Alex Speed
@awhspeed
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Associate Chem professor @DalhousieChem . Focuses on sustainable organic and main-group chemistry. Camper, plant hoarder, and Victorian house enthusiast. He/him.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Joined December 2016
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Who is with me that if a reviewer says something is "not novel", they then must provide a reference?
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Some day I am going to give a lecture titled: The importance of being able to say "I don't know"
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Experiment time. each has dilute ketyl in THF.
1) Just the cap.
2) Teflon tape on threads
3) Teflon tape outside
4) 1.5 turns parafilm
5) 5 turns parafilm
6) 3 turns electrical tape
Removed from glovebox at 1:00 pm, Oct 20th. Any bets as to the winner?
@MarkStradiotto
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Here's the 2 hour update. Looks like teflon on the outside is worse than useless, though not much worse than nothing at all. Teflon on the inside is fading too, Parafilm is doing something to help, but electrical tape is the clear winner.
1(ish) hour update time: while it's hard to see by my phone, 1 and 3 are clearly fading. 2,4 and 5 all have faint discolouration at the top. 6 seems to be going strong. I should credit
@bowringgroup
, who did this first, and better, with glassware:
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I was told I was not capable of/committed to a research PhD by 2 different advisors. I just finished my first week as a tenured professor!
It would be ridiculous if we told people, "you're not passionate enough to belong in:"
- Tennis
- Cooking
- Painting
- anything else
Yet,
#academia
continually tells people, "you're not passionate enough to belong in SCIENCE." 🧵 1/
#AcademicTwitter
#phdchat
@AcademicChatter
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In these trying times, I got some good news today: my application for promotion and tenure was successful, and I will be promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure effective July 1st. Thanks to all my co-workers past and present, and
@DalhousieChem
!
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Pick your PhD advisor carefully: an unsupportive advisor doesn't just set you back in your PhD.... there is a continuing effect throughout your early career, where you can't get reference letters, you get passed over for awards, and you get dinged for not having PhD papers.
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Look how much of this photoredox catalyst my student made! That would be almost $6000 worth by Aldrich prices!
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@aaronhoyland
I remember talking with my grandmother about when she was a schoolchild, now over 100 years ago, and every fall, when they returned from summer break, there would be students missing because they had died.
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Can publishers make this horrible thing go away? I don't want to watch coffee swirling in a gd cup for one minute, I want to see the PDF I have clicked on, on the site my institution has paid a great deal of taxpayer and tuition money to subscribe to!
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@Chemjobber
It would be difficult to think of a more efficient way to sabotage STEM research in the USA, and hobble American competitiveness internationally than passing this legislation.
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Since I am not an HPLC expert, I am curious what a shark fin like this means? Overloaded?
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One of the unpleasant features of academia is the constant criticism. I have been told multiple times in the past week "not good enough", "inadequate", "rudimentary", etc. I fought hard to get a PhD, and a job, and papers, and tenure, and grants, but sometimes it gets to you.
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Great throwback: "what chemical shifts did you see in your crude reaction?" "All of them....."
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I have received 1000s of applications in 5 yrs, most of which I cannot answer. While some are heartfelt genuinely researched applications, the majority are not personalized, and do not even pertain to the correct research area I work in. But here's a new misspelling of my name:
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@AnnaGHughes
When people say they were "electrocuted" but they didn't actually die, I always correct them, and tell them they were "electrified".
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Maybe an unpopular opinion among some: if you work in a top lab, and work your ass off, and get no papers, because your advisor does not publish uncompleted syntheses, or publish in journals below JACS/ACIE, you have been done a grave disservice by your advisor.
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If anyone is curious how I run a 12 hour reaction while soending lass than 12 hours on campus:
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A 3rd year Chem prof gave a closed book test where the students had to know Avogadro's number to get the answer. Avogadro's number was not provided on the formula sheet. Some students protested. Prof's response was "by third year Chem majors should know Avogadro's #). Thoughts?
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The largest reaction I ever ran, about 300 g scale. It taught me I was not destined to be a process chemist, though I will eternally admire them!
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Are we dropping an album? No, actually we're celebrating the Speed group's first PhD defence! Congrats Blake on an excellent presentation and defence today!!
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@SapphireLally
@aussiastronomer
I'm a tenured chemistry professor, and I don't know the difference between "high field", "low field", and I have to think hard about "inter" and "intra". Also I screwed up clockwise and counterclockwise today in lecture!
