I knew a person from my previous laboratory who left academia to work on some secret GoogleX project. "Superstar" fits their bill, to be sure. Coldest person I've ever met, but whatever. Exceptional scientist.
My hunch is that Google has a oncology/immunology platform which they're not talking about but trying to actively develop in order to help fuel Calico's pipeline and maybe sell off some other generated IP. There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, potentially describing the polymorphisms in majorhistocompatability (MHC) molecules between people. Having a large dataset of this kind of information would provide a lot of predictive power for infectious disease resistance and also disease progression.
Google is new to this space and enjoys young talent, so I can tell that their approach will be to hire the people graduating from the top biomedical PhD programs. This is a hiring market that they can easily dominate by offering salaries of 50k-90k, though they may bump this range up to ensure loyalty. Nobody else will offer a better game in town to fresh PhDs in the current (extremely hostile benefits-wise) science employment environment. Google gets in on the ground level, and the fresh PhDs avoid wasting 5 years on their postdoc-ing. Once the platform is established using the young talent, Google will spend a lot of money bringing in older mid-level people from prestigious organizations to mainstream-ize development and provide more credibility.
My hunch is that Google has a oncology/immunology platform which they're not talking about but trying to actively develop in order to help fuel Calico's pipeline and maybe sell off some other generated IP. There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, potentially describing the polymorphisms in majorhistocompatability (MHC) molecules between people. Having a large dataset of this kind of information would provide a lot of predictive power for infectious disease resistance and also disease progression.
Google is new to this space and enjoys young talent, so I can tell that their approach will be to hire the people graduating from the top biomedical PhD programs. This is a hiring market that they can easily dominate by offering salaries of 50k-90k, though they may bump this range up to ensure loyalty. Nobody else will offer a better game in town to fresh PhDs in the current (extremely hostile benefits-wise) science employment environment. Google gets in on the ground level, and the fresh PhDs avoid wasting 5 years on their postdoc-ing. Once the platform is established using the young talent, Google will spend a lot of money bringing in older mid-level people from prestigious organizations to mainstream-ize development and provide more credibility.