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Celebrating Women in Organic Chemistry
Organic Process Research & Development ( IF 3.1 ) Pub Date : 2020-02-11 , DOI: 10.1021/acs.oprd.0c00032 Melanie S. Sanford , Pauline Chiu , Marisa C. Kozlowski , Angela L. A. Puchlopek-Dermenci
Organic Process Research & Development ( IF 3.1 ) Pub Date : 2020-02-11 , DOI: 10.1021/acs.oprd.0c00032 Melanie S. Sanford , Pauline Chiu , Marisa C. Kozlowski , Angela L. A. Puchlopek-Dermenci
In 1828, Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea from potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate, an achievement that is often credited as the birth of modern organic chemistry. At the time, it is relatively safe to say that most, if not all, scientists were men. As organic chemistry grew as a field of science and evolved over the ensuing years, this gender balance did not change substantially for a long time, owing to social norms among other reasons. Only in recent times has modern society witnessed a rapid progression in gender equality in organic chemistry and in science and engineering. In recognition of this new age, American Chemical Society journals that publish a significant amount of organic chemistry research—the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organic Letters, The Journal of Organic Chemistry, and Organic Process Research & Development—present a Virtual Issue celebrating the organic chemistry research of women in the field. The selection of articles for this issue has been made by four Guest Editors, women who are Associate Editors for these journals and share some of their thoughts and experiences as chemists.
Melanie S. Sanford, an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. For many years, I anecdotally observed that scientific press coverage was heavily skewed toward research conducted by male principal investigators. To gain more quantitative data on this, I worked with a graduate student to assess gender representation in the News of the Week/Science Concentrates sections of Chemical & Engineering News. This study, conducted over a six-month period in 2016, revealed that just 12% of research articles featured in these news sections had women PIs. To benchmark this number versus representation in the field, at the time 18% of tenure/tenure-track faculty in US top-50 chemistry departments were women.(1) Considering only US top-50 institutions, we found that 118 articles were covered in C&EN over this period, and just 6 (5%) of these had women PIs. There are a number of possible explanations for the low representation of women in C&EN science coverage and other media outlets over the years: Perhaps women simply published at a lower rate than men in the journals we investigated, maybe the work of women scientists was perceived as less significant than that of their male counterparts, and/or unconscious biases in the mechanisms by which articles were selected for coverage could have led to these gender discrepancies. Whatever the cause, there are numerous important implications of the low representation of women in science coverage. First, and most directly, coverage in such high-profile venues impacts the visibility and recognition of researchers and their scientific work. This, in turn, can affect myriad career outcomes, including citations of scientific work, tenure and promotion decisions, salaries, funding opportunities, and awards. Another important implication relates to the “pipeline” of scientists from historically underrepresented groups. Many studies cite the lack of high-profile women role models as a major reason for pipeline problems in the sciences. Young researchers do not see people “like them” with successful careers as scientists and, thus, choose to take other career paths. The nonrepresentative coverage of scientific discoveries by an already small population of women PIs serves to reinforce these perceptions. With these thoughts as backdrops, I view this Virtual Issue as a timely and essential opportunity to highlight the work of a series of outstanding women scientists. These scientists are all up-and-coming stars in their fields who are conducting exciting research in organic chemistry and at the interface of organic chemistry and other disciplines. Their articles highlight the range of topics being pursued by modern organic chemists, including contributions in organic synthesis, catalysis, biocatalysis, organometallic, main group, physical organic, and materials chemistry. In some examples, detailed studies of reaction mechanisms provide lessons that should ultimately lead to new/improved catalytic processes. In others, novel catalytic or biocatalytic methods open up selective access to important classes of small molecules and/or natural products. Several examples demonstrate safer and more atom economical approaches to classic organic transformations. Some of the advances are enabled by close collaborations between academia and industry or by synthetic chemists and crystallographers. Our hope is that we will soon be approaching a time when gender discrepancies and biases in scientific publication/media will no longer be an issue and that a Virtual Issue celebrating “Women in Organic Chemistry” will just be celebrating “Researchers in Organic Chemistry” with equal weight and opportunities given to all talented chemists in the field.
