility to in-vestors—something that Marrone counts as “the biggest down-side to founding a business,” she says. “As soon as you take investors’ money, you become beholden to them, so it is naïve to think that you are still calling the shots.”

Still, Marrone says she is happy to be divorced from the politics and the bureau-cracy associated with a large corporation. She finds it “freeing” to be able to “really set a company’s direction and see my ideas come to fruition more quickly.”

Dukor, too, embraces the flexibility of owning her own business. “Basically, I can commercialize anything I want. There is no boss to shoot down my ideas. So if I have an idea in the middle of the night, I can come in the next morning and put people on it and try it. I really love that.” ■

Women entrepreneurs need to con-stantly demonstrate their competency and capabilities, Contag says. Although it’s critical for women entrepreneurs to have “a differentiated technology and commer-cialization strategy and the ability to ex-ecute on a plan, that’s usually not enough. I do think that women need to have a better-than-the-average skill set to receive the same considerations as men.

“Most investors like to move to their comfort zone of an experienced manage-ment team whether you are doing a good job or not,” Contag adds. “It’s not much different for men, except that they are often given the benefit of the doubt—something from which I don’t think women benefit.”

DUKOR ECHOES this point. She believes there is still a stigma against women sci-entists who want to enter into business. “People don’t seem to doubt that I am a good scientist, but I think it is still harder for women to be taken seriously in the business world.” It appears that men don’t face the same biases in business, she says.

Still, women entrepreneurs believe that gender biases are not as prevalent as they once were. It is “much easier for women to be taken seriously now than it was 15 years ago in what has traditionally been a heavily male industry,” Armour says. “In addition to having a good number of women work-ing in our industry today, we also have the input of women at strategic levels of decision-making. That’s a really important difference right now.”

As a result, it’s easier to find role models who can be a valuable resource for women entrepreneurs. Armour, for example, feels “an obligation to mentor other women and help them avoid some of the things I en-countered.” And Dukor encourages women

BALANCING ACTAs cofounder of an instrumentation business, Dukor is able to manage work and family life, which includes a 5-K run with her son, Alan, and daughter, Anna.

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SHIVERING INSIDE a tent in an isolated area of Antarctica, Tufts University profes-sor of chemistry Samuel P. Kounaves could barely feel his fingers as he tried to keep the solution in his pipette from freezing. Out-side the tent, the temperature was −30 ºC. The barren, cracked land in these so-called dry valleys looked eerily like Mars.

In fact, that’s the reason Kounaves and colleagues embarked on this three-week expedition in December 2007. They wanted to do a trial run of analytical instruments that would be taken to Mars by the PhoenixLander, and these dry valleys in Antarctica are similar to some regions of the red planet.

“In chemistry, you think a lot of us just want to be in the lab, but, in reality, I think a lot of chemists are extroverts and they enjoy going out into the world and doing things,” Kounaves says. “We’re explorers at heart.”

Kounaves isn’t alone in seeking an-swers to scientific questions in such extreme environments. As chemistry becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, chemists are finding more opportunities to do fieldwork, which has traditionally been the domain of researchers in the

natural sciences, in areas such as oceanog-raphy and vulcanology. In this stormy job market, the ability to work at the intersec-tion of multiple scientific disciplines and to be imaginative about how chemistry is applied to big-picture problems could provide a safe haven.

Fieldwork can take many forms, from a local half-day trip to a monthlong excur-sion to the other side of the world. The example of Kounaves and two other chem-ists working on the far end of the spectrum demonstrates that there’s no limit to what chemists can do.

Tamsin A. Mather, an academic fellow in the earth sciences department at the University of Oxford, understands the trials and tribulations of doing fieldwork in extreme environments. She studies the atmospheric chemistry of volcanic plumes and their effects on the environment.

Mather says that the most extreme place she’s worked in is Lascar Volcano, in the Chilean Andes. What made it so challeng-ing for her team is the high altitude, which

made the climb to the summit—while carrying all their equipment—that much more difficult. Not only that, but the remote-sensing device they had brought with them stopped working. “You al-

ways try to anticipate problems,” she says. “But of course, things always occur that you can’t anticipate.”

At the same time, Mather says she wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. “I feel privileged to be able to work in some really beautiful places,” she says. Mather has also studied the gas geochem-istry of volcanoes in Hawaii, Nicaragua, and Italy.

