Oddbean new post about login | logout @b4c50e1b She's an SVP at BioNTech and has been in private industry for the last 10 years (after starting her own company to attempt to commercialize in 2006). I don't think at that point you have time or need to be TT. Not to take away that UPenn trying to bask in the achievement seems very off putting. I wonder why she stayed there especially after the 2005 papers were published.
@0269c0e4 - it's possible UPenn will now get so embarrassed having her listed as an adjunct on their website that they'll make her tenure track and quickly give her tenure. https://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g325/p13418
@b4c50e1b @0269c0e4 She doesn't have to accept promotion or tenure and she probably doesn't have to route the Nobel money through that affiliation. I'd keep the appointment, reject promotion and tenure, accept another appointment at another school and route the money through that affiliation. But I'm a vindictive old guy so I have behavioral flaws related to large institutions and how they're run.
@f26421da - I don't think people route their Nobel prize through an institution. Grants, yes - because you apply *through* the university, and the university forces you to give them a cut. "The typical Nobel Prize winner is no slouch — he or she has probably already got a good job at a prestigious university — but while winners make an honest dollar, wealthy they are not. Most laureates spend their prize money (about $1.4 million) in mundane ways: to pay the mortgage, buy a car or save for rainier days. MIT's Wolfgang Ketterle, one of three scientists to win the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics 2001, said, "I used the Nobel money to buy a house and for the education of my children." Others, meanwhile, such as the late Franco Modigliani, an MIT professor who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985, buy a sailboat. In the following pages: how a smattering of other Nobel laureates spent their winnings." @0269c0e4 https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848803,00.html
@0269c0e4 @b4c50e1b it is entirely possible remaining embedded in the academy was valuable to her? This isn’t hard.
@2a6cb6f5 - yes, there are lots of reasons for a researcher to have an academic affiliation. @0269c0e4
@b4c50e1b @2a6cb6f5 I'm assuming the collaboration with Weissman must have been rewarding/productive enough to keep her at the lab but at that point it feels like she could have procured an appointment at an institution that actually valued her once the breakthrough publications had been published. (Or UPenn could have recognized her which it doesn't seem to have done until now)
@0269c0e4 - Since 2019 she was senior vice president of BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, but in 2022 she left BioNTech to devote more time to research. It'll be interesting to see what she does now.
@0269c0e4 @b4c50e1b She stayed, in part, for the staff discount on tuition for her daughter, who as a Penn rower won two Olympic Gold Medals, completed her Bacheror's and Masters degrees in Sociology, and went on to become an internationally recognized #rowing coach. Here: https://www.susanfrancia.com/#home Also, as a cancer survivor, I surmise that access to Penn's group health insurance figured in to her decision. After surgery and treatment, you need to get yearly scans for its possible return.
@d8e83438 - that's extremely interesting. How do you know that stuf! I can see that Susan Francia is Katalin Karikó's mother but not that her mother kept that job for the health benefits. https://www.inquirer.com/college-sports/penn/susan-francia-penn-gold-medalits-rower-katalin-kariko-nobel-prize-20231003.html @0269c0e4 -