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Why is my balance doing this? Does it also with door closed. Blower, fridge and vacuum pump are off, and my hands are static. Needless to say, it makes it tough to work precisely.
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A metathesis with Grubbs' II catalyst was the first transition-metal catalyzed reaction I ever did. It's rare somebody can change the way the whole field thinks about putting molecules together, but Prof. Grubbs did just that. RIP.
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We had a power failure last night, and a casualty of the thaw/refreeze in my fridge was this air sensitive primary amine. The bottle cracked, but the amine-CO2 adduct self-healed, so I only lost about 10% of the product. I wish all sensitive compounds could protect themselves!
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The question of "did I close that valve?" (Yes I did) brings me to campus at 10 pm.
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I'm very happy to have this accepted!
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I am running 2 enantiomeric reactions, so I can mix the products together to get a racemate!
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C3I4 is explosive. We figured out why... it stacks in wires. Since it's a 2 electron system, it's like ready-made Cooper pairs, so it makes a room-temperature superconductor. The explosion is because the magnetic field blows it apart. Attached is a video:
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Me explaining to students why total synthesis is hard. All unpublished work from my PhD.
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Maybe it's a credit to Chem Twitter being mostly upstanding people that 90% of the shit takes only come from 2 accounts...
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Very proud of my group. Our longest-running (or maybe 2nd longest depending on how you count) project is now accepted!
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Those of you that predicted it was the workstation ionizer earn my eternal gratitude.
@ConradGoodwin
@Teachforaliving
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Yes, because I spend every waking moment of my being working in the lab and writing grants and papers, and it would be a waste of time to be involved in such things as "community" or "outreach". smh
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@Tim_Bousquet
has been
#1
on my twitter feed for the past few weeks due to stellar pandemic coverage, so it only seem fair I made my first newspaper subscription in a long time to the
@HfxExaminer
!
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1(ish) hour update time: while it's hard to see by my phone, 1 and 3 are clearly fading. 2,4 and 5 all have faint discolouration at the top. 6 seems to be going strong. I should credit
@bowringgroup
, who did this first, and better, with glassware:
Experiment time. each has dilute ketyl in THF.
1) Just the cap.
2) Teflon tape on threads
3) Teflon tape outside
4) 1.5 turns parafilm
5) 5 turns parafilm
6) 3 turns electrical tape
Removed from glovebox at 1:00 pm, Oct 20th. Any bets as to the winner?
@MarkStradiotto
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Very happy to have our paper on arylphenothiazine synthesis with Erin and Kathy recognized this way!
The Canadian Journal of Chemistry Best Paper Award recognizes the “best paper” published in the volume year of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry (CJC). Congratulations to Dr. Alex Speed of
@DalhousieU
on being the recipient of this award.
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It's possible Chem Twitter knows about DMac's Nobel prize before he does, since they just said at the press conference that they could not reach him, and left an e-mail and a voice message....
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I am in a bar with books as decoration, and saw this in the wild.... I wonder how many former chem students worked here?
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I deleted my last tweet, because English is hard. But there are bigger issues with Organic Chemistry than people not taking melting points or doing combustion analysis. There is a diversity problem, and there is a mental health crisis. It's a beautiful science, with an ugly side.
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Like phenyl phenothiazine photocatalysis?
Check out our new route to the catalyst using benzyne chemistry. Over 7 grams prepared in one reaction, without transition metals or ligands!
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There may be a Nobel prize coming up, but I am more excited my H-index went from 11 to 12 today. Not bad for somebody who was at 3 or 4 when they were hired! It's worth remembering nobody should be defined by their metrics, or awards they do or do not win.
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Here's the good news from earlier. Almost 3 years to the day since our SF6 tank arrived in the lab, our first paper on SF6 chemistry is out in press!
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Reviews I write: "this paper seems solid, but the SI seems to be missing a bunch of data, which will need to be added"
Reviews I get: "this paper is well done, but I personally did not find the subject interesting, so it should be rejected"
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Good news: I think one of the compounds in my lab is isomerizing from something we didn't want, to the thing we originally wanted to make.
Bad news: the sample was made 4.5 years ago, and the isomerization is not complete.
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Some big name should write a review on all the syntheses they tried that they did not finish, and why. It would be a very interesting read.