IF RESEARCH atop volcanoes isn’t excit-ing enough, imagine spending an entire day in a tiny closet with two other people. That’s what it feels like in the deep-sea submersible Alvin, says George W. Luther III, the Maxwell P. & Mildred H. Har-rington Professor of Oceanography at the University of Delaware, who studies sulfur and iron biogeochemistry at hydro-thermal vents.

Alvin’s chamber, essentially a titanium ball that’s seven feet in diameter, is so small that only one person can stand at a time. The other two people have to be lying flat in the ball, and sometimes their legs get tangled, Luther says. What’s more, there are no bathrooms, heating, or air condi-tioning. “It’s exhausting going down in Al-vin,” says Luther of the daylong dives. “It’s one of the most intense days of science you’ll ever have in your life.”

Inside Alvin, a pilot navigates the subma-rine to areas where hot chemicals are spew-ing out of hydrothermal vents or farther down the chimney where all the organisms are. Using laptops that are wired through the hull, Luther and the other scientists collect data from sensors attached to the outside of Alvin.

“Our goal is to try to understand the chemistry that these organisms are living in so we can better understand why they live in the ecological niches that they live in,” Luther says. “There’s an awful lot that we don’t know about how they uptake chemi-cals and perform their chemosynthesis.”

Luther’s research cruises have included deep-sea expeditions in the Mediterranean

EXTREME CHEMISTRYChemists working in extreme environments

mix SCIENCE WITH ADVENTURELINDA WANG, C&EN WASHINGTON

COLD ROOMInside a tent in Antarctica, Kounaves analyzes data on soil samples.

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MORE ONLINEExperience what it feels like to sit in the passenger seat of Alvin, a deep-sea submersible, at www.cen-online.org.


Sea, the Black Sea, and the Arabian Sea. So far, he’s done 14 dives in Alvin.

As exciting as their jobs sound, these chemists are not primarily after the thrill of adventure. Instead, they say, they’re driven by the science. “I’m not somebody who goes out to find tough places to get samples from just for the sake of it,” Mather says. “But if the science justifies it, then that’s very exciting.”

Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that these chemists are all explorers at heart. Kou-naves says that when he was a child, he wanted to be an astronaut because he was fascinated with space exploration. As an undergraduate at California State Univer-sity, San Diego, Kounaves couldn’t decide between physics, biology, and engineering, so he ended up majoring in chemistry.

In graduate school at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland, he focused on environmental chemistry and immersed himself in fieldwork. As he studied the en-vironment on Earth, he began to wonder, “What about environments on other plan-ets?” Little by little, he gravitated back to his childhood dream of space exploration. Today, Kounaves is the science lead for the Phoenix Mars mis-sion’s wet chemis-try lab.

Unlike Kou-naves, Luther considers himself a late bloomer in the world of extreme chemistry. He

earned a Ph.D. in physical inorganic chem-istry from the University of Pittsburgh in 1972 and taught chemistry and physics at Kean College of New Jersey for 14 years. While attending scientific meetings, Lu-ther found himself engaging in conversa-tion with many oceanographers who were doing extensive fieldwork. “The next thing I knew, I found that this was kind of inter-esting,” he says.

In 1986, he joined the University of Delaware’s College of Marine Studies. The following year, Luther took his first major

expedition to the Mediterranean Sea to study hyper-saline and anoxic brines at the bot-tom of the sea. The next year, he went

on a research expedition to study chemical reactions in the Black Sea. After that, he was hooked. “It’s possible at almost any part of your career to get involved in this kind of work,” he says.

At age 31, Mather is the youngest of the extreme chemists C&EN interviewed. She says that after receiving an M.S. degree in chemistry, she decided to pursue research with a more environmental angle. She also knew she didn’t want to be in the lab all the time. She found the perfect match with her Ph.D. work on volcanic atmospheric chemistry.

Mather says that doing fieldwork allows her to stay in touch with the big picture of what she’s doing. “In my line of science, if you don’t go out some of the time, you sort of lose touch a little bit with how the samples are being collected, and it’s good to see something through from collection to analysis to writing the paper. That way, you get a very thorough understanding of the science.”

