Erik Jacobs / Broad Institute
David Liu, biochemist and teacher at Harvard
At a time when technology billionaires begging for public funds for investigation and startups get involved in risk capitalism schemes, a teacher found his key to innovation: having scientists capable of doing their lab work without being bankrupt.
The biochemical Biochemist David Liu He is a professor of chemistry and director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Health Technologies at Harvard University.
Over the past five years, the teacher has celebrated Thanksgiving Day giving discreetly All your salary – Tax -free – to students and workers in their biomedical laboratory.
According to, the unusual tradition began During Pandemia from Covid-19, when Liu learned that the students and researchers who worked with them had difficulty buying bikes to go to work.
Liu began by trying to distribute his salary on Amazon-tight cards, but changed to checks because “Everyone thought they were being deceived“.
Although individual Harvard employees are not available to the public, we can assume that Liu has a high performance. But according to The Guardian, the teacher was actually co-founder of several successful startups, which allows him Live without your Harvard salary.
Liu is also one of the eight winners of in Life Sciences, in the value of 3 million dollarsfor your work in the editing of bases – a gene editing technique that.
“The true heroes behind our work It is the incredibly talented students and employees who worked tirelessly to develop these technologies to benefit society, ”said the investigator.Without your dedication, this work would not be possible“.
Although Liu’s generous efforts are commendable, a teacher who distributes his salary It is not exactly a replicable model, Note or.
Despite the huge workload and the required specialized training, the Laboratory Technician Jobs are notoriously paidwith high level of stress, where the benefits are scarce. This has led to a shortage of personnel throughout the sector, especially in medical laboratories.
With regard to your laboratory, Liu is concerned about the future of scientific research in America, at a time when doge, the department of government efficiency set up by Elon Musk, is the Cut hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts in the education sector.
“For me, cutting the financing and the people of science in the United States is How to burn corn seeds“The investigator tells the British newspaper.“ It’s not even eating the seeds of corn. It’s just destroying it“.