Pauline Chiu, an Associate Editor for Organic Letters and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. Throughout my university studies, I had wonderful teachers, supportive mentors, and an inclusive environment that made me feel I could succeed in industry, academia, or in any career of my choosing. Yet, as I embarked on my academic career, I faced my share of difficulties as a woman. For example, I found out, much later, that when I was seeking my first faculty position at a certain university I was passed over even being shortlisted as an assistant professor because I was a woman. At the time, I just thought I did not get the job because I was not good enough or that they did not need someone with my expertise. After I started my career, the reality that there was only a small population of women faculty who spoke at conferences or attended meetings was unsettling. At professional gatherings, women faculty members were sometimes mistaken for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, secretaries, or the wives of professors. In a sense, this is reflective of the statistics, that while many women studied chemistry, far fewer stayed in the field to continue to climb the career ladder. My discussions with Asian women graduate students in chemistry have revealed that some felt the pressure to have to make a choice between having a research career and having a family. It is gratifying to see that things are not as they used to be, and the tide is turning, because more people in the field and in administration are aware of the challenges that women scientists face. The situation is much improved as institutions are bringing in and adopting more women-friendly policies and practices. The cultivation of diversity in the research environment will attract more young talents to the field, and the convergence will foster greater creativity, innovation, and impact in chemistry research. The future looks brighter than ever for women in organic chemistry: women are making fascinating and important discoveries on all fronts—synthetic methodology, catalysis, total synthesis, and chemical biology—as featured in the articles selected from Organic Letters for this Virtual Issue. These contributions come from women chemists at various stages of their careers and at both academic institutions and in industry from around the world. I am excited in anticipation of more beautiful chemistry that women will be discovering and sharing in the coming years and to celebrate the unique ways women will lead and contribute to the life of the organic chemistry community.
Marisa C. Kozlowski, an Associate Editor for The Journal of Organic Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. The beauty and breadth of organic chemistry is captured in the articles of this Virtual Issue. Those representing The Journal of Organic Chemistry highlight how structure drives function with respect to materials and biological properties, how reactivity can be probed and modulated to allow efficient assembly of new and known structures, and how complex structures can be assembled through the art of organic synthesis. It is encouraging that women are increasingly contributing to these endeavors. So, as a woman, why was I was drawn to the field? I recall a love of experimentation during grade school—nothing was better than mixing together two chemicals to see what would happen, or realizing that not all liquids were solutions in water, or extracting chlorophyll from leaves. As an undergraduate researcher in the late 1980s, the first time I came back from the NMR instrument and realized that I had made a compound that had never been made before was especially empowering. I knew then that I wanted to pursue organic chemistry research as a career. But the barriers, both obvious and subtle, were ever present. Role models were few and far between. Only one member of the chemistry faculty at Cornell was a woman when I was an undergraduate and only two at Berkeley when I was a graduate student. Although my entering cohort in graduate school was populated by equal numbers of men and women, the graduating rates were far different. Out of the 30-plus co-workers in the group where I did my postdoctoral work, I was one of two women. However, persistence paid off, and with the help of supportive mentors, both men and women, I moved along into an academic career and established my independent research program. Even so, in the first decade, not much seemed to change: only a handful of women were at the organic chemistry-oriented Gordon Conferences, the culture was macho and competitive, sexist statements were not uncommon, and parental leave policies were nonexistent or there were consequences to their full utilization. Even so, the ground was slowly shifting, and momentum has built up over the past decade. More and more women are succeeding in careers in both industry and academia and are undertaking efforts to encourage further diversity. That diversity strengthens research efforts, by integrating more approaches to a given problem, contributes in no small way to this success. Women are leading the way in the use of biological catalysts for organic transformations, in the study of mechanisms using more quantitative approaches, in interrogating systems in different ways, and in developing next-generation syntheses and synthetic methods. Much progress still needs to be made as a culture of bravado and competition persists in organic chemistry, inculcating some institutions and subfields more so than others; for example, women in natural products research face particular challenges. However, there is considerable promise for women entering the field today. These women stand not only to make valuable contributions in terms of scientific discoveries but also to leverage different viewpoints leading to more productive ways to solve difficult research problems. It is a thrilling time to be an organic chemist, as there are global challenges to solve—energy production, plastics, disease, aging populations, and more—that will require the very best of all of us.
