Via the New York Times, this rather wonderful Gina Kolata profile of Dr. Katalin Kariko, one of the people who helped develop the field of mRNA vaccines:
For her entire career, Dr. Kariko has focused on messenger RNA, or mRNA — the genetic script that carries DNA instructions to each cell’s protein-making machinery. She was convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines.
But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year.
By all accounts intense and single-minded, Dr. Kariko lives for “the bench” — the spot in the lab where she works. She cares little for fame. “The bench is there, the science is good,” she shrugged in a recent interview. “Who cares?”
By all accounts intense and single-minded, Dr. Kariko lives for “the bench” — the spot in the lab where she works. She cares little for fame. “The bench is there, the science is good,” she shrugged in a recent interview. “Who cares?”
This was a rather charming detail:
On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works,” she said. “I thought so.”
To celebrate, she ate an entire box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. By herself.
I sure wish I could send her some Goobers - I'm good for a couple of cases.
Inspiring
ReplyDeleteIt's stated in the article that she “was not a great grant writer”, and her lack of grant funding is mentioned half a dozen times: "She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more mundane research was rewarded". Grant funding is obviously one of the key metrics used to evaluate both tenure-track and nontenure-track faculty, but one has to wonder how many great advances we've missed out on simply because someone struggled to bring in funding during the early years of their career. I teach at a large public university (Carnegie R2), and it never fails to amaze me that weeks can pass without talking to another colleague about research, but I can't go a day without someone pointing out that we need to secure more grants. C'est la vie.
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