SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Extra Scrutiny for "Grandee Grantees"
from Nature News
Vadim Backman no longer relies on coffee to get him through the 100-hour weeks he puts in at
his biomedical engineering laboratory at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Since giving up caffeine, he drops to the floor and does press-ups whenever he needs to clear
his head. It certainly takes an alert mind to supervise 20 students, collaborate on clinical
trials at 8 hospitals worldwide, and manage 7 grants worth a total of more than US$3 million from
the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
At 38, Backman is already a biomedical superstar. He is developing an imaging technology that
could detect abnormal structures in cells during the earliest stages of cancer. And a Nature
analysis has identified him as one of seven scientists whom the NIH supports with the most
grants. That puts him near the top of a larger group of NIH-supported researchers who will soon
be targeted for extra scrutiny beyond the peer-review process.
Read more...
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