Aligning scientific expertise with passion for a career

Aligning scientific expertise and passion through a career path in the chemical sciences Antony Williams ACS Denver August 28th 2011

Classical Chemists
Make
Measure
Analyze
Model
Applications
Write

Who am I today?
I am VP Strategic Development, ChemSpider for the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) - publisher
Responsibility for the ChemSpider platform, cheminformatics projects, collaborations, business development, social marketing (presentations and publications) - cheminformatician
Oversee a team of people developing solutions for RSC - manager
I am @ChemConnector – social networker
Scientific publications - scientist
Blogger, writer of books - author

My background…
Worked in
Government lab as postdoc
Academia as NMR Facility Manager
Fortune 500 Company as NMR Tech Leader
Start-up as product manager, marketing manager, Chief Science Officer
Consultant – chemistry informatics industry
Company owner – Created ChemSpider
Now at Royal Society of Chemistry (bought ChemSpider)

What have I learned in my career?
Much time is spent working - not enjoying it is not an option
It is called “work” for a reason – if you enjoyed every moment it would be a hobby
Continue to sharpen your toolset as time and projects allow. Don’t fear going outside the box
“ Playing it safe” is a perfectly valid option – but rarely effects change and innovation
Use your head AND heart to make career choices
Say what you are going to do and do what you say – it defines your reputation as an employee
Careers are made – they don’t just happen

“ Work” versus “Passion”
We all need to work but choose to work on things that give you a good emotional response… stimulate interest, lack of sleep, joy, obsession…
Develop new skills, step out of the box and extend yourself. What you know now is never enough…
Balance logical decisions with gut-level responses
Hope to work somewhere that supports your passion(s)

Education…B.Sc 1982-85
I always found Chemistry interesting….but never found it easy!
Master of crystallization and yield
Almost bottom of my class for PhysChem! – spectroscopy made no sense but was fascinating !
Self-realization – “Beat the Challenge” – had to study it until I got it.

What brings you joy?
Figure out early what brings you joy if you can (not so easy!) what drives you and what brings you joy? The list below fits for classical chemistry and for me:
Creating solutions to difficult problems
Building and playing with functional teams
Communicating complexities
Acts of service for my community
Working with people more skilled than me

Post Doc 1988-90
Multiple offers for NMR Postdocs in USA (PhD studies)
One offer for ESR/EPR Postdoc in Canada
Why Canada?
Emotional decision …
Exploration is fun
Out of the box motivates

NMR Technology Leader, Kodak 1992-1997
Never synthesized anything again…
Business Driver: Do more analyses faster and with higher quality. Walk-up automation for analytical support, Get data to chemists, Reject bad data
Business Driver: Improve NMR Data analysis- can software outperform people for analysis ?
Business Driver: Sample tracking – LIMS as the internet was born
I became “ businessman in a scientific laboratory ”
And one day a phone call… and measuring data

ACD/Labs Start-up 1997-2007
Creativity at its best – new products, new markets, design work, marketing, good science
From NMR spectroscopist to deeply understanding chemical nomenclature, structure representation and databasing, data integration, and the web
My greatest joys – solving problems for people and innovating scientific solutions with computers
“ Vision is great, Execution is Better”

Can software outperform people?
Chemistry skills into software – YES, software can outperform people in many areas!!!
Nomenclature generation, PhysChem prediction, NMR analysis, Structure Elucidation

ChemSpider – Skills and Passion
An idea to use technology to spider data in an organization. Morphed to a vision to spider the internet and link all chemicals
Hobby project built in a basement – thousands of visitors a day. Judged harshly in the blogosphere but “beat the challenge” by engaging in it…
Acquired by RSC – chose them as the best partner to define the world of web-based chemistry

Social Networking in Science
Career-wise, NOT having a personal presence online is likely already a detriment
Establishing a public profile
Getting on the record
Collaborative Science
Demonstrating a skill set
Measured using alternative metrics
Contributing to the public peer review process

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/AntonyWilliams

Chemistry Social Networking
Methods of sharing MY science online include:
Wikis or blogs
Slideshare for presentations
YouTube for videos
Flickr, Wikimedia etc. for images
ChemSpider for chemistry
GoogleDocs for data
Google Scholar Citations for citations
Microsoft Academic Scholar for papers

You will be a set of statistics
Number of papers, patents, citations, grants, ….

You will be a set of statistics & profiles
Number of papers, patents, citations, grants, ….
My Blog: www.chemconnector.com
Twitter: http:// twitter.com/ChemConnector
Amazon Author Page: Follow Link to Author Page
My Klout: http://www.klout.com/#/ChemConnector
LinkedIn: http:// www.linkedin.com/in/antonywilliams
SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams
Google Scholar Citations Profile: Antony Williams Citations
Researcher_ID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/C-3089-2009
Wikipedia : http :// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_John_Williams
Mendeley Profile: http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/antony-williams/

The Alt-Metrics Manifesto
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

Enabled by ORCID…

My day job as a chemist
Make
Measure
Analyze
Model
Applications
Write
Support the Chemistry Community

Conclusions…what worked for me..
I LOVE Chemistry – but never want to synthesize!
I have an attraction to magnets – but it’s all data!
Career choices should be head & heart decisions
Decide what motivates, excites and stimulates you over what puts food on the table. (Clearly driven by ability to eat!!!)
You are responsible for your reputation – build it and maintain it - and with online tools take charge of it!
Interview your boss – their support will be critical
Not every decision works out – but not making decisions is crippling

Thank you Email: williamsa@rsc.org Twitter: @ChemConnector Personal Blog: www.chemconnector.com SLIDES: www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams

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Aligning scientific expertise with passion for a career

by Antony Williams, ChemConnector

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