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You know what would make my life infinitely easier: if there was a venue where I could just publish "we had this idea, and tried it, and it wasn't as selective as our previous best effort, so here is the work, but we didn't spend the effort get pristine NMRs or run scope"
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This molecule's message from the past is "Alex, enjoy your 20s.... the synthesis of me is not important, and will not happen":
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If my credit card goes through in a restauraunt, after some difficulty, and I say "I guess I won't be washing dishes afterall", do you get the joke?
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I did the whole 60+ hours thing throughout my 20s. In my 30s, I see how many things I missed out on, and how I am not a full person. But never too late to change. I am delighted with the culture my students have set up in my lab. I have never suggested or enforced hours (1/n).
I tell my graduate students and post-docs that if they’re working 60 hours per week, they’re working less than the full professors, and less than their peers.
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Food for thought:Galen Weston Sr. is worth 8.7 billion (Wikipedia). He could pay a butler a million dollars a day for the next 23 years to help him put on his jacket. His son Galen Weston Jr. decides it is the right time to end the $2 an hour bonus for store workers.
#loblaws
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My student made a deuterium labelled compound. But not being knowledgeable about deuterium NMR, why is the peak (in red) so broad?
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@nathanwpyle
I broke my 5th metacarpal once, and I impressed the ER doctor by saying "looks like a broken 5th metacarpal" when he showed me the x-ray. I had a long enough wait to google it, thanks to the free wi-fi in the ER.
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In the big scheme of things, a very first world problem, but I spent the morning cleaning old student samples so I could get the vials back:
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@erinomarakunz
Yes, I've maintained for a long time Millenials are the computer savviest generation. We're mostly digital natives, but also know what things look like under the hood. If something doesn't work, I can at least start to troubleshoot, though modern OS makes that harder and harder.
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This is very technically challenging, and very important work. RIP Prof Reich:
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My modest proposal for a grant review system. If a reviewer says something won't work, then you get it to work, then you get to take some of their funding!
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@bedcatalysis
Coral bleaching presented as adapting to environmental change is like saying diarrhea from cholera is your body adapting to its new gut flora.
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Couldn't help but note that the missile used to shoot down that balloon cost more than all the grant money I've gotten over the 8 years of my career.
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An interesting observation, I did my undergrad degree from 2002-2006, and PhD from 2006-2012, and I was barely formally taught about radical chemistry in that time. We might have had one lecture on it in Andy Myers' Chem 215 class. Now it seems so central to organic chemistry!
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So this isn't exactly me being a good work life balance role model, but I went to the lab today, because I wanted to. Anyway, I solved something that has been bugging me for months and months, and was the last hurdle in a project. so 2021 seems to be off to a good start.
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Here's an interesting unanswered question from class today. Both N and P can be in the V oxidation state (consider nitric acid). So why don't we see an anion like this, in analogy to phosphate? Is the N too small?
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As the mask mandates drop in NS tomorrow, a little reminder for you all that COVID is still with us. I was fine and full of energy yesterday, woke up today with a mild scratchy throat, and body aches. Hopefully no more severe consequences come.
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I went on a nice hike with a colleague from physics, and got talking about my background in total synthesis. For anyone who wants to see what a scale-up campaign of 28 steps to an advanced intermediate might look at, a lot of tweets are gonna follow. SM (3 steps from commercial):
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Some personal thoughts on work/life balance: in my own PhD experience I had a rather negative experience with balance that might be instructive to people who are still trying to figure it out. First though a preamble about my pre-grad school experiences for context (1/n)
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I received reviews for a grant, and one of them takes the cake for the most galaxy brained thing I have ever seen in a review. To paraphrase: "I am not sure why the chiral parts of the catalyst are needed"..... the whole proposal was on asymmetric catalysis.
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Which is better? The group with $1 000 000 funding that publishes 10 papers/year, or the group with $ 100 000 in funding that publishes 5 in the same time? Which group has a better shot at getting further funding?
The Matthew effect is one reason why science is not meritocratic.
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We have 3 openings in the Dalhousie Chemistry department! One is for a theoretical position, while 2 are for experimental chemistry. Come and live and work in beautiful Halifax NS!
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Well with today's news, that's another 0% success rate for funding in the past year's grant applications. My ideas are solid, and I am a good researcher. And I am very very good at turning very little funding into good work. It's just that science is terribly underfunded.
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@emily_m_arndt
I remember learning about Transjordan and Cisjordan in bible class long before I did any chemistry. They're relatively common prefixes :P
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First group photo since September! No longer reflects current group, so we will need to update soon.
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