Senior Scientist - Critical Materials

Role Purpose

Corning Research & Development Corporate’s Organic Materials Directorate specializes in addressing technical challenges involving organic materials across all Corning businesses. By leveraging advanced expertise in organic synthesis—particularly using Advanced Flow Reactor (AFR) technology—the team excels in design, synthesis, and extraction of high value critical materials.

This role serves as a key synthetic chemist supporting Corning’s strategic efforts in Critical Materials, including pharmaceutical intermediates, energetic materials, and critical minerals. The position centers on innovation in material synthesis and extraction using AFR technology as a core enabling platform, with responsibilities spanning synthetic route design, process development, data generation, IP support, and cross-functional project leadership and execution:

• Designing novel molecules and reaction pathways to enable efficient synthesis and processing of target materials across batch and flow platforms.
• Developing, optimizing, and scaling chemical processes, including reaction screening, condition optimization, troubleshooting, and translation from lab-scale to pilot or production-relevant systems.
• Driving innovation in critical minerals extraction, leveraging fundamental chemistry principles to improve yield, selectivity, cost-efficiency, and process robustness.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams, including materials characterization, engineering, and project management, to deliver integrated solutions and meet project objectives.
• Ensuring safe and effective laboratory operations, including contributing to the development and continuous improvement of safety practices, protocols, and compliant experimental workflows.
• Monitoring scientific and technological trends in synthetic chemistry, process chemistry, and related fields (including flow chemistry) to identify and drive new opportunities for innovation and business impact.
• Collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and documenting experimental data to support technical decision-making, intellectual property generation, and patent filings.

Experiences/Education - Required

• PhD degree in Polymer, Organic Chemistry, or related discipline.
• Familiarity with analytical techniques such as NMR, GC-MS, UPLC, and FTIR.

Experiences/Education - Desired

• Experience in critical mineral extraction 
• Demonstrated experience with batch synthesis of small organic molecules and/or polymers, including synthesis, purifications, and characterizations; experience in scale-up is highly preferred.
• Excellent documentation and data analysis skills for intellectual property and reporting.
• Effective communication skills, including the ability to interact with customers and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience working in a fast-paced project environment to meet deadlines.