Survey: What industry do you work in?

[Jade.Barker]

Some of you are easy (it's right in your tag line...) but what about the rest of you?
Just for fun: what are the Best and Worst parts of your industry?

Myself?
I think Fuel Ethanol is considered "Industrial" science -
Best part? Production science gives you something you can "see" at the end of the day.
Worst part? Giving an "really basic" explaination to a business person, and realizing too late that it was 100% too technical.

[Bruce Hamilton]

Contract analytical chemistry, mainly for pharmaceuticals, energy, and manufacturing industries.

Best Part - solving a problem.
Worst Part - explaining to casual callers that I only have two charge out rates; "Exorbitant", and "Highly-exorbitant". So, unless they have a friendly bank manager, they will not be able to hire me to investigate why their nice white convertible top has oil stains on it, and where those stains orginated ( yesterday's enquiry ).

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

[Kostas Petritis]

Bruce,

You should have accepted the job and a couple of months later tell them that PCA analysis shown that the oil originated from Saudi Arabia and got refined in the golf of Mexico. Attach a GC-MS chromatogram with it and charge them $10,000. I would like to see the look in their faces after that

[JGK]

Contract research for me also, analytical chemistry for preclinical drug safety evaluation.

High intensity and deadline driven, but the variety means I'm never bored

[Bruce Hamilton]

Bruce,

You should have accepted the job and a couple of months later tell them that PCA analysis shown that the oil originated from Saudi Arabia and got refined in the golf of Mexico. Attach a GC-MS chromatogram with it and charge them $10,000. I would like to see the look in their faces after that

I suspect it might have been a silicone-based waterproofing treatment that was over-enthusiastically applied, but IR would discriminate. I pointed them to their insurance company. They should swallow hard and pay the claim fee, and let the insurers fix the problem.

A lot of my calls are "CSI" influenced - neighbour's garden sprays killing flowers or making people/pets sick; fuels that stop engines, make people sick; houses that make people/pets sick etc. Usually a diverse mix of paranoia and justified grievance.

CSI shows that competent analysts look, dress, and act nerdy, and can rapidly identify the entire provenence and composition of samples in no more than 10 minutes. So, the analytical cost must be less than $100, including any court time.

Lawyers, on the other hand, look, dress, and act sexy, take the analysts data, solve the problem, get the neighbour sent to jail ( if they didn't kill them in the last 10 mins ), and are worth the $10K.

I usually suggest talking to the neighbour / supplier first and, if that fails, try to suggest analytical resources ( eg regulatory labs ) that might offer much cheaper services.

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

[Peter Apps]

Probably the smallest "industry" in the world: I analyse African wild dog territorial scent marks to identify which components are sending the signal that stops neighbours trespassing into pack territories. The ultimate aim is to use artificial scent marks to make artificial territorial boundaries that will stop the dogs from straying out of protected areas into cattle farming areas where they come into conflict with people. ( http://www.bpctrust.org/research.html , http://wildentrust.org/index.php?q=node/12 )

Best part, working on an large carnivore, pushing the limits of GC-MS to find the tiny quantities of active semiochemicals.

Worst part; the lab is in a very small town 1000 km from the nearest city and the supply logistics are a nightmare

Peter

[gcguy]

I work for an agrichemical manufacturer. My current role invloves developing new methods, fixing old ones and "holding the hand" of chemists and QC analysts.
Even in industry there is a bit of the CSI effect, people have turned up with brown, sticky tar from manufacturing units and asked "What is this and where did it come from". My ususal reply is "It's brown tar from whatever plant they have come from"
Best bit...freedom to develop my own methods.
Worst bit...having to explain to people that we have limited analytical instrumentation and cannot tell them 100% composition on that brown tar.

GCguy

[Uwe Neue]

Well, the next time you get such a sample, make a nice chromatogram, does not matter if it is LC or GC. Then you tell them that this is the "profile" of their sample, no more.

The expected question follows: "Well, what does this mean?"

