(Image: Gary Braasch/Corbis)

Data scientists must collect, store and find patterns in vast amounts of information about Earth – a job some have termed the “sexiest of the 21st century”

What does a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California have to do with climate change? On the face of it, not much. But rockets armed with satellites designed to collect information on the planet’s weather, atmosphere and ice cover can provide Earth scientists with terabytes of valuable data. With each terabyte the equivalent of 1000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, making sense of it all is a huge task. Step forward data scientists, the people who hold the “sexiest job of the 21st century”.

This year has proved NASA’s busiest in over a decade. Since January, . These include three satellites for studying rainfall, snowfall, carbon dioxide and soil moisture, and two International Space Station experiments collecting data on ocean winds and atmospheric aerosols.

Missions like these – along with global weather stations and high-tech ocean buoys – help Earth scientists and climatologists understand global weather patterns and warn of dangerous environmental shifts such as rising sea levels. But these important insights can only be made if someone can join the dots between the masses of data coming in from many sources.

Data scientists collect, catalog and analyze the resulting “big data” sets to spot trends. Data scientists have already proved their mettle in Silicon Valley, having played a vital role in assessing data collected from users of sites such as Facebook and Google to create bespoke advertising opportunities worth billions of dollars. The huge value of data scientists across a range of industries, and the high demand for them, has led some, including , who manages one of NASA’s Earth science data centers, to give the job its “sexy” moniker.

Within the field of Earth science, data scientists help to solve some of the planet’s biggest problems, including climate change. When satellites first began collecting data on sea ice in the early 1970s, before climate change was widely recognized, only a small number of specialists were interested in studying it. That was until data scientists noticed that ice levels appeared to be declining over time. “After a few decades, it started to look like there might be a trend [toward a changing climate],” says , a data scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

A mixed-up medley

Duerr leads a team of researchers who develop new methods and products for storing and sharing vast amounts of Earth data. For example, she and her colleagues recently developed an archive for polar data – – that aims to provide easy access to scientific data collected from the Arctic and Antarctic.

Often, data is collected in various formats by different researchers using different equipment, which can make them difficult to compare and study. The way data is formatted can also affect its suitability for specific software or algorithms. Kempler and his team work to standardize Earth data, ensuring that what is gathered from a variety of sources is stored in an accessible format for future researchers to use. As more sophisticated satellites and experiments on Earth collect ever more data, Kempler feels his task is growing.

At his data center alone, eight terabytes – nearly enough to hold the Library of Congress’s entire printed collection – come in every day from satellite-based instruments studying Earth’s precipitation, hydrology and atmospheric composition.

Once the information has been standardized, it has to be stored. To meet the need for cataloging Earth science’s growing quantities of data, there is increasing demand for the expertise found in old-school library science. “When it comes to making information available and searchable, that’s what libraries have been doing for centuries,” says Nancy Ritchey, the archive branch chief for the .

Ritchey, who initially set out to be a weather forecaster, helps the federal center archive data from satellites, ocean buoys, and other sources. She researches different, complementary disciplines for better data management, such as using library scientists’ ability to organize information accessibly alongside Earth scientists’ expertise in specific research areas and statistical analysis. “You’re there to ensure that the data remain accessible for the scientists today, and their grandchildren,” she says.

Crunch time

When it comes to crunching the data, students interested in Earth science should know their chosen field well, be it sea ice, atmospheric CO2 or permafrost, Kempler says. But it is also worth choosing a program with a solid curriculum in data analytics to equip you with the skills to branch out. Two examples Kempler suggests fledgling Earth scientists could consider are those offered by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena or the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Data analytics technologies like , which helps store files and process information, are also useful to know and can be learned from online courses or instruction books.

Ritchey’s department at NOAA offers internships and scholarships to students in the environmental, computer, and library sciences, while Duerr says another good starting point for an Earth science career is in a government lab, with NASA, NOAA, or the the three largest employers.