DOING EXTREME chemistry doesn’t have to interfere with your work-life balance. The chemists point out that their time in the field encompasses only a small percent-age of their jobs. Mather says she spends only about four weeks a year doing field-work. Luther spends one to two months a year doing fieldwork. And Kounaves is out in the field for about five weeks every two years. The rest of the time, the researchers are back at their universities analyzing data and writing their papers. Mather says that’s actually the part of her job she finds most exciting because “that’s when you start making sense of the results you pulled in.”

As Kounavis, Luther, and Mather show, chemists can decide to go extreme at any point in their career. “The important thing is to realize that you have the ability to en-able yourself to do these things,” Kounaves says. “Just because you’re a chemist doesn’t mean you’re limited to doing exactly what chemists are supposed to be doing.” What’s critical is finding a scientific topic that you’re passionate about, Luther says.

Mather agrees. “You have to enjoy the science,” she says; otherwise, the fun stops at the end of the adventure. ■

DEEP-SEA EXPLORERLuther (right) and Alvin pilot Mark O. Spear prepare for a deep-sea dive.

ON THE EDGEWearing a gas mask, Mather sits on the crater rim of Villarrica Volcano, in Chile, after collecting gas and aerosol samples.

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INCORPORATING an internship into a student’s educational program isn’t a new idea, but international internships have been few and far between. Cheryl A. Matherly, associate dean for global educa-tion at the University of Tulsa, says that many science students write off going abroad because they think that they won’t be able to find the time. Chemistry and engineering students do, however, have opportunities to gain international experi-ences, which are increasingly important in the workplace as the chemical industry becomes more globalized.

According to students C&EN inter-viewed, the cultural and educational chal-lenges posed by international experiences gave them a sense of personal accomplish-ment and independence and helped them plan their career paths. Employers say they value students’ ability to survive and thrive in challenging situations such as adjusting to life in a foreign country.

During an internship abroad, students

have to be more self-reliant than those who are merely studying abroad, Matherly says. When “studying, you have all the cul-tural challenges, but you know how to be a student. When interning, you have to be a scientist, and you have to cook for yourself and wash your clothes but also do this in a place where you can’t read the names on the bottles to figure out what goes in the washing machine.”

Matherly is a co-principal investigator (co-PI) on the National Science Foundation grant that funds Rice University’s Nano-Japan program and was previously director of Rice’s Career & International Education center before moving to Tulsa. The three-year-old program offers a 10-week research experience in Japan to first- and second-year undergraduate engineering students. The program includes culture and language courses in addition to academic research.

“There are few programs for freshmen and sophomore science and engineering students,” Matherly says, “and there are

few programs to attract them to graduate studies in physical sciences.” NanoJapan specifically targets students who are inter-ested in nanotechnology, she says, “to give them a meaningful and substantial research experience and to do it at a time when they still have an opportunity to do something about it—select courses, have more re-search experiences, or study a language. We built the program as a career catalyst.”

This past summer’s NanoJapan had 80 applicants from universities across the U.S., but only 16 students were selected for the program. “We are looking for students with a strong interest in a relatively nar-row field of research”—carbon nanotubes, nanoscale semiconductor devices, and nanophotonics—says Sarah R. Phillips, the co-PI on the grant who deals with recruit-ment, applications, and program planning for NanoJapan. “We are also looking for students with a strong interest in Japan, living there and learning the culture and language,” she says.

“The grant funding required a heavy educational component and a strong com-mitment to international science to devel-op globally savvy scientists and engineers,”

INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIPS

RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD offer students unique opportunities for career development, personal growth, and intercultural exchange

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GETTING ORIENTED During orientation, NanoJapan participants traveled to Mount Nantai, in Nikko. From left, Raj, O’Connell, Amal El-Ghazaly, Andrea Barrett, Daryl Spencer Jr., Tiffany Kuo, Tolulope Ogubekun, Shiv Gaglani, Norman Pai, and Keiko Packard, the culture instructor for the orientation.


Matherly says. NanoJapan requires a three-week orientation in Tokyo that includes an introduction to nanotechnology. “Students have varying levels of experience in courses and research, and for many this is their first opportunity to study nanotechnology,” Phillips says.

THE FIRST TIME in a research environ-ment might be difficult for some students, but moving to a country in which English is not the primary language can be much

harder. English is spoken in the more than a dozen participating university labs that host the students, Matherly says. And the NanoJapan program includes Japanese culture and language courses during ori-entation to aid interns in their work and personal lives while they are in Japan. However, NanoJapan participant Christo-pher O’Connell, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Rhode Island who studied ink-jet printing of carbon nanomaterials at Tohoku University, in

Sendai, says even his prior two years of Japanese courses were “not nearly enough for fluent conversation. But the challenge of the language barrier made the experi-ence more exciting.”

