New Director's Experience a Plus for MSU, but his Controversial Views Concern Some
By Matthew Miller,
Lansing State Journal
| 10. 06. 2012
Stephen Hsu was an unconventional choice to lead Michigan State University’s research enterprise.
A theoretical physicist by training, Hsu has done respected work on dark energy, black holes and the more esoteric reaches of particle physics, but his only experience in academic administration was a stint last year as the director of the University of Oregon’s Institute for Theoretical Science. The institute’s budget that year was just shy of $74,000.
As vice president for research and graduate studies at MSU, the position he assumed in August, Hsu is charged with setting the broad direction and expectations for a research operation that topped $400 million in expenditures in 2010. His office administers millions in internal grant money, ensures the university’s compliance with ethical and legal standards for research, leads MSU’s efforts to commercialize its research.
But Hsu has another sort of experience that MSU’s leaders found compelling: years as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and a successful one at that.
MSU President Lou Anna Simon said Hsu is not only “an extraordinary intellect,” but he “understands the relationship of research to economic...
Related Articles
By Nick Paul Taylor, BioSpace | 03.14.2024
A U.K. watchdog balked at the cost-effectiveness of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ CRISPR-based sickle cell disease therapy Thursday, recommending against funding the treatment unless uncertainties can be cleared up satisfactorily.
The U.K. became the first country to authorize Vertex’s Casgevy (exagamglogene...
By Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post | 03.07.2024
Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy.
But the couple...
By Manuel Ansede, El País | 03.01.2024
A team of Italian researchers has reached a major scientific milestone, heralding a revolution in the field of medicine. The scientists have succeeded in silencing a gene associated with high cholesterol levels, without the need to modify DNA. In the...
By Anne Rumberger and Marcy Darnovsky, Science for the People | 02.29.2024
Eugenics is widely regarded as a debunked pseudoscience—developed and promoted mostly in Nazi Germany—that fell off the political radar after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. In fact, twentieth century eugenics represented the mainstream science of its day and...