With a push from the White House and groups like the non-governmental organization the International Council for Science to make all data freely available to scientists and laypeople alike, the demand for data scientists is only going to increase. That’s great news for those already in the field, says Ritchey. “Our ability to use multiple data sets has increased,” she says. “Having more data, over longer periods of time, enables scientists today and in the future to better understand our planet.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Earth, wind and data”

“You can’t negotiate a seat at the table, you can’t negotiate respect” (Image: iStock)

An increasing number of university professors are hired as poorly paid adjuncts. Can unionization improve pay and working conditions?

Finding a professor on an academic campus should be easy. But at institutions across the country, ranging from small community colleges to big state schools and elite universities, the traditional full-time, tenure-track professor is becoming a minority. What gives?

Instead of hiring fully fledged professors, schools are opting to employ instructors in part-time positions, often with low pay and little access to resources. In 1969, just 22 per cent of faculty members nationwide were not on the tenure track; by 2009, that number had increased to . Now, a growing trend toward unionization suggests that adjuncts have finally had enough with holding the fort. Yet how did the teaching terrain at our schools flip so drastically to begin with? And are unions the answer these faculty are looking for?

Universities have had an adjunct or two on their campuses going back to the beginning of the 20th century, says , a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Schools would occasionally employ a working or retired expert – say, a journalist or a lawyer – to teach or co-teach a class, bringing valuable, real-world experience to students without the need for substantial pay or benefits. In the 1960s, community colleges picked up this tactic, and as they grew in the 1970s, so too did the model of part-time teaching employment.

But, beginning in the 1980s, a confluence of factors started to drive the rise of the part-time teachers. As baby boomers graduated and moved into the workforce, researchers predicted enrollment declines, making schools skittish about offering tenured employment – just at the same time that state budgets for education were dwindling.

But instead of the anticipated drop, enrollment kept increasing. Simultaneously, there was more influence from the American corporate world. “You had a lot of people in leadership positions moving onto boards on college campuses, saying, ‘Hey, you know in the business world, we just hire people part time, and contingent,'” Kezar says. “So you had this corporatization of the university, where these practices that were in business were moved in and across.” In the past three decades, she adds, this approach has led to a college culture where the rates of part-time employment at some campuses reach upward of 80 per cent.

Pennies for your thoughts

Though adjunct numbers have risen, their pay, in many cases, hasn’t, despite often punishing working conditions. Adjuncts are sometimes hired days before a class starts, or spend weeks preparing for a class only to have it canceled at the last minute, without receiving any pay for that preparation. They also regularly need to prepare and teach their courses without any office space or other resources. Strapped for cash, adjuncts working in urban areas often find themselves juggling classes at multiple campuses.

Now, many are looking for ways to improve their collective lot. Organizing such a disenfranchised group is challenging, but it is happening, says , an adjunct at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, and president of , an organization working to address the plight of adjuncts. It says about 25 per cent of adjuncts nationwide are now members of a union.

Join the revolution?

So far, adjunct faculty unions have campaigned for things like pay for office hours or canceled classes and access to reduced healthcare costs, says Kezar. And in some schools, the administration’s reception to union efforts has been open, and even warm.

At Georgetown University, in Washington, DC, for instance, says the administration has been fair throughout the bargaining processes. A retired government employee teaching part-time at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, America voted for the union last year not because of his own situation — he says the business school treats its adjuncts well — but because adjuncts in other departments were “grossly underpaid.”

But it’s not such a smooth reception everywhere. In December, . And last summer, .

“I think it’s fairly normal for the administration to feel very threatened by unionization occurring, which is too bad,” Kezar says.

And unionization isn’t always seen as a positive by the adjuncts themselves, who may fear retaliation or simply prefer to bargain directly with the administration. Sometimes adjunct concerns are an issue of oversight rather than overt ill will, Kezar says, and some administrations are open to hearing adjuncts’ concerns even without a union backing them up. At Minnesota’s University of St. Thomas, for example, faculty voted against a union 136 to 86, says , an adjunct in the university’s Opus College of Business.