“The difficulty in communicating is what I missed the most” after returning from Japan, says NanoJapan participant Aanchal Raj, a second-year electrical and computer engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University who studied quantum tunneling in nanomagnets at Tohoku. “It

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

CULTURAL CONFUSION

Working Abroad Is Fraught With Difficulties, But It Is Also Rewarding

“There were a lot of things that were really shocking about my experience in Thailand,” says Marguerite (Meg) Desko, who had an international research ex-perience at Mahidol University in 2002. Many people who go abroad experience culture shock and not just while out in public. In Desko’s lab, “it was the ambi-ent temperature of the outdoors,” which was about 90 ºF, she says. “We had to run a lot of columns using methylene chloride, but it evaporated and cracked our columns. So we had to spray down the outside of the column with methanol to keep it cool.”

Because of the temperatures, Desko initially wore shorts. “They weren’t short shorts,” she says, but “I was just stared at; it’s unacceptable for women in Thai-land to wear shorts, so I decided to buy pants. I had so much trouble because everyone would say, ‘No, too fat.’ In Thai-land, I’m huge, but in the U.S. I’m consid-ered petite.”

To adhere to another flustering fashion fad, Aanchal Raj, a participant in Nano-Japan 2008 who is studying electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, says she tried “to assimilate to the culture of women riding bikes while wearing 3-inch heels.” In Japan, she says, people are generally dressier than in the U.S.; it’s part of their culture. Almost every woman wears big heels, and people use bikes a lot, she adds. “The women look like they’re going to a party, but they’re riding bikes to get there,” she says. “I had to try it—it’s not as difficult as it may seem, but I prefer my sneakers.”

Raj also experienced her first earth-quake while in Japan and several oth-

ers after that. She knew earthquakes happened in Japan, she says, and she got used to them but was still scared. “I went to the beach one day, and there was an oceanside earthquake,” Raj says. “They made us come out of the water for a possible tsunami. Everyone was just sitting around eating lunch, but there were helicopters and news crews.” Even the Japanese friends she was with said they had never been to the beach during an earthquake, Raj relays. Although there was a slight decrease in water level, no tsunami hit the beach that day, she adds.

Benjamin Y. Lu, who is study-ing bioengineering at Rice Uni-versity and was a NanoJapan 2008 participant, had a differ-ent kind of cultural difficulty in Japan. He had been to Japan several times before because he has family in Taiwan and Japan, so it was easy for him to adapt to life in Japan, he says. “But it was difficult for me to tell peo-ple that I don’t speak Japanese that well. People assumed I did,” Lu says. Although he was famil-iar with Japanese culture before the NanoJapan program, Lu had never been in Japan by himself and says he re-ally enjoyed the cultural opportunities he was able to experience. “I went to a sumo wrestling tournament,” he says. “It was a lot of fun.”

At the end of the internships, the NanoJapan students climb Mount Fuji to-gether as “a metaphor of ‘I survived—I did this,’ ” says University of Tulsa’s Cheryl A.

Matherly, who is involved in running the program. “It’s quite exciting to see stu-dents who, at the beginning of the sum-mer, were having difficulty finding their way around the subway” finish climbing Mount Fuji by the end of the internship.

Despite the rain and cold they experi-enced while climbing Mount Fuji, some students said the ascent was the defining moment of their lives so far, Lu says. The

students climbed the mountain at night to watch the sun rise the day before leav-ing Japan. “It was an unforgettable expe-rience, seeing the sun come up above the clouds,” Lu relates.

Solongo H. Wilson, who participated in the German Academic Exchange Service’s Research Internships in Science & Engi-neering Professional program in 2007 and started a full-time contract position at her

SUMMER SUMO While in Japan for their internships, Norman Pai (left), Shiv Gaglani (center), and Lu (right) took in one of Japan’s traditional cultural experiences: sumo wrestling.

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was a fun challenge.” For her, the language barrier and cultural differences allowed her to understand the difficulties foreign students face in the U.S.

Many students express that same sentiment, Matherly says. “The students remember what a fish out of water they felt like when they arrived,” she says, and so they are more sensitive to the experience of foreign students.

