Hood 32

Hi, I'm Autumn and I earned my PhD in the Jui Group at Emory University in 2020! Currently: a postdoctoral researcher with the Sigman lab at Utah. My PhD was about small-molecule modulators for the nuclear receptor LRH-1 and messing around with visible light photocatalytic methods sometimes. I love synthetic organic chemistry, but am most excited about trying to figure out why things work. I try my best to present chemistry as something that appeals to more than just chemists. Ask me anything you can think of! Chemistry, life, grad school, or whatever. If you need to contact me professionally, my information can be found at our lab group website or LinkedIn.

[hood32]

What do you mean when you say you work on small molecules? Nano? Or organic push-pulls?

around 100–900 g/mol! Drug-like organic molecules that are not peptides, proteins, or polymers, but bigger than a few atoms :)

[hood32]

Hey Autumn! How’s it going? I was hoping I could ask your opinion on something. I just got my bachelors in chemistry and am going to work in the industry for a few years before considering graduate school. I feel like every time I bring up industry to an academic, they get super negative about it and tell me that only academic jobs are taken seriously in the chemistry field. It’s happened on numerous occasions and I don’t understand why. What’s the animosity between industry and academia?

First of all, congrats on your degree and your commitment to doing a few years in industry before going to grad school. In case you were worried, this WILL NOT hurt your chances of admission. 

To your question: in my opinion there’s no REAL animosity between industry and academia. A lot of fun gets poked at the other but ultimately the world wouldn’t turn without them both and we all know it. What you’re probably experiencing, I think, is that for a lot of academics this idea of “legacy” drives so much of their lives. So academics like people who become prolific academics and produce more great academics because of this idea of the “academic family tree” and that the more notable progeny you have the bigger deal you are. This doesn’t really exist in industry (because you typically don’t run your own research group), so when you move to industry the line “dies out.” 

Importantly, academics also have a direct impact on the next generation of scientists because teaching is a big component of your job, so I think at some point in your undergrad, you must have caught someone’s eye as a great undergrad and potential teacher and they would be really excited to see you go on to have your own research group and inspire more scientists. 

But ALSO VERY IMPORTANTLY: do what you want to do. Live the life you want to lead. Both options are equally respectable and necessary, and remember that there are so many other  career paths besides “academia and industry” that are available to you--don’t be afraid to look around! 

[hood32]

3/3: I have taken some chemistry and chemical engineering labs in undergrad, so that’s basically what I am going off of. I am very unsure of myself but am not sure where to turn for help. Do you have any advice?

Hi! I don’t know many universities with textile science grad programs so it’s really interesting to hear from you! As you guys have a postdoc, I’d say they are a phenomenal source of information for you, especially if their grad work was in textiles (but also even if not). I wouldn’t worry too much about “bothering” them, a lot of a postdoc’s responsibility is typically helping mentor graduate students, and training if they are young and in a situation like you are. Most of the time nobody is under the impression that a postdoc is a solo endeavor, postdocs make the research world go ‘round in terms of training and a wealth of knowledge!

As for how I learned: I was in a small group when I started because it was a VERY young group. My PI was still somewhat in the lab and whenever one of us was conducting a hallmark named reaction for the first time (you know, the ones you learn about in textbooks: Grignard, Swern, Heck, etc) he would come in and walk you through it. But that was often not an option, for sure, especially if he had never done it before.

I learned that you can learn a lot from the supplementary information from other articles by reading the details of how they set up their reactions. Really try to understand the purpose of every single reagent or condition: why is it under nitrogen? What is sensitive in the reaction? Is it sensitive to water or oxygen? Why did they choose the solvent they did? Is it polar? Nonpolar? Protic/Nonprotic? Would a different solvent be reactive under the same conditions? What temperature is it at? Why? Does it need heat to overcome some barrier? Is it cold because the reaction rates change at different temperatures or is there an exotherm? 

You can also get a sense for “typical conditions” by putting in a similar reaction in something like scifinder (or if you have a similar database, use that) or by bringing up a lot of similar papers and comparing how they set up their reactions. It’s a tedious process but eventually you will learn typical conditions and why things are run so you can be informed to start playing around with your own reactions.

There are also a bunch of SOPs out there and websites that walk you through specific reactions and their hazards, I learned a lot from those reactions when I had to run something nobody in the lab had run before. Just remember always have a buddy if you’re doing something with pyrophorics!

