Off to Philadelphia

This week's issue of C&EN carries the preliminary program for the 228th American Chemical Society national meeting, which will be held in Philadelphia on Aug. 22-26.

The Philadelphia national meeting will be the 40th such meeting I will have attended in my 28-year career with ACS. (During my 14 years as C&EN West Coast bureau head, I attended one meeting per year--the one held in the westernmost venue that year.)

I am always excited by the prospect of an ACS national meeting. There is such a tremendous amount of energy and intellectual ferment in the huge technical program that unfolds at each national meeting. I look forward to reading through the "Technical Program Summary" (starting on page 52), what we here at the C&EN offices in Washington, D.C., call "the grids," to begin planning my itinerary at the meeting. Each national meeting features a cornucopia of fascinating chemistry to savor.

Just take the first page of the summary as an example. There are 13 presidential events on topics ranging from "Designing Materials for Product Success" to "Recent Advances in Nuclear Chemistry & Technology" to "Fuels for the Future." Of particular note is the Academic Employment Initiative (AEI), a poster session that will take place as part of Sci-Mix on Monday evening at which close to 130 postdocs interested in careers in academia will present their research. AEI is set up to encourage members of academic search committees to informally network with presenters.

Summaries of two other technical division programs also appear on page 52: the Division of Agricultural & Food Chemistry and the Division of Agrochemicals. They are sponsoring, among others, symposia on "Genetic Engineering in Flavor Chemistry," "Potential Health Benefits of Citrus," "Translation of Pesticidal Activity from Lab to Greenhouse to Field," and "Is Organic Food Healthier Than Conventional Food?" The summary continues for 11 pages, listing one tempting morsel after another.

All told, 31 of the society's technical divisions, three secretariats, and nine committees will participate in over 800 technical sessions at which more than 7,100 papers will be presented.

Of course, there is much more to an ACS national meeting than just the technical program. There are social events; the exposition; tours; and meetings of the ACS Board of Directors, the ACS Council, and many committees. The preliminary program, which begins on page 49, has information on these events and on registering for the meeting.

C&EN and the ACS Department of Career Services (DCS) are proud to announce the debut of the Chemjobs Career Center at the Philadelphia meeting. Formerly known as the National Employment Clearing House (NECH), the Chemjobs Career Center is a collaboration between C&EN Online and DCS. Beginning today, the Chemjobs Career Center will be open for business to ACS members and student affiliates, helping to arrange job interviews between candidates and employers in Philadelphia.

Each year, employers have conducted more than 3,000 interviews at the center for hundreds of job openings from coast to coast. The center provides an online database to sign up job seekers and employers, display résumés, post jobs, and schedule interviews. The system allows applicants to register, manage their accounts, track changes in their schedules, and communicate with each other completely online.

Users of Chemjobs, the online extension of C&EN Classifieds, can access the career center by going to the Chemjobs site, http://chemistryjobs.acs.org, logging on, and clicking on "sign me up." The Chemjobs Career Center seamlessly weaves together the services previously provided by NECH with all of Chemjobs' powerful functionalities.

The Chemjobs Career Center is an example of the "integrated suite of products and services" envisioned in the ACS Strategic Plan for 2004-06. C&EN and the ACS Membership Division (of which DCS is a part) are working together to deliver to ACS members a powerful set of tools to manage their careers effectively. For more information on the Chemjobs Career Center, see page 79 of the program.

Thanks for reading.