>What has changed the opportunities in the job market?
Good questions, I don't have many answers since I'm only one of the above, certainly not an Ivy League PhD :)
So I'll respond with a short response to your prompt, using only the natural intelligence this senior citizen has remaining .
>graduated summa cum laude from Rice University and enrolled at Princeton for his Ph.D. in 2018. His research on ice formation was cited by the Nobel committee when it awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2024.
>he aimed to work in science roles at pharmaceutical companies.
This shows a certain kind of kind of ambition and brilliant capabilities. I would think if he had stayed in Houston in 2018 and went straight to work at an oil company or chemical company he would done a lot better by now. Then with a company helping pay for the advanced degree, they will already be more invested in your progress after that.
I almost took this route myself when I was right out of school, my first employer was fairly ideal as a research company that had some money-making chemicals (including a pharmaceutical I didn't know about until I got the job), however it was the only chemical place at all in the college town, founded by one of my professors 20 years earlier. That's just about the opposite of how it is in a truly industrial location.
>The response to numerous applications was mostly silence, with a few rejections.
For me it was from applying at non-chemical outfits so I could potentially survive the Nixon recession and remain in the college town to regroup and see about further degree pursuit.
I'm not up-to-date but I would think that staying in Salt Lake would also limit the job possibilities for pharmaceuticals compared to places like New Jersey. All things being equal a local candidate can often be preferred precisely because the screening process takes so long, by the time they get close to selecting the winner, the need to get to work immediately rules out any further delays. Job goes to the one that can start the next Monday without involving any personal "logistics", and who can put the nose to the grindstone uninterrupted immediately without distractions, making up for time lost when the position was unfilled.
>Weis studied chemical principles and molecular interactions,
I did that, it was a very worthwhile stepping stone, no doubt about it, I also accepted a destiny to thrive or not based on my own technology. I'm a chemist, not an engineer though.
When an opening came up at my local target chemical employer, the competition was so overwhelming in number I didn't stand a chance. This felt about the same point in the recession as it is now. I began to realize I needed to start looking in another state, so that was going to be after my fiancee graduated if we could survive that long.
No such thing as on-line screening yet, and phone screening had become out-of-the-question, with hundreds of applicants, employers never had any more time for that, especially for jobs where the application form is what you need, not so much a resume. Fax machines were not even out yet.
So you applied in person and it was personal screening from that point forward. During normal times an open position would draw a few applicants a week, and it could always take a long time for a candidate to get hired whether the employer was seeking some uncommon previous experience or not.
The problem was, there were now hundreds of applicants per day for jobs of any kind, and it was getting worse.
The real break came when I was applying for miscellaneous local jobs (hope was still declining across the country), one time at a lumber company. I didn't think my chances were too good after I talked to some of the other applicants, a number who had at least a few years somewhat related experience when I had not much.
But I was already wearing a tie so I stopped by the old chemical plant when there wasn't an opening and the Personnel lady[0] liked me and pulled my original application to review. I toured the plant and labs with the actual hiring PhD, and within a week they made me a part-time job 4 days a week Tue-Fri. I tried my hardest to kick butt in a visible way and within 6 months some of the other workers started to say "to themselves", "why doesn't he have to work on Monday?". So that's how I got the first full-time job in my field :)
Things were still not ideal concerning pay and (chemical) toxicity, and after I became a more experienced candidate I went for "greener" pastures, some of which were uniquely toxic in their own ways :\
There was a real big difference once I got to an actual major industrial environment. There are more diverse opportunities, but more normal in the sense that the majors have money-making chemicals first & foremost usually based on natural resources more so than technology, then their research is also massive in scale afterward, when they simply need it more and can afford it better. Realistically, though the number of opportunities are far more abundant, I would still say the biggies fund far less experimentation than the amount they could actually afford. Which turned out to be where I found my niche and eventually started my own research company, with somewhat deeper theoretical background for the most part after more than a decade of more intense experimentation, and leaning much more on ambition to make up for the lack of advanced degree. By now it's been a few more decades of further advances.
>Weis got a gig training AI on his expertise, including in engineering and fluid mechanics.
I know a little but sure don't think I could pull my weight doing that compared to a decent engineer. However I still feel confident I could turn him into a money-making lab worker right quick, no engineering required. Just like I did the last time the employer I had hired a ChemE PhD for me to train.
For this person in particular having circuit boards on the bench without being under an employer's direction, that is one thing most ChemE's don't do. I think a good one-word piece of advice might be "electrochemistry", and would consider focusing on networking with as many of those in every level and position in the battery technology landscape. I would play the odds that there's more employers who don't have "any" open positions (compared to those that do where odds are in your favor) and focus on the former (after already experiencing so much of the latter) so that when something does come up you might have a better chance.
[0] The "HR" designation for the established Personnel Office at corporations was still in the coining process. With the unprecedented amount of meat they now had to draw from, it could then be recognized as more of a "resource" to be exploited, and huge compared to the personnel they still had working after the widespread cutbacks. A great deal of rebalancing took place between the effect these external untapped resources have versus the internal human resources, especially with regard to pay & benefits. Once it got underway it did kind of snowball in a lot of areas. For instance you could start a salt mine based on a natural resource, but eventually once you had thousands of employees and for some reason growth has stalled, quarterly figures can still be goosed toward increase by extracting more from human resources along with the same old salt. It's all just salt of the Earth to some people when you think about it ;)