[hood32]

(2/3): The other research groups in my department conduct such different research from us that I can’t really ask them for help. My adviser suggested asking chemistry grad students, and they tried to help as much as possible, but there seems to be a weird barrier between how my field conducts research versus chemistry. What I’m trying to ask is how did you know how to set up experiments? Was it having older students in your group train you?

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[hood32]

(1/3): Hi there! I just recently stumbled upon your blog and lemme tell you it’s so refreshing and reassuring! I am a second year grad student in textile science (basically doing chemical reactions on fibers). My department is tiny and my research group even tinier. At the moment we only have one post doc, me, and one undergrad. It’s nice because we don’t have to worry as much about sharing lab space, but I also don’t have many people to turn to when I have questions about my research.

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[hood32]

hey ur post about getting ur phd made its way to my dash and idk who u are but!! congrats im sure that a hard process and like. go u idk hope this isn't weird

heyyyy thanks!! not weird at all, thanks for the note!

[hood32]

For Quarantine reading: here’s my first First-Author JACS article! Look how pretty those spirocycles are... and peek at the NMRs of them in the SI! Best project ever and best team ever, my fiancé is even an author on it with me! 🥰

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c03926

[hood32]

Time to update the Tumblr world: I’m officially Dr. Flynn!!! A special thanks to those of you that have been following me since before I declared my chemistry major in undergrad 🥰 it’s been a wild ride

[hood32]

A dream come true: getting to visit Princeton’s chemistry department. Learning some biochemistry. Making new friends and seeing old ones. What a good week 🥰

[hood32]

PSA: PURIFY YOUR SHIT. CHARACTERIZE YOUR SHIT. ESPECIALLY IF IT IS FOR THE ENTIRE LAB.

Love, a disgruntled grad student who trusted a fellow fifth year. Thanks to both first and third year in the lab we caught this... unfortunately 6 months too late. Upside is we caught it about two weeks from having to retract a paper with the data (if it was published, wasn’t yet) but downside is instead we get to redo the entire substrate scope. 🙃😭🙃😭🍷

P.s. I’m not saying you need to stop trusting coworkers altogether. Just. Be good to each other. Do your own due diligence. When you tell someone you checked if something was clean, actually have done it. By all methods possible.

[hood32]

National chem conference Denver 2015 vs San Diego 2019: accidentally wore almost the exact same outfit (surprised the skirt still fit!) went from presenting a poster to giving a talk. Went to about the same number of talks, but understood them 2000% more this time. Got to reunite with people and meet even more new ones :) perspective has changed to value smaller conferences over these large ones, but still had a great time! What a great end to the traveling season.

[hood32]

Thanks for the 3D printed liganded LRH-1 @avichyssoise ! New desk ornament to show off to people :)

[hood32]

Hi Autumn! I’m starting an undergrad degree in chemistry next month and I was wondering if you had any tips for a first year. Love your blog btw

Study hard but don’t miss out on the college experience! Don’t be stressed out over your future career but do try to figure out what you like. Do internships, take campus jobs, shadow people, chat with alums who have the career you think you want. Don’t push to hard to bottle yourself into any preconceived notion you have of yourself, take this time to explore and learn and grow and have fun!

[hood32]

You might notice a familiar name in The Journal of Medicinal Chemistry today: it’s me!

5th year of grad school and these papers are finally starting to come out, feels good 💕 #proud

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.9b00753

[avichyssoise]

I know nothing about chemistry, biology, or medicine.

“ By exploiting a novel polar interaction in the LRH-1 DPP, we have overcome this challenge and have made substantial progress in agonist development “ - This reminds me of a book launch I volunteered at with a local NYC non-profit a few years ago called Pro Agonist: the art of opposition, which is about how agonism is necessary for society... in the philosophical sense, as in that which leads you in collision with the ideas of others. ( https://www.marisajahn.com/agon ).

And I”ve never really seen the term agonist used again until reading this paper :D

On that note... pretty pictures... I kinda wanna get those 3D models and try 3D printing them :)

[hood32]

Interesting! It’s weird how my mind has adapted how I think of the word “agonist” from this project-we want them, they’re good!!

I can send you 3D files, though I don’t really know how to handle them as anything but the .pdb, so if you can do something with that I’m happy to share! And if you figure out how to print it I’d pay for the materials + some coffee/beer money to print me a copy too :)

[hood32]

You might notice a familiar name in The Journal of Medicinal Chemistry today: it’s me!

5th year of grad school and these papers are finally starting to come out, feels good 💕 #proud

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.9b00753

[hood32]

I’m crying look how pretty our lab used to be

[hood32]

My undergrad is an optimist