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Is Organic Chemistry a dead career?

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 02:16:45 2021 No.12748024 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12748268 >>12748346 >>12748392 >>12748570 >>12748890 >>12750386

I'm interested in doing a PhD in Organic Chemistry but from what I hear it's literal hell and leaves you with relatively garbage prospects. and will only continue to phase out as biotech starts taking over the Pharmaceutical sector. Any opinions on this?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 04:10:53 No.12748268 Report

Quoted By: >>12748290

>>12748024
I lived in the bay area and wanted to study o chem after PIHKAL and Fester came out. My prof told me I'd end up making plastic pellets at a refinery in Richmond for the rest of my life.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 04:22:07 No.12748290 Report

Quoted By: >>12748302

>>12748268
>imagine taking org. chemistry in uni, spending nights on end studying all the terms and processes just to make some shitty pellets

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 04:26:39 No.12748302 Report

Quoted By: >>12748316 >>12748851

>>12748290
That's why you get a PhD, stay in academia, and get to yell at undergrads that you're a Dr. not a Mr.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 04:34:00 No.12748316 Report

Quoted By: >>12748521

>>12748302
I've seen most undergrads call their college teachers "Professor" instead of Mr. though

Hell I was even called that a few times while I TA'd

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 04:46:55 No.12748346 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748024
The hours are absolute fucking shit. Believe me I don't know a single person in organic chemistry or biochemistry for that matter who was happy with their work life.
I loved the subject but I don't think I'd ever do it with those working conditions.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 05:09:21 No.12748392 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748024
Organic chemistry is the exact field all undergrads I’ve ever talked to wanted to go in. The field is apparently very saturated.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 05:23:11 No.12748422 Report

Quoted By: >>12748443

A massive problem is that synthesis sucks extremely

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 05:36:55 No.12748443 Report

Quoted By: >>12748493 >>12748567

>>12748422
Can you point me to a resource that talks about this problem or explain it yourself?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 05:51:06 No.12748493 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748443
some first-hand experience should serve as proof

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 06:03:12 No.12748521 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748316
This
I always call my professors well... professor

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 06:14:25 No.12748567 Report

Quoted By: >>12748643

>>12748443

Just read a synthesis paper sometime. A lot of manual labor hours go into synthesis unless you can cut down the number of steps dramatically.

And at the end of the day you get to parade your accomplishment of making some insanely complicated natural product nobody gives a fuck about with a completely unfeasible process. The justification for natural product synthesis is mostly an exercise to promote discovering reactions and shortcuts to get to your product.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 06:14:58 No.12748570 Report

Quoted By: >>12749019

>>12748024
I absolutely loved o-chem.
I should've gone the chem eng path. <- hint, hint
Not much money in it, but what's life for otherwise.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 06:38:20 No.12748643 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748567
I feel like you'll like organic synthesis if you're a person who's process driven rather than strictly results driven, like the type of person who likes cooking for cooking's sake as opposed to making the best tasting meal for a party or something

Like my first synthesis project was exactly the scenario you described: I had to help fix/improve a synthesis of a compound that in practical terms took 12 steps to synthesize from spermine, 6-hydroxypicolinic acid and 4-nitrophenylethylbromide and had an overall yield of 1.4%. I still liked doing it overall because I was exposed to a bunch of new reactions and scenarios and I thought seeing visceral stuff happen in the reaction vessels was pretty cool.

I think you said it yourself, most of the time it's about the reactions to get to your product rather than the product yourself, so if you're the type of person who likes that and who likes learning about new reactions rather than being focused on the application, you'll think synthesis is pretty cool

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 07:41:07 No.12748851 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748302
Is this why they get so mad?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 07:55:34 No.12748890 Report

Quoted By: >>12749006 >>12749081

>>12748024
Ochem is gonna get completely phased out as we use computers that can automate the entire process. We have AI that can read papers for synthesis methods and then pass them directly to a robot that performs the reactions. We have AI that can look through the list of all known organic synthesis pathways and select the optimal ones based on cost, enviormental impact, yield, etc.

If you like ochem go into bio-organic or get a bunch of CS experience. Pure ochem is more of a hobby thing at this point to be honest.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 08:33:43 No.12748967 Report

Quoted By: >>12749090

>is organic chem a dead career
>is an occupation directly related to medicine manufacturing dead

well gee op tell me this: are people going to stop using medicine in the next century

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 08:53:39 No.12749006 Report

Quoted By: >>12749026

>>12748890
Source for the AI?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 09:01:35 No.12749019 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748570
>I should've gone the chem eng path
>Not much money in it
Literally all I know about chem eng is it's "dude TUBES lmao" and mad buxx$$$$

Anonymous

View Same Google iqdb SauceNAO reverse engineer this you'll und (...).png, 8KiB, 320x227

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 09:05:12 No.12749026 Report

Quoted By: >>12749643

>>12749006
there is none lmao
but then again, complex organic structures don't appear to be very useful for medchem.
Medchem seems to be all about modular assembly of common and similar synthons, then throwing 10,000's of compounds at the phase I-IV system until something sticks. I imagine that could be pretty easily automated.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 09:38:08 No.12749081 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748890

What you're describing is just outsourcing the manual labor component of Ochem. The fear of it getting phased out into irrelevance from that is no different from any other field.

AI's utility will be limited by our understanding of Physical Organic chemistry. We're nowhere close to being able to predict novel reactions from a purely mechanistic standpoint.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 09:43:30 No.12749090 Report

Quoted By: >>12750406

>>12748967

> well gee op tell me this: are people going to stop using medicine in the next century

Medicine is trending away from small molecules. Organic Chemists are and still will be needed in Med Chem but they're only one small part of the drug development process.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 14:39:15 No.12749643 Report

Quoted By:

>>12749026
>reverse engineer this
sydnone/alkyne [3+2] cycloaddition

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 18:30:08 No.12750386 Report

Quoted By:

>>12748024
Anyone have thoughts/insights on specialized orgo chem, especially in emerging industries? I'm studying orgo chem+hydroponics/indoor agriculture rn which I think will be prudent considering the climate will probably be irreparably fucked in 20 years, but I'm interested in using my orgo education to worm my way into the cannabis industry and possibly medicinal psychedelics since that's just now emerging and will probably be pretty big in the next decade.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 18:37:31 No.12750406 Report

Quoted By:

>>12749090

just like how machinists are a small part of hard parts development (at scale, their primary role is QA and process deployment). They're paid very well.

Anonymous

Anonymous ## Mod Wed 24 Feb 2021 19:14:32 No.12750546 Report

Quoted By:

This thread was moved to >>>/adv/23652373

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