I recently took an old friend out to the Prince William campus, some twenty miles further west of the US Capitol than the Krasnow Institute. He’s a former NIH Lab Chief–one of those brilliant scientists who made training at Bethesda such a delight in the late 1980’s. Now he is a successful medical school department chair and as top flight a scientist as ever, running a group of perhaps twenty researchers in the interface between proteomics and cell biology.
We were going to visit the lab of another former NIH intramural scientist who moved to Mason in the last year with his entire group–also working in the area of proteomics, but interfaced more with the development of new clinical tests and procedures. They are old friends and colleagues.
As we pulled off the Prince William By-Pass and onto the very new Mason life sciences campus, we both noticed the headquarters of ATCC, once a stalwart of the biomedical establishment in Rockville Maryland and I pointed out where the new NIH funded $25M bio-research facility was going to be constructed.
When the two former NIH’ers met (and yes I was one myself, although I count simply as an NIH postdoctoral alumnus), the conversation turned both very technical, but also towards the excitement of building something absolutely brand new. Something beyond what was left behind in Bethesda. We toured the state-of-the-art labs and I couldn’t help but feel that something extraordinary is being built at George Mason these days.
At Prince William, the focus is on systems biology–an excellent counterpoint to the systems neuroscience perspective of Krasnow and the integrative neuroscience focus of the new Janelia Farm facility of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, just a few miles up the road near Leesburg.
On the ride back to Krasnow, my old friend and I both remarked on what a remarkable morning it had been. I think soon it will be good to write a field guide to life sciences research at this new University, George Mason.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 