Angela L. A. Puchlopek-Dermenci, an Associate Editor for Organic Process Research & Development and Senior Principal Scientist in Chemical Research & Development at Pfizer. As a woman in science, I recognized early in my undergraduate years that I was passionate about pursuing a career in the pharmaceutical industry, as it represents a unique opportunity to help patients through discovery and development of important new medicines. My pathway to that goal included the support of fantastic research advisors and mentors along the way, but it also required resiliency and persistence to achieve this goal. Today, I lead multidisciplinary teams including chemists, engineers, and other researchers that design, develop, and optimize commercial synthetic routes to new medicines. The lack of gender diversity throughout my education and now in the workplace has remained apparent. However, I continue to be surrounded by exceptional colleagues, and supportive mentors and sponsors, whom have a genuine interest in fostering careers and remain committed to making strides toward ensuring gender diversity becomes commonplace. While the number of women scientists in process chemistry remains low throughout the industry, it is now, perhaps more than ever, recognized that gender diversity (and diversity in general) fosters diversity in thought, perspectives, and skill sets, all of which are key to driving innovation. Efforts to encourage diversity and inclusion have quickly emerged as key drivers for ensuring the success of teams within the industry. I hope that these efforts will promote greater gender diversity at all levels within the scientific career ladder. Many of the issues surrounding gender diversity in process chemistry are aptly highlighted in a 2019 editorial in OPR&D by Rebecca Ruck and Margaret Faul, process chemists at Merck and Amgen, respectively.(2) Ultimately, the ability to recruit, retain, and progress/promote women at all stages of their scientific careers becomes critical to achieving greater gender diversity both in academia and industry. While there is much still to do, the future is brighter than ever. As the spotlight intensifies on solving this challenge, what better group to do it than scientists, people whose life passion is to solve challenging problems! As an Associate Editor for OPR&D, I am excited to share that we will publish a Special Issue in Spring 2021 focused on women in process chemistry. Surely, this issue will further encourage, highlight, and promote the fantastic scientific contributions of women researchers across our field. I also encourage you to check out the papers selected for this virtual issue, which represent a sampling of interesting, highly interdisciplinary, and collaborative research articles with industrial applications. These papers include innovative processes to prepare new intermediates/APIs via optimization of synthetic routes for multi kilo scale, new methodology to enable new disconnections, flow chemistry suitable for scale-up, process safety considerations, crystallization techniques, and even a few reviews focused on scaling industrially relevant chemistry. This Virtual Issue is timed to coincide with the United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11. As organizers of the UN event note, science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of internationally agreed development goals. Despite much progress, women and girls continue to be excluded from participating fully in science: At present, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women. Still, we should be encouraged by efforts that have been taken to overcome these challenges. In 2019, the inaugural Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry Conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania, and the 2020 conference is set to take place at Genentech before the ACS Fall National Meeting in San Francisco. The annual conference, organized and attended by women and men, was established to guide, support, and promote the next generation of women chemists. It is hard to imagine a similar initiative taking place at any previous point during the nearly 200 years since Wöhler’s discovery. If the progress we have seen in recent times is any indication, history in the next 200 years will present a different story, of full and equal access to and participation in science for all without distinctions. Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS. This Editorial is jointly published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organic Letters, The Journal of Organic Chemistry, and Organic Process Research & Development as part of the Virtual Issue “Celebrating Women in Organic Chemistry”. We thank Dr. Nicole Camasso, Dr. Stephen Ritter, and Dr. Kali Miller for coordination of this Virtual Issue and helpful discussions. This article references 2 other publications.
更新日期：2020-02-11
Melanie S. Sanford, an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. For many years, I anecdotally observed that scientific press coverage was heavily skewed toward research conducted by male principal investigators. To gain more quantitative data on this, I worked with a graduate student to assess gender representation in the News of the Week/Science Concentrates sections of Chemical & Engineering News. This study, conducted over a six-month period in 2016, revealed that just 12% of research articles featured in these news sections had women PIs. To benchmark this number versus representation in the field, at the time 18% of tenure/tenure-track faculty in US top-50 chemistry departments were women.