Thursday, March 28, 2013

Chemistry Bumper Cars II

For Bumper Cars I, click here.

Well, I was holding off until Spring had officially sprung, but they're coming too fast and furious to wait any longer. Thanks to Paul for starting the engine on this season of thrilling, chilling chemistry faculty moves!

I'm a visual learner and amateur cartographer-in-training, so let's chart out Paul's confirmed moves (as of March 2013):

(click to embiggen)


1. John (Wedge)Wood, CSU to Baylor
2. Corey (Saffron) Stephenson, BU to Michgan
3. Sharon Hammes-(Silver)Schiffer, Penn State to Illinois
4. Kyoung-Shin (Cherry) Choi, Purdue to UW
5. Shih-Yuan (Lavender) Liu, Oregon to BC
6. Patrick (Yale Blue) Holland, Rochester to Yale
7. Andrei (Teal) Tokmakoff, MIT to Chicago
8. Xiaoyang (Green) Zhu, Austin to Columbia
9. Glenn (Orange) Micalizio, Scripps FL to Dartmouth
10. Thomas (Tan) Albrecht-Schmitt, Notre Dame to FSU
11. Phil (Purple) Castellano, Bowling Green to NCSU
12. Jer(Red)my Smith, NMSU to Indiana
13. Adam (Brown)schweig, NYU to Miami
14. Paul (Pink) Cremer, TAMU to Penn State
(Update 3/29)
15. Brian (Olive) Shoichet, UCSF to Toronto

Commentary: Most of the "action" seems constrained to the Eastern seaboard so far this season. In terms of overall distance, Prof. Liu takes the cake (3,000 miles), with runner-up (just added: Brian Shoichet, at 2,300 milesProf. Zhu (1,800) and Micalizio (1,400). This time around, there isn't so clear a trend of moving "up the ladder" rankings-wise or towards warmer climes; folks move everywhere! (Readers, if you spot a trend in this messy data, let me know in the comments)

Craziness: This only represents movement for the past seven months! Who knows what the rest of 2013 will bring? Tune in for the next exciting Chemistry Bumper Cars installment.

Thanks again to ChemBark for starting the conversation.

Update, 3/29 - Paul's site brought word of Shoichet, and Andre the Chemist aggregated and scored the moves based on U.S. News departmental rankings. Well done!


  1. The west coast is doomed!

  2. I wouldn't say I spotted any trends, but I did the (lazy) analysis of determining the change in institution ranking of each move listed over at ChemBark (including all of the ones you listed here). You can find it here.

  3. I am a little stunned by the Shoichet news. Toronto is a great university but UCSF is really one of the world's leading biomedical research institutes and Shoichet was having an extraordinary career there. I am sure he will continue to do equally well at Toronto; it's just that I can imagine family-related reasons as being an important incentive in his move (his sister is on the faculty at Toronto and he is Canadian after all).

  4. Awwww...dang. Sorry to lose Paul. I took his P-chem class as a grad student and actually enjoyed it. Best wishes to him and his group at Penn State.

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