Then you look dumbfounded, take a pencil and point to a particular feature of the chromatogram and say: "Well, look here, this is his nose..."

You will never get any questions again...

[Noser222]

I work for a company that had three parts:

Aloe raw materials
Contract manufacturing
Drug Delivery (using a proprietary product drive from Aloe)

Though I was hired as an analytical chemist, I've gotten involved in process and formulation as well.

Best Part: Our Aloe facility is in Costa Rica so I've been there about 25 times over the last 6 years.

Worst Part: Our company blew way more money by being lousy at contract manufacturing than ever went into our R&D Drug Delivery devision, even though we get blamed for being a financial drain.

[Jade.Barker]

I analyse African wild dog territorial scent marks

Wow, that is one heck of a speciality. I don't think anyone can top "wild dog pee". If I can keep a straight face... I'm going to tell my family I am going back to school for that.

Seriously though, I bet it could be a huge industry. Here in the Midwest of the USA, deer hunting is a huge industry. Right around the "deer opener" all the sports stores are touting the virtues of their brand of deer pee. I guess the sportsmen can thank scientists like you when they bag a big one.

[JGK]

I analyse African wild dog territorial scent marks

Wow, that is one heck of a speciality. I don't think anyone can top "wild dog pee". If I can keep a straight face... I'm going to tell my family I am going back to school for that.

Seriously though, I bet it could be a huge industry. Here in the Midwest of the USA, deer hunting is a huge industry. Right around the "deer opener" all the sports stores are touting the virtues of their brand of deer pee. I guess the sportsmen can thank scientists like you when they bag a big one.

Back in the day when i was a student on a placement with Wellcome, I did spend a depressing month performing Liquid/liquid extractions on homogenized dog vomit samples, that is one moth of my life i will never get back

[oscarBAL]

Hello all.
look how little is this world!! Nosser for about 25 times you has been just 2 Km from my Family house in Costa Rica!!!

And I have to admit that I find the the Peters Apps work fascinating; I worqued for 2 years far away form a nearest town; I understand about logistics nighmares and mcorrective services...but it was a very good part of my life; I really enjoyed live wild and free; and "making science" there is not vacancies in your lab?

[Noser222]

Hello all.
look how little is this world!! Nosser for about 25 times you has been just 2 Km from my Family house in Costa Rica!!!

And I have to admit that I find the the Peters Apps work fascinating; I worqued for 2 years far away form a nearest town; I understand about logistics nighmares and mcorrective services...but it was a very good part of my life; I really enjoyed live wild and free; and "making science" there is not vacancies in your lab?

That's interesting. I will miss Liberia and Imperial and Pizza Pronto. Since we are having some changes in my company, my last trip (most likely) was in November

[Jade.Barker]

I only have two charge out rates; "Exorbitant", and "Highly-exorbitant".

CSI shows that competent analysts look, dress, and act nerdy...
Lawyers, on the other hand, look, dress, and act sexy, take the analysts data, solve the problem, get the neighbour sent to jail.

That settles it, you better stick to "Highly-exorbitant" rates from now on, you have a wardrobe to support! We can't have the world thinking lawyers are smarter AND cooler than scientists... I mean, those guys *never* leave the library...

[Peter Apps]

I analyse African wild dog territorial scent marks

Wow, that is one heck of a speciality. I don't think anyone can top "wild dog pee". If I can keep a straight face... I'm going to tell my family I am going back to school for that.

Seriously though, I bet it could be a huge industry. Here in the Midwest of the USA, deer hunting is a huge industry. Right around the "deer opener" all the sports stores are touting the virtues of their brand of deer pee. I guess the sportsmen can thank scientists like you when they bag a big one.

As far as I can tell the deer urine that the hunters use is just that; deer urine, collected from captive animals. This will not work with wild dogs because there are just not enough of them to produce sufficent quantities of pee to be used for artificial boundaries. Hence the need to identify the semiochemicals so that they can be put into artificial scent marks.

Peter