Recognizing greatness

Sep 28, 2004

I’ve had the privilege of freelancing for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund these past few months. One of my assignments was to write about a young physician/scientist whose innovations in computational genomics is opening new ways to find genetic causes of disease. I was thoroughly impressed with this obviously bright guy, and a bit humbled that I had to go to Wikipedia to learn about mitochondria, his specialty and a basic biology concept I should have remembered from high school.

I mentioned to Erin one night my hunch that this guy would one day win a Nobel Prize for his work. Today, the MacArthur Foundation announced that Vamsi Mootha is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship – the so-called genius grants.

Anton Zuiker ☄