blog

I am not a business expert. That’s certainly one reason I’m in academia.

Recently, Rich Apodaca questioned the business case for open source and the small company (i.e., in science).

To me, this question comes around every year or so. There are an increasing number of open source scientific programs, so it’s only natural to question how [...]

I was recently asked online why I bother at all with writing open source chemistry software. It’s a good, important question for myself and my career.

I believe in working smarter and harder. One of my Ph.D. advisors said “a day in the library saves a month in lab.”

I believe a day (or a week) designing [...]

I have periodically posted images of molecules. This particular entry is the structure of Lipitor, aka Atorvastatin, one of the highest selling drugs in the world. Among the classes of statin drugs, this molecule is used to lower blood cholesterol.

Another reason I’m posting this molecular image is that it was generated by a new feature [...]

One of the challenges as a new professor is that you’re starting everything from scratch. Right now, I have no graduate students at all. (In this department, graduate students do not typically join a group until January.)

So I’m recruiting.

Last year, I commented on National Mole Day, celebrated on Oct. 23rd here in the United States (written 10/23).

It’s a great day for chemistry — it celebrates Avogadro’s number, which defines a mole of particles: 6.02 x 1023. It’s so popular, that I had two chemistry dinners happening tonight here in Pittsburgh. One honors Richard [...]

Nature’s “Sceptical Chymist” blog recent wrote about endangered elements.

Certainly in the context of sustainable, environmentally-responsible chemistry, this is an important issue along side questions of energy. I’ve heard that availability of cobalt might be a limiting factor in lithium-ion batteries. For example, is there enough of the element to put batteries in every car, truck, [...]