As noted and cited in the hacker news thread, this is notable for Kariko’s story, where, IIRC, she struggled to get academic positions because her ideas were not recognised as valuable and ended up having to move to a private corporation, namely biontech, which was behind the vaccine we all know.

Real indictment of where academia is up to TBH that this person is winning a Nobel. Yes, COVID was a chance opportunity to demonstrate the technology. But new and experimental ideas is what publicly funded academic research is for.