UW-Madison will pay tribute to stem-cell researcher James Thomson in an untraditional fashion, allowing him to skip a step from assistant professor of anatomy in the Medical School to full professor with tenure.
Thomson’s unique promotion, which starts next year and includes an unspecified pay raise, comes nearly three years after he pioneered stem-cell research at his UW lab and nearly four months after he put the school on the map as one of only a handful of institutions worldwide with stem cells available for federal funding.
Pending approval by the Board of Regents, school officials hope they will have secured Thomson and his work at this school.
“When you have someone of [Thomson’s] caliber, you really are in a different situation,” Medical School Vice Dean Paul DeLuca told The Capital Times Thursday. “You can imagine that every top institution in the United States and the Western Hemisphere would be intensely interested in having [him] join their faculty.”
Thomson confirmed this interest, but said he will stay at UW.
“Over the last few months I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls about other jobs,” he said. “There is a spirit of cooperation on this campus that is often missing elsewhere that will be absolutely essential to bring stem-cell-based therapies into the clinic.”
Thomson’s discovery of the stem cell, an undifferentiated cell that can be coaxed into one of the over 200 cell types, and the consequent patenting of his work by UW thrust him into the spotlight in August when President Bush announced the federal government would fund only stem cells created up to that point.
Bush disallowed future stem-cell production, a technique which could eventually lead to the treatment of such debilitating diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, from receiving federal funding because of the controversies surrounding the destruction of the human embryo. This means UW controls a major chunk of the stem-cell lines available to researchers in the United States.
In an interview with the Capital Times, Thomson praised UW.
“Few places in this world have this combination of resources,” he said. “I believe that because of stem-cell research, revolutionary changes in the practice of human medicine will emerge from this campus, and I hope that my career contributes to that revolution.”
Normally, Thomson would have faced an in-between level as an associate professor before being promoted to full professor.
The promotion will also include an unusual pay increase, DeLuca said, but would not indicate how much.
Currently Thomson is paid $113,862.
Thomson’s promotion, which must be approved by the regents, won unanimous support from the anatomy department’s executive committee, the Medical School’s biological committee and both UW Chancellor John Wiley and Provost Peter Spear.
“In my opinion, based on the quality and quantity of his work and the impact he has made, it’s an appropriate promotion to make,” Spear said.
