aligning scientific expertise with passion for a career
DESCRIPTION
Antony Williams is the Vice President of Strategic Development for ChemSpider at the Royal Society of Chemistry. ChemSpider is one of the world’s primary online resources serving the chemistry community. Antony has a PhD in Chemistry specializing in NMR spectroscopy and has worked in a government laboratory, in academia, for a Fortune 500 company (Eastman Kodak), for a small start-up organization and has started two of his own companies prior to joining the Royal Society of Chemistry. During his career path he has experienced multiple work cultures. Antony will provide a short overview of his career path and discuss the various decisions that helped motivate his change in career from professional spectroscopist to website host and innovator to working for one of the world’s foremost scientific societies.TRANSCRIPT
Aligning scientific expertise and passion through a career path in the chemical sciences
Antony WilliamsACS DenverAugust 28th 2011
Classical Chemists
Make Measure Analyze
ModelApplications
Write
Classical Chemists
Make Measure Analyze
ModelApplications
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, Kodak1992-1997 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
LinkedInhttp://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
ModelApplications
WriteSupport 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: [email protected] Twitter: @ChemConnectorPersonal Blog: www.chemconnector.comSLIDES: www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams