A couple of small West Coast research centers, the J. David Gladstone Research Institutes in San Francisco, and Sage Bionetworks in Seattle, have gotten kudos as the “Best Places to Work” in academia by The Scientist magazine.
The 10th annual survey by the magazine found that the Gladstone Institutes, composed of 27 researchers affiliated with UCSF who are studying cardiovascular, infectious, and neurological diseases, made it to the top based partly on its strengths in tenure and promotion and job satisfaction. It’s the second year in a row at the top for Gladstone.
Sage Bionetworks, the open source biology initiative co-founded by former Merck executive Stephen Friend in 2009, made its debut on the list at No. 2. It has fewer than 30 researchers housed at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The magazine said it made it to the top based on job satisfaction and pay—not an easy thing in the era of tightening federal research budgets.
“This unanticipated recognition for our young endeavor illustrates the increasing importance of collective biomedical research,” Friend said in a statement today.
A number of other research centers in Xconomy’s geographic coverage zones made the top 10, including:
—Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston
—The La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology in San Diego
—The Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle
—Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco
The Scientist also published its new list today of best places to work in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, and several familiar names from the Xconomy network made the top 10. Cambridge, MA-based Epizyme, Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VRTX]]), New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, and San Diego-based Genomatica all made the list.
