Shameless Self-Promotion Thread

[vtlion]

I hope I'm not jinxing the whole thing, but I just had to share this...

I was just offered a visiting professor position on the faculty of the American University Chemistry Department!   

The chair of the department phoned me yesterday to tell me that they were making me an offer and that an official letter should be on the way in a few days.  Of course, all of this is contingent on successful defense of my PhD in August.  NW DC is a beautiful area.  I can't wait to start working there.

I was really starting to sweat the job search, since I leave here in only two months.  I am STOKED to finally have a job lined up!  After all these years of working 60 hour weeks for 18k a year, I will finally be able to work...well... 60 hour weeks still, but for WAY more money and with a WAY better office!! 

Hooray for ME!   

[VTNewb]

Awesome!

What's your area of research?

[natedawg120]

congrats man, that is awesome.  And hopefully in a few months we can call you Dr. vtlion .

[blue05twin]

Congrats 

[MrDan]

Grats !

[vtlion]

Awesome!

What's your area of research?

As a researcher, I would probably bill myself as a biophysical chemist.  My current research is in the area of protein folding thermodynamics. 

The position is a teaching appointment, so if I want to continue research (which I hope I can), then I will have to fit it in here and there among all of my teaching responsibilities.  It would be great if I could generate a short paper or two and compete for tenure someday if I so choose.

[VTNewb]

I'm very familiar with thermodynamics in terms of Mech E. I'm curious, what kind of analysis do you do in terms of "protein folding". What are you looking to find?

[vtlion]

its a very long story, but basically we create variants and fragments of proteins, then denature them using various techniques.  The denaturation data is then used to determine the free energy associated with the folding process.  By making small changes to the proteins and fragments, then repeating the experiments, contributions of single interactions  or groups of interactions can be approximated.  Various experiments exist which allow us to estimate the enthalpic and entropic contributions to the free energy of the unfolding/refolding process.

We can also reveal details about internuclear distances within a folded protein in solution using Nuclear Overhauser Effect spectroscopy on a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer.  Distances can be somewhat accurately determined by the magnitude of magnetization transfered by dipolar coupling during the experiment.  We can piece together a grid of internuclear distance constraints, ultimately resulting in a single, rational solution to the topology of the protein fold in solution.  The end result is a pretty picture of the protein in its folded state, like this structure of a Rat Cytochrome b5 variant.



Its a real hoot 

[jake42]

Vt - Congrats big-time man.  Good teaching is just as valuable as research.  It must be such a relief to be almost done.  I just took my final preliminary today (4 hours of biostats) and should be able to start the research that leads to my dissertation by the end of this summer.  Who knows, in another 2 or 3 years I may actually have my PhD.

Again, congratulations.

Jake

[trumpetguy]

Congratulations, VTLion!  I'm a professor in a regional university in Oklahoma (teaching is our primary mission).  I hope that you will enjoy teaching as much as I do.   You won't get rich doing this, but you'll be able to pay the bills and you'll make a difference in the lives of many students.

[vtlion]

Thanks all.  I'm really looking forward to it.  As for getting rich, I'll leave that to my wife (she is a much better researcher than I am). 

With all of the federal government agencies (NIST, NIH, etc) in the Washington area, there is a lot of opportunity to get involved in collaborative research.  My hope is that I can find a small research project to use primarily as a teaching tool (maybe get a few undergraduates involved and publish a paper a year or something).  American U has a 400 MHz NMR on their campus, which will probably be sufficient for most of the work that I would do.

[frankieG]

way to make a guy with a physics degree feel dump    i was scratching my head about the protein thing.  btw congrats

[MrDan]

way to make a guy with a physics degree feel dump    i was scratching my head about the protein thing.  btw congrats

My philosophy degree got me through the first 9 words   

[Jake D]

American University is an excellent school.  They have an exchange program with my undergrad school and I nearly did a symester there for poli sci.   Kind of which I had.