(1) Considering only US top-50 institutions, we found that 118 articles were covered in C&EN over this period, and just 6 (5%) of these had women PIs. There are a number of possible explanations for the low representation of women in C&EN science coverage and other media outlets over the years: Perhaps women simply published at a lower rate than men in the journals we investigated, maybe the work of women scientists was perceived as less significant than that of their male counterparts, and/or unconscious biases in the mechanisms by which articles were selected for coverage could have led to these gender discrepancies. Whatever the cause, there are numerous important implications of the low representation of women in science coverage. First, and most directly, coverage in such high-profile venues impacts the visibility and recognition of researchers and their scientific work. This, in turn, can affect myriad career outcomes, including citations of scientific work, tenure and promotion decisions, salaries, funding opportunities, and awards. Another important implication relates to the “pipeline” of scientists from historically underrepresented groups. Many studies cite the lack of high-profile women role models as a major reason for pipeline problems in the sciences. Young researchers do not see people “like them” with successful careers as scientists and, thus, choose to take other career paths. The nonrepresentative coverage of scientific discoveries by an already small population of women PIs serves to reinforce these perceptions. With these thoughts as backdrops, I view this Virtual Issue as a timely and essential opportunity to highlight the work of a series of outstanding women scientists. These scientists are all up-and-coming stars in their fields who are conducting exciting research in organic chemistry and at the interface of organic chemistry and other disciplines. Their articles highlight the range of topics being pursued by modern organic chemists, including contributions in organic synthesis, catalysis, biocatalysis, organometallic, main group, physical organic, and materials chemistry. In some examples, detailed studies of reaction mechanisms provide lessons that should ultimately lead to new/improved catalytic processes. In others, novel catalytic or biocatalytic methods open up selective access to important classes of small molecules and/or natural products. Several examples demonstrate safer and more atom economical approaches to classic organic transformations. Some of the advances are enabled by close collaborations between academia and industry or by synthetic chemists and crystallographers. Our hope is that we will soon be approaching a time when gender discrepancies and biases in scientific publication/media will no longer be an issue and that a Virtual Issue celebrating “Women in Organic Chemistry” will just be celebrating “Researchers in Organic Chemistry” with equal weight and opportunities given to all talented chemists in the field. Pauline Chiu, an Associate Editor for Organic Letters and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. Throughout my university studies, I had wonderful teachers, supportive mentors, and an inclusive environment that made me feel I could succeed in industry, academia, or in any career of my choosing. Yet, as I embarked on my academic career, I faced my share of difficulties as a woman. For example, I found out, much later, that when I was seeking my first faculty position at a certain university I was passed over even being shortlisted as an assistant professor because I was a woman. At the time, I just thought I did not get the job because I was not good enough or that they did not need someone with my expertise. After I started my career, the reality that there was only a small population of women faculty who spoke at conferences or attended meetings was unsettling. At professional gatherings, women faculty members were sometimes mistaken for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, secretaries, or the wives of professors. In a sense, this is reflective of the statistics, that while many women studied chemistry, far fewer stayed in the field to continue to climb the career ladder. My discussions with Asian women graduate students in chemistry have revealed that some felt the pressure to have to make a choice between having a research career and having a family. It is gratifying to see that things are not as they used to be, and the tide is turning, because more people in the field and in administration are aware of the challenges that women scientists face. The situation is much improved as institutions are bringing in and adopting more women-friendly policies and practices. The cultivation of diversity in the research environment will attract more young talents to the field, and the convergence will foster greater creativity, innovation, and impact in chemistry research. The future looks brighter than ever for women in organic chemistry: women are making fascinating and important discoveries on all fronts—synthetic methodology, catalysis, total synthesis, and chemical biology—as featured in the articles selected from Organic Letters for this Virtual Issue. These contributions come from women chemists at various stages of their careers and at both academic institutions and in industry from around the world. I am excited in anticipation of more beautiful chemistry that women will be discovering and sharing in the coming years and to celebrate the unique ways women will lead and contribute to the life of the organic chemistry community. Marisa C. Kozlowski, an Associate Editor for The Journal of Organic Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. The beauty and breadth of organic chemistry is captured in the articles of this Virtual Issue. Those representing The Journal of Organic Chemistry highlight how structure drives function with respect to materials and biological properties, how reactivity can be probed and modulated to allow efficient assembly of new and known structures, and how complex structures can be assembled through the art of organic synthesis. It is encouraging that women are increasingly contributing to these endeavors. So, as a woman, why was I was drawn to the field? I recall a love of experimentation during grade school—nothing was better than mixing together two chemicals to see what would happen, or realizing that not all liquids were solutions in water, or extracting chlorophyll from leaves. As an undergraduate researcher in the late 1980s, the first time I came back from the NMR instrument and realized that I had made a compound that had never been made before was especially empowering. I knew then that I wanted to pursue organic chemistry research as a career. But the barriers, both obvious and subtle, were ever present. Role models were few and far between. Only one member of the chemistry faculty at Cornell was a woman when I was an undergraduate and only two at Berkeley when I was a graduate student. Although my entering cohort in graduate school was populated by equal numbers of men and women, the graduating rates were far different. Out of the 30-plus co-workers in the group where I did my postdoctoral work, I was one of two women. However, persistence paid off, and with the help of supportive mentors, both men and women, I moved along into an academic career and established my independent research program. Even so, in the first decade, not much seemed to change: