Competing Attractions Of Private Research Prove Alluring To Top Academic Scientists

Moves to companies by a small group of HHMI investigators shows the growing appeal of commercial- sector biological research jobs. Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators are acknowledged to be among the most creative and accomplished basic researchers working in academic laboratories today. Yet even these top scientists sometimes feel the urge for a different set of challenges. Some long for the chance to develop useful new drugs and therapeutics based on their ideas or to run a larger,

Written byFranklin Hoke

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Moves to companies by a small group of HHMI investigators shows the growing appeal of commercial- sector biological research jobs.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators are acknowledged to be among the most creative and accomplished basic researchers working in academic laboratories today. Yet even these top scientists sometimes feel the urge for a different set of challenges. Some long for the chance to develop useful new drugs and therapeutics based on their ideas or to run a larger, more broadly influential research enterprise outside the cloister of the university_options not available under the terms of their investigator status.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of this can be found in a small, but growing band of researchers who have voluntarily given up the unusually generous support and intellectual freedom HHMI offers to pursue such alternative careers in industrial laboratories. The fact that some have been willing to move into industrial research, however, ...

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