Scientist without a PhD: Ben Novak

Ben Novak is a brilliant researcher passionate about bringing Passenger Pigeons back to life. His application to Pennsylvania State got rejected, so he went to another school before ultimately taking a year off. Instead of getting a PhD he got funding from his family and friends to sequence the DNA of passenger-pigeon tissue himself, eventually landing him a job and his own TED Talk.

https://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7448-279a

Once I had passenger-pigeon tissue, I started applying for grants to do a population analysis, but I couldn't secure funding. I got about US$4,000 from family and friends to sequence the DNA of the samples. When I had data, I contacted George Church, a molecular geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who was working in this area. He and members of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, California, which fosters long-term thinking, were planning a meeting on reviving the passenger pigeon. We had a few phone calls and Long Now ended up funding more sequencing. The more we talked, the more they discovered how passionate I was. Eventually, Long Now offered me full-time work so that nothing was standing in my way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUoSjgZCXhc

tl;dr - this is what happens in the ted talk

04:20 <&rachel> they are going to make a chimera for the reproductive system so they can insert the recreated DNA into an existing pigeon embryo and have them reproduce to create passenger pigeon eggs
04:20 <&rachel> this is insaneeeeeee
04:20 < shelby> lol
04:20 < shelby> welcome to jurassic park
04:21 <&rachel> they are going to dye the feathers of the surrogate parent pidgeons so the baby can properly imprint on them
04:22 <&rachel> this is amazing science
04:26 <&rachel> and then they are going to use dyed homing pigeons to make a migratory flock for the young passenger pigeons to follow