Washington University’s Joseph Jez is one of 15 ‘million dollar professors’

Washington University’s Joseph Jez is one of 15 ‘million dollar professors’

Joseph Jez, PhD, co-director of the plant and microbial biosciences graduate program at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of 15 professors nationwide to receive a $1 million HHMI grant to bring the creativity he has shown in the lab to the undergraduate classroom. He plans to use the grant to establish a two-year program called the Biotech Explorers Pathway that will introduce entering students to both the science and business of biotechnology.

A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Intellectual Property

Biotech innovations pop up every day. From medicines developed by large companies to ingenious solutions worked out by individuals in university labs, new technologies are poised to enter the marketplace. The question is, are patents helping or hurting this process? “Patents are essential to bring biotechnology innovations from everyone — not just well-funded corporations — to the people,” says F. Scott Kieff, J.D., associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Without patents, the biotech marketplace in basic science takes on the nature of something like an old boys’ club in which personal attributes such as fame, prestige, and even gender and race, govern what exchanges take place; and the addition of patents gives many more people a way to play in that game.”