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鈥淭HE times, they are a-changin,鈥� sang Bob Dylan, a line that could well strike a chord with chemists navigating the choppy waters of the jobs market. As industries that were once the traditional home of the chemist experience a seismic shift, you may well be wondering if you will ever find a job. But don鈥檛 worry: alternative paths are emerging that offer exciting new careers for chemists.

One traditional career path for chemistry graduates was to join the pharmaceutical sector and work in R&D. In the last few years, however, many companies have relocated chunks of their business, including jobs, to Asia as purse strings are tightened, making a career in the industry harder to get.

Cast your net wider and you will find that big pharma isn鈥檛 the only option. 鈥淭here are very good job opportunities for chemists, even with the pharma industry changing,鈥� says , chair of chemical nanoscience at the University of Nottingham, UK. 鈥淭he reality is that chemistry is different to other sciences. It genuinely is the central science.鈥�

聯The reality is that chemistry is different to the other sciences. It genuinely is the central science聰

All the small things

What marks the field out, says Champness, is the fact that chemists work at the cutting edge, making entirely new things. This is especially true if you work in nanoscience. Rather than looking at a test tube containing billions of molecules, nanochemists zoom right in to see each molecule and its interactions. 鈥淭here鈥檚 something amazing about being able to see those individual molecules,鈥� says Champness.

In fact, it was when Champness showed Anna Phillips some of those images in her university interview that she decided she wanted to pursue research in nanochemistry. 鈥淚t really caught my imagination,鈥� she says. Now she works with Champness as a postdoctoral researcher, trying to find ways to persuade molecules to self-assemble into a particular shape. To do this she creates square-shaped molecular tiles which arrange themselves according to the interactions along their edges. By understanding how the tiles bind together, Phillips hopes to be able to make the tiles form a pre-determined shape. The more we learn about how the molecules behave, the more likely it is that one day scientists will be able to find uses for the molecular structures Phillips builds. In the meantime, job satisfaction is high: 鈥淚 get to see something that I鈥檝e designed myself, doing something I want it to do. It doesn鈥檛 always work but when it does, it really is incredible.鈥�

While seeing matter鈥檚 building blocks up close is fascinating, nanochemistry does have practical applications, too. One of the research areas in vogue is hydrogen storage, and nanochemists are in demand here as well. For example, Champness works with car firms to find ways nanochemistry can make hydrogen a safe and reliable fuel for the future.

As with any area of science, collaborating with people from other disciplines is becoming essential. For example, Phillips and Champness are working on a project with computer scientists, to design computer algorithms based on the way molecules come together to form random structures. 鈥淭he computer scientists can come up with some pretty unusual requests,鈥� says Phillips. 鈥淚 sometimes say 鈥榶ou want me to make what?鈥� But it makes you go away and think 鈥榗an I find another way of doing it?鈥� 鈥�

Recognising that not all scientists speak the same language is vital when working on the edges of traditional disciplines. 鈥淚 have long-standing collaborations with physicists and we still have issues where we don鈥檛 quite know what each other is talking about,鈥� admits Champness. To combat this, he reads up on areas outside his specialism and is no stranger to picking up undergraduate physics textbooks 鈥� something he says 鈥渋sn鈥檛 terribly normal鈥� for a university professor. But being able to understand the language means 鈥測ou can talk to other people and think outside your discipline, and that opens up enormous numbers of career possibilities鈥�, he says.

Thinking beyond your traditional remit is a recurring theme in modern science. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of green chemistry, where chemists regularly work alongside biologists, chemical engineers, commercial companies and policy-makers.

鈥淚f you go back 10 years the focus was very much on the chemical manufacturing process: using greener solvents, reducing waste, making the process more selective,鈥� says , director of the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York. Today every aspect and component involved in each industrial process gets the green treatment. This shift towards sustainability has become more marked in the last few years as industry chief executives realise that green issues are key if they want to continue manufacturing their products 鈥� and keep their customers.

This is good news for chemists, as it has led to a steady increase in job opportunities. Clark has been involved in projects with companies that don鈥檛 usually feature on a chemist鈥檚 client list: high street names such as B&Q, The Early Learning Centre and Marks and Spencer. Clark also runs a masters programme in at the university, 鈥淲e see a much broader range of careers than you get from conventional chemistry courses,鈥� he says, having seen his students go on to become environmental consultants, work for the government and go to China to work in the solar heating industry.

Breaking out of your box

This broadening of scope means that green chemistry isn鈥檛 for people who like to hunker down in their cubby hole. 鈥淵ou need to have a much broader awareness of chemistry in the real world than perhaps your average research chemist coming out of the lab,鈥� says Clark. 鈥淕reen chemistry has never been just a subject area 鈥� it鈥檚 more of an attitude about how things can and should be used.鈥�

Chemists are also at the forefront of research into climate change. Colin Johnson, an atmospheric chemistry modeller at the in Exeter, translates what is happening in the atmosphere into algorithms that form the basis of climate models. A decade ago, these models typically focused on the atmosphere and the ocean. Today they also encompass sea ice, vegetation, plankton distribution, atmospheric chemistry and aerosol modelling.

It is Johnson鈥檚 job to develop the next generation of climate models and ensure they contain as much chemistry as possible to produce accurate reconstructions of past climate and predictions of how it will change in the future. 鈥淲e have to be very selective while trying to include everything we would like. There are thousands of reactions but we can only put a few hundred into the model. Our biggest complaint is that we never have a big enough computer to put in all the things we would like!鈥