One of Raj’s main reasons for applying for a NanoJapan internship was the inter-

national aspect of the research experience. “To be a leader in science requires much more than just technical expertise,” she says. “It requires entrepreneurship and skills in leadership, communication, and, most of all, cultural awareness with the ever-increasing global collaboration. And that’s what NanoJapan offers.”

Indeed, global collaboration is the goal of the German Academic Exchange Ser-vice’s (DAAD’s) Research Internships in Science & Engineering (RISE) and RISE Professional programs. The RISE program brings Canadian and American undergrad-uate science and engineering students to German university labs to do research with a doctoral student adviser. And the RISE Professional program places recent bach-elor’s graduates and current master’s and Ph.D. students at research facilities within German chemical companies such as BASF. Each research experience is conducted in English, lasts about three months, and includes a stipend for living expenses. This past summer, DAAD initiated a pilot language grant program for a number of its RISE students to take German-language courses before starting their internships.

Funded by a variety of government sources, DAAD offers many opportuni-ties for educational exchange to and from Germany. The RISE programs were created to help balance the exchange figures, says Martina Ludwig, whose role in the North American department at DAAD’s head-quarters, in Bonn, includes working with RISE program participants.

Since the initiation of RISE in 2004, the number of applications has increased dramatically, says Peter Kerrigan, deputy director of DAAD’s office in New York City. “RISE is probably the most popular of our grant programs,” he says. Students at the RISE Professional level have many choices for practical research experiences, he adds. “Our goal is to make this the most attractive option for practical experience,” he says.

RISE was certainly attractive enough to turn heads at NSF and the American Chemical Society. NSF was interested in establishing a multisite International Research Experience for Undergraduates (IREU) program that would send U.S. stu-dents abroad and bring foreign students to the U.S., ACS Committee on International

Activities Chair Nina I. McClelland says. “Both the U.S. and Europe are suffering from the same syndrome: Only a small number of university-bound students are electing careers in science. The prospect to promote international col-laborations is very appealing to all ends,” she says.

When Christian Schaffer, director of the RISE programs, attended the 2006 ACS fall national meeting in San Francisco, the idea for an ACS/NSF/DAAD collaboration was presented to him, McClelland says. The pilot program ran in the summer of 2007, with 10 students from the U.S. and 10 students from Germany (C&EN, April 23, 2007, page 62).

“THE SUCCESS of the program led to its expansion,” McClelland says. With reci-procity from DAAD, NSF provided three more years of funding for 2008–10. For this past summer, the program also received funding from the German Chemical Soci-ety and the European Chemistry Thematic Network. The extra funding allowed 15 U.S. students to travel to Germany this sum-mer, and an additional three U.S. students

internship placement company, Hydac International, in Sulzbach, says: “The stereo types of Germans as unfriendly and harsh couldn’t be further from the truth. The culture is easy to adapt to, and the people are friendly and helpful. People want you to be comfortable.”

There are, however, some differences that are difficult to get used to. Gro-cery stores don’t have baggers, Wilson says, “and if you don’t pack your bags quickly enough, you get mean looks.” Also, Germans are energy conscious, she says. “People freak out if you idle your car, leave a light on, or leave water on while washing dishes.” The people care about recycling and the environ-ment, she adds.

The hardest thing to adjust to when she returns from Germany, Wilson says, will be going from six weeks of vacation per year to only two weeks.

Sarah R. Phillips, who is involved in running the NanoJapan program, says, “Reentry culture shock occurs for almost everyone who has spent a significant period of time outside of their home country.” So much about the person has changed, she says, “but their family, friends, and everything back home really haven’t. That can be a huge disconnect, and you reach a mo-ment when it’s difficult to convey all the changes you’ve gone through.”

“It’s a lot more interesting to be in” another country, Matherly says, “where everything is new and novel, rather than to be back in the U.S.”

Desko agrees. “Something I discov-ered throughout my experiences in Thailand and grad school is that I’m not going to be satisfied in the lab all the time. I need more variety,” she says. “Just living in Thailand gave me that va-riety every day.”

“U.S. participants, without exception, have considered this the experience of a lifetime.”

EYE-OPENERDesko, pictured here at Wat Arun, in Bangkok, Thailand, gained insight into the country’s culture during her IREU.