only a handful of women were at the organic chemistry-oriented Gordon Conferences, the culture was macho and competitive, sexist statements were not uncommon, and parental leave policies were nonexistent or there were consequences to their full utilization. Even so, the ground was slowly shifting, and momentum has built up over the past decade. More and more women are succeeding in careers in both industry and academia and are undertaking efforts to encourage further diversity. That diversity strengthens research efforts, by integrating more approaches to a given problem, contributes in no small way to this success. Women are leading the way in the use of biological catalysts for organic transformations, in the study of mechanisms using more quantitative approaches, in interrogating systems in different ways, and in developing next-generation syntheses and synthetic methods. Much progress still needs to be made as a culture of bravado and competition persists in organic chemistry, inculcating some institutions and subfields more so than others; for example, women in natural products research face particular challenges. However, there is considerable promise for women entering the field today. These women stand not only to make valuable contributions in terms of scientific discoveries but also to leverage different viewpoints leading to more productive ways to solve difficult research problems. It is a thrilling time to be an organic chemist, as there are global challenges to solve—energy production, plastics, disease, aging populations, and more—that will require the very best of all of us. Angela L. A. Puchlopek-Dermenci, an Associate Editor for Organic Process Research & Development and Senior Principal Scientist in Chemical Research & Development at Pfizer. As a woman in science, I recognized early in my undergraduate years that I was passionate about pursuing a career in the pharmaceutical industry, as it represents a unique opportunity to help patients through discovery and development of important new medicines. My pathway to that goal included the support of fantastic research advisors and mentors along the way, but it also required resiliency and persistence to achieve this goal. Today, I lead multidisciplinary teams including chemists, engineers, and other researchers that design, develop, and optimize commercial synthetic routes to new medicines. The lack of gender diversity throughout my education and now in the workplace has remained apparent. However, I continue to be surrounded by exceptional colleagues, and supportive mentors and sponsors, whom have a genuine interest in fostering careers and remain committed to making strides toward ensuring gender diversity becomes commonplace. While the number of women scientists in process chemistry remains low throughout the industry, it is now, perhaps more than ever, recognized that gender diversity (and diversity in general) fosters diversity in thought, perspectives, and skill sets, all of which are key to driving innovation. Efforts to encourage diversity and inclusion have quickly emerged as key drivers for ensuring the success of teams within the industry. I hope that these efforts will promote greater gender diversity at all levels within the scientific career ladder. Many of the issues surrounding gender diversity in process chemistry are aptly highlighted in a 2019 editorial in OPR&D by Rebecca Ruck and Margaret Faul, process chemists at Merck and Amgen, respectively.(2) Ultimately, the ability to recruit, retain, and progress/promote women at all stages of their scientific careers becomes critical to achieving greater gender diversity both in academia and industry. While there is much still to do, the future is brighter than ever. As the spotlight intensifies on solving this challenge, what better group to do it than scientists, people whose life passion is to solve challenging problems! As an Associate Editor for OPR&D, I am excited to share that we will publish a Special Issue in Spring 2021 focused on women in process chemistry. Surely, this issue will further encourage, highlight, and promote the fantastic scientific contributions of women researchers across our field. I also encourage you to check out the papers selected for this virtual issue, which represent a sampling of interesting, highly interdisciplinary, and collaborative research articles with industrial applications. These papers include innovative processes to prepare new intermediates/APIs via optimization of synthetic routes for multi kilo scale, new methodology to enable new disconnections, flow chemistry suitable for scale-up, process safety considerations, crystallization techniques, and even a few reviews focused on scaling industrially relevant chemistry. This Virtual Issue is timed to coincide with the United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11. As organizers of the UN event note, science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of internationally agreed development goals. Despite much progress, women and girls continue to be excluded from participating fully in science: At present, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women. Still, we should be encouraged by efforts that have been taken to overcome these challenges. In 2019, the inaugural Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry Conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania, and the 2020 conference is set to take place at Genentech before the ACS Fall National Meeting in San Francisco. The annual conference, organized and attended by women and men, was established to guide, support, and promote the next generation of women chemists. It is hard to imagine a similar initiative taking place at any previous point during the nearly 200 years since Wöhler’s discovery. If the progress we have seen in recent times is any indication, history in the next 200 years will present a different story, of full and equal access to and participation in science for all without distinctions. Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS. This Editorial is jointly published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organic Letters, The Journal of Organic Chemistry, and Organic Process Research & Development as part of the Virtual Issue “Celebrating Women in Organic Chemistry”. We thank Dr. Nicole Camasso, Dr. Stephen Ritter, and Dr. Kali Miller for coordination of this Virtual Issue and helpful discussions. This article references 2 other publications.
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