ChemBark

Just how hard is life in chemistry at Harvard? It’s brutal. Everything is done to the extreme, and sometimes, people crack under the stress. We lost a trusted friend this week when the DeuceGobbler 3000 was hauled out of our bathroom on a stretcher. All that remains is an empty stall—a constant reminder of the emptiness in our hearts:

Seriously…I hope we get a new toilet soon. The plumber “sealed” the sewer line by cramming a wad of TP into it (see above), and as you can imagine, this was not the best solution. The area around our bathroom smells like 3-methylindole and friends.

In other news, I can’t believe the toilet managed to beat me out of here.

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The Chemmy Award for the Most Outstanding Chemistry Department of 2006 goes to:

Princeton University

In the comments thread announcing the Chemmy Awards, Excimer noted that “although all these awards are subjective as hell, the Outstanding Academic Department is really out there. How can one honestly be 100% objective about such things?”

He’s absolutely right; there’s no way to definitively peg what department had the best year. This award was made to mimic how various sports leagues recognize a general manager or team executive of the year. We’re just asking, “which department made the best personnel moves or exceeded expectations for the past year?” Of course, this is going to make it harder for the “top flight” departments to win this Chemmy. The bar is higher for them, as we’ve come to expect schools like Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford to do amazing things.

So, why Princeton? They’ve made a number of big strides forward in the recent past. Coming on the heels of Sorensen’s arrival from Scripps in 2003, Princeton was able to attract superstar David MacMillan this year. Princeton also gained a resident chemistry blogger in 2006, Carmen Drahl, who’s noted that the school has vastly improved its instrumentation this year. A new chemistry building is also in the works, with completion scheduled for 2010.

In terms of losses, the sophomore organic class at Princeton might suffer with the impending departure of Maitland Jones. He is closing down research operations in preparation for a move to Greenwich Village to teach orgo at NYU. For those interested, The Chem Blog had a post this summer chronicling the movement of some other professors. Yale had a particularly rough year, which included the loss of Hartwig to Illinois.

So, when I think of up-and-coming schools, Princeton is the first that comes to mind. I’ll stand by it as deserving of the award for 2006, but feel free to post your thoughts on other departments that will soon be surging up the rankings.

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It’s Christmastime at ChemBark, and we’ve tweaked the theme a little bit to be more festive. Ed the Dog has even agreed to wear the Santa hat we bought for him. Good boy!

When the holiday season approaches for our lab, we all contribute to a central gift fund and purchase presents as tokens of our appreciation for our janitor, the office staff, and George. Here was this year’s gift to the Big Guy:

It’s a 12″ wall clock with his face in the center, surrounded by rings of the names of all the subgroups and students in the lab. The main obstacles of giving customized gifts are finding acceptable hi-res images and deciding upon the gift early; you can’t leave the decision to the last minute when you’re at the mercy of the shipping industry. Whenever we order one of these personalized items, I can’t resist buying one for myself. That’s why a GMW Clock graces my fume hood:

My favorite lab gift of all time was what we got for him two years ago. We designed a group logo and had it put on a nylon briefcase–something that he could actually use on his travels:

 

To satisfy the minimum order requirements, I had to order three bags. While this was annoying at the time, it turned out to be a blessing. Not long into the next semester, George saw me and said that John Deutch (former director of the CIA and one of George’s old colleagues at MIT) saw the bag and insisted on having it. I don’t know exactly how that works, but Deutch got his way. Fortunately, we had a spare to replace it.  Now, owning one of these bags puts me in pretty elite company: Whitesides, Deutch, and Bracher.

So…is anyone else busy buying lab-related gifts for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus?

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You knew it was bound to happen, and now it finally has: a chemistry professor has made a video advertisement to attract first year graduate students. Check it out.

Aside from her mesmerizing voice, the spokesmodel’s eyes will follow your cursor around the screen. From the looks of her hair, it must be really windy in Professor Grzybowski’s lab. Then again, he is in Chicago.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I should note that Bartosz was a former labmate. We overlapped for under a year, so I never got the chance to get to know him, but he’s a wicked smart guy and his research is really cool. Now, let’s see if anyone follows his lead in making lab ads.

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