When the , a relative newcomer in the adjunct-unionization effort, first began sending emails about a union vote, Sovell, who had a positive work experience and wasn’t interested in a union, ignored them. But the vote came up quickly, so she organized a “Vote No” campaign to encourage faculty to take more time to think.

Despite demanding transparency from the university, Sovell says, SEIU was not transparent itself and attempted to schedule the vote over a July 4 weekend when few faculty would be on campus. On top of this, the school had recently acquired a new president and other key administrators who said they were willing to work toward improved working conditions for adjuncts.

Though the union was voted down, the election brought adjunct concerns to the attention of the administration, which has already made significant changes, Sovell says. These include establishing a permanent adjunct faculty council and inviting adjuncts, for the first time, to the president’s convocation.

“They really are taking steps to include adjuncts, and these are the kinds of things that you can’t negotiate with a union,” Sovell says. “You can’t negotiate a seat at the table, you can’t negotiate respect.”

Still, Kezar says, the research generally shows that at campuses that unionize, adjuncts have better pay and increased health and retirement benefits.

At Wisconsin’s Madison Area Technical College, for example, the formation of a part-time teachers’ union has led to more clearly defined contracts, access to shared office space where there previously was none, and both a general increase in pay and stipulations for pay for work outside of the classroom. But it takes a fair amount of time and work to improve the situation, a point America has been making as he visits campuses across the country to tell the story of the unionization at Georgetown.

“This is a learning process, and is just the first step,” he says. “Adjuncts across the country should understand that. This is not a magic solution to their concerns, but over time we hope it’ll get better and better.”

A career in chemistry can look tough for recent graduates – and not just because of the scientific rigours of a potential life in the lab. An found that 14.9 per cent were unemployed jobseekers five months after graduation, up from 12.6 per cent in 2012. However, not all of chemistry’s fields are barren – if you know where to look.

The production of synthetic drugs, the development of tests to understand what’s in unregulated food supplements and the quest for better disease treatments mean that in three areas, at least, chemists are in demand for engaging and challenging jobs.

Say yes to drugs

Americans , driving a drug-creation industry that, in 2012, , and 27 in 2013. That 2012 figure is only half the story, though: it came after a 16-year lull in new drug development that was triggered by a string of drug patent expirations that led to a boom in the production of generics.

A resulting plummet in brand-name drug sales hit the for-profit companies that had held the patents hard, says , resulting in layoffs across “big pharma”. Allen is the program chair for ACS’s Business Development and Management division and is a recruiter with , a Nashville, Tennessee-based toxicology lab.

As employment prospects for the for-profit sector faltered, non-profits and start-ups rushed in to fill the void. Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, matched with an investment of more than $250 million. The partnership involved 10 big pharma companies – but also several non-profits.

And as big pharma creates new drugs and begins to rebound, jobs that pay big bucks are returning to the field. But there’s a trade-off. “Salaries for non profits do
tend to be a bit lower, but can offer more stability,” Allen says. She points to her own movement in 2004 from international healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline to , in Memphis, Tennessee, as proof of this. “Moving [here] let me see the research being done translate from bench to bedside,” Allen says. “Nothing is more fulfilling than seeing that come full circle.”

An entry-level job in this field generally only requires a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree, Allen says. New graduates are likely to be employed as research assistants or research technicians, but master- and PhD-level chemists are also hired in these areas. PhD candidates often start with postdoctoral research and move into a more senior research role. ��è����Ƶs, as well as medical professionals, can also focus on related administrative roles, including data entry, survey interviews and as research associates. “Job seekers need to decide what their key motivators are,” Allen says. “Is their focus on a high-paying salary, a stable career or a more personally fulfilling position?”

