As I said on linkedin:
The firm policy intention was to give these prestigious awards to mid career scientists in order to buy them out for ~a decade. From a quick google of this list of professors:
- Niakan already has significant reputation with her own lab and has been a group leader for 10+ years
- Cooke was a URF for a decade prior to this
- Biggs got her PhD in 2007 and is co-director of a centre in her field
- Bayer did his first postdoc 20 years ago
- Hastie is full prof and directs an institute
- Mackinder has his own lab
- Kukura and Graham have an FRS for crying out loud!
Bronstein arguably the most mid career on this list given prof in 2022.
All in all I'd say this mix of professors, while no doubt excellent scientists, represents a severe policy failure on the part of everyone involved. 😞
I think part of the issue is that funders have no downside for funding later-stage researchers. In fact it's the opposite: funding a well-known researcher makes your organisation more appealing by association. Nobody gets rewarded for "backing them early".
In venture capital, backing a $10b company at seed stage means you get a 2500x ROI. At series B, it drops to 60x.
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