Skip to content

Postdoctoral Associate Position at University of Pittsburgh

Posted by Marcus D. Hanwell on

At the start of October I began my first postdoctoral position, at the University of Pittsburgh in the Chemistry Department working in the newly formed Hutchison Group for Geoffrey Hutchison. Life has been so hectic these last few months finishing my doctorate and preparing for my biggest move ever.

Louise and I arrived on the 27th of September and had less than a week to find a suitable apartment out here ready for me to start work. I am now a legal non-resident alien (I think - someone correct me if I got it wrong). I am very excited to be starting this new job, the move has been really tough but the research looks very interesting and I am sure that my time here will be very productive.

I have already been to quite a few interesting talks in the department and am making the transition from physics to chemistry. It is OK though as I get to do lots of physics and programming along with some more chemistry. Exciting times and I am sure I will talk more about my work in future. I have already posted a tutorial article on installing Sun Grid Engine on a Mac OS X cluster.

Dax made it out here and we are both enjoying the recent snow. This entry sat in drafts for about a month or so as I have been so busy sorting things out, coding, reading and going to physio for my high ankle sprain which I am told is both unusual and the worst kind of sprain...

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

peter on :

peterNice to hear. I'm just starting my PhD. Interesting are two things. Two people make a group :-) (Hope more people are joining the research group). And FLOSS is used in the group. Great.

Marcus D. Hanwell on :

Marcus D. HanwellEvery new group has to start somewhere and initially many new research groups are made up of just one member (the new faculty member). Of course we are looking for some graduate students and undergraduates to join the group. Two of the reasons that I really liked this position was the use of open source programs and the fact it is a new group.

Good luck with your PhD - I get to go back to England in January for my PhD graduation ceremony. Really looking forward to that too.

peter on :

peterNo need to explain that a group has to grow. (Hope I did not offend you or your group! In case, sorry for that.) Found it just somewhat "funny".
However, you are totally right regarding OSS and new groups. Actually the situation is similar for me here at least regarding that my group is starting to form. My Prof. hired a new post doc (sub group leader) some technicians, students and pre docs (e.g. me and some N.N.). Unfortunately our new sub group leader is using MS ACCESS therefore I have to use it too (via WINE or CrossOver I think). This is really challenging for me because I was using only FLOSS before. One can say I have to migrate to Windows. ...
Anywhy, all the best wishes for you.

Marcus D. Hanwell on :

Marcus D. HanwellNo worries - I wasn't offended. I find it very exciting to be part of a new group and being given the opportunity to get it up and running in my first postdoctoral position.

I have had some challenges too in terms of learning Mac OS X which has been tough at times. Thankfully it is pretty much *nix underneath it all. I really feel for you. Using MS Access - one of my first jobs I had to develop an Access database which locked when more than two/three people accessed things at the same time. Use MySQL!

I hope things go well for you. I honestly think that more research groups need to learn to embrace open source software, develop better tools shared by many groups who all have a stake in the future of the tool. I think the academic world is beginning to catch on :-)

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA 1CAPTCHA 2CAPTCHA 3CAPTCHA 4CAPTCHA 5


You can use [geshi lang=lang_name [,ln={y|n}]][/geshi] tags to embed source code snippets.