Get a feel for forensics

With the creation of new substances comes the need to test for and identify them, a field known as forensic toxicology. “Forensic toxicology is definitely a fast-growing
field,” says Allen. One of the biggest drivers of this growth is the increased use of pain medications in the United States. In 2011, – about three-quarters of the total deaths from pharmaceuticals that year. Many forensic toxicologists are working to develop new methods for monitoring the use of painkillers, says Allen, to help prevent some of these deaths and allow for safer pain relief.

These methods can also help pain specialists detect the use of other drugs
for non-medical purposes. This includes recreational drug replacements, like synthetic marijuana and “bath salts,” sometimes called fake cocaine. “The need to detect new illegal synthetic drugs as they continue to hit the streets regularly and the need to be able to detect them at lower thresholds has become increasingly important,” Allen says. The story is similar with synthetic hormones in food, along with dietary supplements, which are not regulated by the FDA and may contain harmful or banned substances – a particular worry for athletes and an increasingly important one for the general public too.

All of this points to new opportunities for job-seeking chemists. Aegis, where Allen works, has seen an increase in the number of employees working on these issues from 50 to more than 900 since 2008. Some jobs in this field involve performing the tests themselves, while others contribute to research and development of new methods.

And, while an undergraduate science degree is generally a must for lab accreditation, only an associate’s degree is necessary for jobs involving processing samples. With a bachelor’s or master’s degree, jobs at the lab bench preparing samples become available, and higher-level research positions are available to those with a master’s or PhD.

Hello biotechnology

As our understanding of the chemistry of living things becomes more complex, it’s no surprise that chemists nationwide are finding jobs in the broad field of biotechnology: making products from living systems and organisms.

works for Vaco, a recruitment and consulting firm headquartered in Nashville, where she specialises in linking jobseekers with positions in life sciences and clinical research. This can mean jobs that pair biotechnology with pharmacology in order to develop new drugs based on the genetic building blocks.

“I look at clinical research, drug discovery and biotechnology as though you can’t have one without the others,” Colapietro says.

But biotechnology isn’t all about pharmaceuticals. The field has a broad swathe of applications, with two of the biggest umbrellas being agriculture and the environment. People working in biotechnology create crops that last longer after harvest and thus can be shipped further, pesticides that kill bugs without harming animals, and solutions to blights on plants and crops.

It’s a “wet bench” field, Colapietro says, meaning researchers do much of the at-the-lab-bench research work. Those jobs are generally available to scientists with an undergraduate degree, with many companies providing career ladders to help with advancement.

For those seeking a clinical or scientific research position, an advanced degree
is crucial, Colapietro says. But many employers of these top-notch positions also want prior experience, whether through an internship, summer research position or volunteer work.

“The most important information is to get a degree, at least a bachelor’s if not a master’s or a PhD,” Colapietro says. “I think one of the challenges is getting your foot in the door in order to obtain some experience.”

The team effort behind drug development

knows all about the huge amounts of time and manpower needed to develop a new drug. As Director of Operations for Chemical Biology and Therapeutics (CBT) at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, she helps keep teams of scientists from a variety of backgrounds organized as they work to develop new treatments.

Under a team-based, cross-functional approach, the program has : 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), an existing cancer drug that the team repurposed to treat ependymoma, a rare brain tumour. The department is also close to producing its first de novo drug, a treatment for malaria.

Bryan’s undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts were not in chemistry, but in biology. She began her career in the 1990s working on drug screening technology at Scriptgen Pharmaceuticals, a start-up based in Waltham, Massachusetts (it has since moved to San Diego as Anadys Pharmaceuticals). She later consulted for the in Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked on project management. It was during her time at CFF that she met R. Kip Guy, the future department chair at St. Jude, who brought her on to create a new program.

“We are an academic department,” Bryan says. “However, we also have all of the small bits and pieces that would make up a biotech company doing drug discovery. I try to keep everybody going in the same direction.”

Drug discovery involves scientists in a wide variety of disciplines, says Bryan – which is why the project management she offers is so important. “No one person is going to have all of the information, from an idea to the bench of the research, all the way to the clinic.”