John Carlos BaezOct 2, 2023

The University of Pennsylvania is acting proud of Katalin Karikó now that she's won a Nobel. But they kicked her out of her research assistant professor job when she insisted on doing the work that won her that prize:

"She recalls spending one Christmas and New Year’s Eve conducting experiments and writing grant applications. But many other scientists were turning away from the field, and her bosses at UPenn felt mRNA had shown itself to be impractical and she was wasting her time. They issued an ultimatum: if she wanted to continue working with mRNA she would lose her prestigious faculty position, and face a substantial pay cut.

”It was particularly horrible as that same week, I had just been diagnosed with cancer,” said Karikó. “I was facing two operations, and my husband, who had gone back to Hungary to pick up his green card, had got stranded there because of some visa issue, meaning he couldn’t come back for six months. I was really struggling, and then they told me this."

"While undergoing surgery, Karikó assessed her options. She decided to stay, accept the humiliation of being demoted, and continue to doggedly pursue the problem. This led to a chance meeting which would both change the course of her career, and that of science."

Elsewhere she recalled:

“I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else. I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough."

She's now an adjunct in UPenn's neurosurgery department. Will they fast-track her for tenure now that she has a Nobel, or just live with the shame?

Both quotes here come from interesting stories. The first is from here:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech

The second is from here:

https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-covid-vaccine-mrna-kariko-demoted-biontech-pfizer/

How mRNA went from a scientific backwater to a pandemic crusher

For decades, Katalin Karikó's work into mRNA therapeutics was overlooked by her colleagues. Now it's at the heart of the two leading coronavirus vaccines

WIRED UK
Show threadBenjamin Leis ✅

@johncarlosbaez 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.

Oct 2, 2023 at 9:04pmWeb
Show threadJason Petersen (he)Oct 2, 2023
@benleis @johncarlosbaez it is entirely possible remaining embedded in the academy was valuable to her? This isn’t hard.
Show threadJohn Carlos BaezOct 2, 2023

@jason - yes,
there are lots of reasons for a researcher to have an academic affiliation.

@benleis

Show threadBenjamin Leis ✅Oct 2, 2023

@johncarlosbaez @jason

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)

I'm also sure there are details here I'm not privy to

Show threadMichael RobertsOct 18, 2023
@benleis @johncarlosbaez @jason - she had had problems getting hired anywhere *but* Penn because her lab advisor during her postdoc at Temple had reported her to Immigration when she accepted a job offer at Johns Hopkins without telling him. Johns Hopkins dropped the offer after that, even though she successfully contested the deportation order. THE DEPORTATION ORDER. Which was baseless. But that's why she ended up at Penn.
Show threadJohn Carlos BaezOct 2, 2023

@benleis - 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

Katalin Kariko | Faculty | About Us | Perelman School of Medicine | Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Show threadMadisonMonkeyOct 3, 2023
@johncarlosbaez @benleis high level academic institutions admitting they were wrong 😑 don’t bet on it
Show threadMycotropicOct 3, 2023

@johncarlosbaez @benleis

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.

Show threadJohn Carlos BaezOct 3, 2023

@mycotropic - 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.

"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."

@benleis

https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848803,00.html

How Nobel Winners Spend Their Prize Money - TIME

When Austrian Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, a television reporter asked what the prize meant to her. Jelinek paused, apparently amused at the foolishness of the question,...

TIME.com
Show threadMycotropicOct 3, 2023

@johncarlosbaez @benleis

You're right of course but I'm a grant funded person so I think in those terms. I've also spent "Start-up"/faculty development money to collect data and publish papers and having a pot of money that big would mean that I could do some of the "unfundable" work I'd like to do! I'd just be certain to do it with as little benefit to the institution as possible given their past behavior.

Show threadJohn Carlos BaezOct 3, 2023

@benleis @gabriel - 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.

(I hadn't known she'd left BioNTech when I wrote the original post, now corrected.)