Assistant Director, Materials Science

Division and Department Overview

CAS is the world’s authority for chemical information. Our secure databases are human-curated and quality-controlled by CAS scientists and are recognized by chemical, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing companies, universities, patent offices and other government organizations around the world as the most authoritative and comprehensive in the world. One of these databases, CAS REGISTRYSM, is widely regarded as the gold standard for chemical substance information. Currently, it contains more than 150 million organic and inorganic substances and more than 64 million sequences. CAS combines these databases with the most accessible and sophisticated suite of search and analysis tools in the industry: SciFinder®, NCI Global®, PatentPak®, MethodsNow®, ChemCats®, ChemZent®, ChemPlanner®, and Formulus®.

SciFinder is the premier research discovery tool for scientists. STN provides powerful and precise search capabilities for professional searchers and intellectual property experts. Science IP is the CAS professional search service, staffed by scientists with decades of search experience. By integrating these technologies with the best available collection of chemical and related scientific data; CAS delivers the most current, complete, and cross-linked environment for scientific discovery. CAS BioFinder, our newest product is under development. CAS is a revenue-generating division of the American Chemical Society, contributing approximately 2/3 of the net contribution made to the Society through its Publications and CAS Divisions. The Content Operations Division encompasses ~450 U.S. employees with global partnerships of approximately 1350 people.

Core to the organization, Content Operations builds content to populate the CAS information databases through acquisition and selection of relevant documents, thorough analysis, abstracting, and indexing of those documents, and the collection and editing of other information such as bibliographic citations, abstracts, and index entries. Content Operations staff members embrace advancements in chemistry, building their subject matter expertise to maintain the world's largest collection of molecular substances, reactions, and related content. In addition, Content Operations staff provide scientific and content knowledge and capabilities for CAS Services and Data, Analytics and Insights Divisions.

Position Summary

With the Material Science & Engineering (MSE) program, CAS is launching one of its most advanced, innovative, and ambitious customer focused initiative ever created. The Materials Science program and its corresponding content activities is meant to offer CAS’s customers a new level of data connectedness, insights, and solutions that we believe will revolutionize the way chemists, materials scientists and engineers use scientific information to do their work. The new content comprehensiveness, its quality and the innovative ecosystem build around Materials will offer a unique value proposition to the professionals working on the next generation of materials.

The Assistant Director, Material Science is responsible for the content ingestion and curation leading to the creation of sophisticated data sets, data models, and new solutions designed to support our customer. Because MSE content is the foundation of CAS’s business growth initiative, this new role is one of the most critical functions in the success of CAS Material Science future vision.

This role is responsible for the creation of a new Content Operations business unit with domestic and international staff meant to structure, organize and implement an efficient and new content ingestion and curation process.

At steady state, this role may encompass a team of 15-20 direct reports but may grow to a larger size depending on needs. The MSE Content team will comprise chemists, material scientists, technicians, material testing experts, Materials informatics, market consultants. The position reports to the Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President, Content Operations.

The leader in this role must have deep materials science expertise, broad experience successfully managing people and demonstrated success in influencing peers and executive leaders, collaborating across functional groups, leading inspirationally, and coaching across large and diverse teams.

Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science
• MBA preferred
• Minimum of 15 years of applied industry experience in a Material Science & Engineering field (Polymers, Composites, Semiconductors, Metals and Alloys, Ceramics, Biomaterials).
• 7+ years of business experience in managing product portfolio, sales, marketing activities, P&L, general management
• Proven track record of industrial achievements in the Material Science market through commercial or scientific projects.
• 10+ years of experience managing people with at least 5 years of experience managing managers of manager
• At least 7 years of experience in a business, customer facing role (sales, BDM, marketing, technical support).
• Proven ability to lead large, complex projects and work across the organization and with senior leaders
• Outstanding leadership success through engaging, coaching, developing, and inspiring high performance

Qualifications

• Strategic thinker with ability to understand complex business problems and turn them into executable strategies and roadmaps that deliver results
• Developer of talent and capabilities: Identifies and cultivates essential skills and attributes to maximize individual contribution and engagement and ensure right people, right skills, and right time
• Displays organizational savvy, interpersonal and influence skills to drive alignment
• Nurturer of culture of curiosity, innovation, and continuous improvement
• Strong intellectual ability paired with high emotional intelligence
• Partnership-builder based on mutual trust and respect and among employee levels, contractors, customers, consultants, and external vendors
• Effectively leads and influences in a highly matrixed environment, across functions, and among all levels
• Excellent oral and written communication skills with ability to engage with large audiences
• Strong communicator, especially with complex information to a variety of audiences