It's a wrap, y'all. The TIMSTOF SCP is crated up and leaving today. The SCIEX ZenoTOF crate is in the hallway. The Agilent QQQ is already gone. I've closed the Johns Hopkins Metabolomics core. Hopkins isn't interested in having me as a tenure track faculty member. I probably could stick around as a research associate, but it is a dead end job. You are on 1 year contracts at ....more.... than a postdoc salary and you can only have students by paying for someone else's students that you mentor. You can hire technicians, but they'll stick around and learn enough to go get 2x the salary at one of the companies in the area. You have to write short term pilot grants because no one is going to give you a 3 or 5 year award when you are on 1 year contracts. "Lack of institutional support" should be my middle name. So....
I am currently seeking work. I verbally agreed to a tenure track position months ago, but it is unclear when/if that will actually start. If paperwork drags out much longer I'll lose the last year of my R01 and at that point I think I'll accept I'll never have "professor" anywhere in my job title. When I turned down a tenure track offer in 2014-2015(?) to stay in my home town it never occurred to me for a second it might be the only shot I'd ever get.
Right now I'm planning to unpaid sabbatical for a while to write the 20-ish papers that are open on my desktop. 8? 8 would be stellar. I used to do a solid amount of industry consulting, so I've got a DUNS number, etc., However, I can only write like 4 hours/day, and it doesn't pay very well (in fact, it pays $0 and if the papers get accepted I'll have to figure out how to...pay....them.....cart before the horse, though).
Are you looking for some mass spectrometry/proteomics help? Here are some ideas I have that I think could be fun and helpful to people, but I'm open to ideas for other consulting type roles
1) Did you get one of those giant TIMSTOF things after running an Orbitrap since 2005? Could you use help getting over the hump so it's making the crazy data that everyone says it can? I can help with that. Early adopter.
2) Want to jump into single cell proteomics? Did you already and then just discover it's actually really super hard? I've been doing this miserable stuff for years. My really good students can generate great data. Not as good as my stuff, and zero insult to them, it just takes time to get it right.
3) Did you spend a fortune generating proteomics of multi-omics data and need it to talk somehow?
4) Are you really great at proteomics but need to do some intact protein or metabolomics or glycoproteomics and could use a hand?
5) Could you use help marketing your proteomics technology, technique, reagent, or just advice on the business side of proteomics? This blog is only for sale after I've completely burned through my savings, though I might test putting ads up before I get too desperate).
Those are just some ideas. I'm open to remote or on-site support. If you are interested, my personal email address is LCMSmethods@gmail.com.
That is so disappointing to learn! You are such an expert in the proteomics field. Please have faith! I don't know how it works in the US, but generally, academic institutions place more emphasis on intriguing biological questions. I guess try to integrate your expertise with a great biological question, and you should have no issues in finding good positions. If things don't work out, please consider trying a couple of years in less competitive countries. In India, NCBS is pretty decent and already has couple of foreign faculties. It would be easier for you, since there are very less proteomics experts in India.
ReplyDelete