At Rice, Provost George McLendon said his school focused on the San Diego trio as it sought the best physicists and other scientists for cancer research. “It wasn’t about targeting the University of California, but it was targeting some specific people who could help us move forward in a much faster way,” he said.
McLendon said he hoped California resolves its budget problems. “In the meantime, my job isn’t to figure out how to help the University of California,” he said. “My job is to make Rice University even greater.”
Suresh Subramani, UC San Diego’s executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, called the departures serious, but added: “If we didn’t have other universities interested in our faculty, I would begin to wonder whether we were doing something wrong.”
UC San Diego has fended off about 90 percent of the raids, yet Subramani worries that the price is “mortgaging the future.” He declined to specify his unsuccessful counteroffers to the three men.
Onuchic, who is co-director of UC San Diego’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, said he was drawn to Rice mainly for the research funds and new building, along with the chance to work with cancer experts in Houston.
“The opportunities were spectacular,” said Onuchic, whose research focuses on protein movement and chemical reactions in gene networks. His UC salary, including summer grants, is $265,000; he and his colleagues said Rice would give them 40-percent increases.
The three scientists are expected to take with them much of their National Science Foundation grant, which has paid $6.6 million since 2008 and is expected to provide several million more over the next two years. At Rice, their funding will also include a $10 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, created with a $3 billion state bond issue approved by voters in 2007.
Levine, 55, who has been at UC San Diego for 25 years and earns $187,000 a year, said Rice’s new and larger lab space and extra administrative support was too good to turn down. Another factor is that Rice, which has a fifth of UC San Diego’s 27,417 students, is much less bureaucratic, he added.
Wolynes, 58, is a 10-year veteran of UC San Diego and earns $330,000 a year. Moving together keeps the team intact—it’s a “Three Musketeers situation,” he said—and the Texas cancer money will mean less hustling for grants. He still greatly admires UC, he said, but believes its “period of expansion” might be over.
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