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went to schools elsewhere in Europe: one each to the University of Strathclyde, in Scotland; the University of Perugia, in Italy; and CPE Lyon, in France. Eighteen Europe-an students express placed at universities in the U.S., as well. Most students present-ed their summer research at the recent fall ACS national meeting in Philadelphia.

“Feedback from participants, organiza-tions, and advisers has been overwhelm-ingly positive,” McClelland says. “U.S. participants, without exception, have con-sidered this the experience of a lifetime.”

DAAD’s Ludwig says most other RISE students express the same thing. “Feedback has been very enthusiastic so far,” she says.

Solongo H. Wilson, who participated in the first year of the RISE Professional pro-gram in 2007 after receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Toronto, says she loved her experience that summer. “I knew doing research in aca-demia was not for me because I need to see a result in a short period of time,” she says.

Studying water saturation behavior of industrial oils for Hydac International, in Sulzbach, Germany, she had to deal with customers and run experiments on a deadline. “It’s not like writing a report for school,” she says. “It’s a big step from theo-retical chemistry.”

After her 2007 internship, Wilson re-turned to Canada but kept in touch with her coworkers at Hydac. Her Hydac adviser eventually offered her a position, and she returned to Germany to start a two-year contract that began in January.

Like Wilson, some students use such internships as a way to get their foot in the door of a specific company, and the com-panies welcome that tactic as prerecruit-

ment. “BASF’s strategy is to form the best team in industry,” says Dagmar Klinge, a scientist and engineer recruiter who deals with BASF’s interns at the company’s headquarters, in Ludwigshafen, Germany. “BASF attempts to keep in contact with excellent interns; the intent, of course, is to recruit them for BASF.”

Klinge says the company has about 700 to 800 interns at its headquarters and at a nearby agricultural research facility in Limburgerhof. That is up from about 600 to 700 in 2006, and, she adds, the number is increasing. About two-thirds of the in-terns are science or engineering students, and 1 to 2% are from the U.S. BASF offers internships on its careers website, but it also collaborates with DAAD as part of the

RISE Professional program. “We are quite pleased with RISE Professional,” Klinge says. This past summer, the second summer of RISE Professional, BASF doubled the

number of internships it offered to stu-dents in the program.

The nature of the project offered deter-mines the degree level that BASF looks for, Klinge says. The company prefers master’s students for its science internships, she adds, but BASF also considers undergradu-ates in their last year. Academic excellence is most important to the company, she says.

WHEN STUDENTS enter the job market, having an international research experi-ence can tip the scales in favor of a candi-date vying for a certain position, Klinge says. “Sometimes the experience to survive in a new environment is more important than the subject” the applicant researched during an internship, she says.

John Cherkauskas, vice president and director of Rhodia’s Center for Research & Technology, in Bristol, Pa., agrees, saying that having international research experi-ences “can be the deciding factor in candi-date selection,” although it is just one facet in considering a candidate for a position. Rhodia looks for strong academic achieve-ment, curiosity, and technical creativity when hiring students fresh on the job market, he says, but “a relevant scientific internship certainly helps.”

“It’s more important that a candidate with international exposure can convey some sense of synergy from their intern-ship, academic training, and perhaps in-dustrial experience,” Cherkauskas says.

An internship abroad tells recruiters that you are adaptable, successful in diffi-cult situations, and likely a good candidate for their firm. Marguerite (Meg) Desko, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University, says her IREU at Thailand’s Mahidol University gave her the abilities to “communicate without language and be flexible at all times because things just never worked like they were supposed to” in Thailand. Her experiences there helped her think outside the box, she says, and now that she is looking for employment, her internship in Thailand is “an unusual experience that sticks out on your résumé; people remember you.” ■

EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

DEADLINES LOOM

NanoJapannanojapan.rice.eduApplications open on Nov. 15Deadline is Jan. 12, 2009

RISEwww.daad.de/rise/enApplications open on Dec. 8Deadline is Jan. 31, 2009

RISE Professionalwww.daad.de/rise-pro/enApplications opened on Nov. 1Deadline is Jan. 25, 2009

ACS IREUwww.acs.org/ireuApplications open in November 2008Deadline is Jan. 31 or March 1, 2009

MOUNTAINEERSRaj climbed Mount Fuji at night with other NanoJapan participants. During their descent, they walked down through the clouds.

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Documents

THINKING CREATIVELY ABOUT WORK