Subject: The Completed Paper on Comp Chem Career

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2001 01:21:48 +0000

Dear CCL-ers,
     First of all, I would like to say thank you to all 
who answered my survey about computational chemistry.  
It went very well and I had a lot of good answers.  
Second, I would like to apologize to everyone who tried 
to email me recently and got an 'undeliverable' 
message.  I was one of the unlucky people with @home, 
and so when the company went bankrupt, I lost internet 
for a while.  Last of all, I am including my paper for 
all those interested.  Regretfully, I have to say that 
some of your answers have made me begin to rethink my 
career choice, but the survey was still very 
informational, I am glad I did it, and thanks again for 
all your help.
Best wishes,
Linda M. Prengman          Ringgold High School
124 Briarwood Dr.          1 Ram Drive
Monongahela, PA 15063      Monongahela, PA 15063

=========================================================================
Linda Prengaman

Miss Ciccone

Period 3

December 5, 2001

Computational Chemistry

        What is computational chemistry? Dr. Allen Richon, Ph.D., writes that,
"Not very many people know about it, even chemists." (Richon). The
Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry gives the following explanation:
Computer methods are used to solve any mathematical problems concerning
chemistry, physics, etc, which would be nearly impossible using experimental
methods. In it's short thirty-year history, computational chemistry has proven
itself worthy of being acknowledged as a subdivision of chemistry. This
discipline has applications that can be applied to all areas of chemistry and
has impacted the work of all chemists, significantly increasing efficiency in
a number of fields (Encyclopedia). Dr. Lisa M. Balbes, Ph.D. sums up her job
this way, "I am a chemist, and I use the computer to help design new drugs."
(Balbes). Computational chemistry used to sound like a good idea to me because
I love chemistry and computer programming. I did not really know too much
about it, but I wanted to find out more.

        Obviously, I need to know something about how to get from here to
there. The first important step is getting the proper education. Not many
colleges offer computational chemistry as a major because it is an incredibly
rare one, and not many people know what it is. One of the very few colleges
that offer it is Carnegie Mellon University. Once in college, I will be
spending quite a few years there. According to Dr. Allen Richon, a
computational chemist, I will need to get a BS in Chemistry, a Ph.D. in
Computational Chemistry, and then do at least two years of post-doctoral
research. Most likely I will finally get a job around age 27 (Richon).
Sudhakar Pamidighantam tells me that I will need to have a strong background
in general chemistry, mathematics, and computational sciences (Pamidighantam).
Although there are some chemical societies who would like to see one
implemented, at this time there is no special licensing requirement for
computational chemists (Richon). Once I finish my post-doctoral research,
there is nothing standing in my way of becoming a computational chemist.

         Suppose I am out of college, trying to get a job as a computational
chemist. I need to worry about what kind of place will hire me, how easy it is
to find a job, and whether my position will be secure. First, I have two main
choices to make. I can either get a job working for an industrial company or
doing hard research for a university. Research and development divisions of
industries involved in materials, drugs and pharmaceuticals, and chemicals
mainly usually employ industrial computational chemists and chemical software
industry as well (Pamidighantam). In a survey I sent out to all computational
chemists who subscribe to the Computational Chemistry List, most agreed that
the future of computational chemistry is fairly secure because it is quickly
becoming a very useful tool in chemistry. However, they also agree that it
will always only be as essential as experimental chemistry, that it is not
much good on its own (Prengaman). The availability of jobs is an interesting
situation. Jobs are not offered everywhere because the profession is so rare.
As one computational chemist that took my survey told me, "You have to go
where the jobs are." (Prengaman). This does not mean that jobs are hard to
find. While the job market is sparsely spread out all over the world, there
are not enough computational chemists to fill the positions (Richon). Getting
a job seems to be both easy and hard at the same time.

        Now I have a job offer. Before I accept it, I need to know what kinds
of things I'll be doing, what my hours are, and how much money I'll make. Most
of the computational chemists I surveyed told me that they spent most of their
time reading chemistry journals and researching the work of their peers. Other
things that they do include studying molecular models on the computer, running
computer programs that allow them to do the actual computations, writing
reports of their findings, talking to lab chemists about the theoretical
results compared to what actually happened when the experiment was done in the
lab, attending meetings with other research teams, and a lot more (Prengaman).
The majority of the chemists told me that they spent very little time writing
programs, and most of the programs that they did write were for their own
private use. All of them reported long workdays, usually 10-14 hours, although
the actual hours that they gave me varied. One interesting consistency in
their answers was that many of them begin work later than typical in the
morning and end late in the evening. For example, one computational chemist
told me he worked from 10 AM to 7 PM. Another told me, "Being a computational
chemist is, for me, 24x365 because the computers never sleep," and many
reported that they did a good deal of work-related reading at home
(Prengaman). The general feedback about salary was interesting. On the survey,
the most popular answer to, "How much do they pay you?" was, "Not nearly
enough." Dr. Richon told me that I would probably start out at about $80,000
per year, and that I could work my way up to making $125,000 per year
(Richon). That corresponded well with the Chemistry Occupational Possibilities
web site, which reported that most people in the chemistry field make
$75,000-$100,000 per year (Chemistry). I began to wonder if the stress of the
job is so high that it is not worth a salary close to or maybe even about
$100,000 per year. Maybe this job is not such a good idea after all.

        In fact, by this time, I had begun to wonder about a lot of things. I
had been told that I need to have a strong background in mathematics to excel
in my potential profession. Quiet frankly, I do not do well in my math
classes; therefore I do not like it, and I can think of few things worse than
dealing with huge computations everyday at work. Also, tedious research bores
me. I could not spend many hours per day reading chemical journals. Another
thing that bothered me was that I might not spend much time writing programs,
and this one was one the main reasons computational chemistry appealed to me
before I knew much about it. The more I thought about it, the more I decided
that computational chemistry might not be right for me.

Works Cited:

Balbes, Lisa M. "Re: Career in Computational Chemistry." E-mail to
Linda Prengaman. 4 November 2001.

"Chemistry Careers." Chemistry Occupational Possibilities.
 <http://loki.stockton.edu/~stk9913/CCAR.HTM> 20 November 2001.

Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry.
<http://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/ecc.opening.html>. 7 Novemver 2001.

Pamidighantam, Sudhakar. "Re: Career in Computational Chemistry." E-mail to
Linda Prengaman. 12 November 2001.

Prengaman, Linda. Personal Survey of Computational Chemists. 
6 November 2001- 21 November 2001. 

Richon, Allen. "Re: Career in Computational Chemistry." E-mail to
Linda Prengaman. 14 November 2001.