I’m winding things up at my university before retiring in January after 29 years. The agenda runs from critical to trivial. Signing up for Medicare Part B is really important. Cleaning decades of assorted detritus out of my office, less so. I’m also getting a lot more comfortable saying no, explaining that, as the lamest of ducks, my influence with the powers that be is asymptotically approaching zero.
Over the years I watched many colleagues and friends go through this same end-of-career passage. Now it’s my turn.
So what happens to this blog? It continues, and so does my Substack, thanks to my friends at Emergent Ventures. The blog may be a bit less focused on S&T policy, but it’s been through transitions before: when I moved from heading Krasnow to leading NSF’s Biological Sciences Directorate, and again when I returned to GMU as a public policy prof. I’ll keep the title, Discoverers and Discoveries, because that’s the theme that ties everything together. At Krasnow, we were building an institute at the intersection of neuroscience, computer science, and cognitive psychology to explore the complexity of mind. At NSF BIO, we were investing in Understanding the Rules of Life. And in this most recent chapter, we were trying to understand the ecosystem that has produced an era of massive discovery, from LIGO to AI.
I’m already finding new outlets for my intellectual energy. Last year I slogged through Moby-Dick. This year it’s Joyce’s Ulysses. When I read those books in high school and college, it was always under the gun of a paper being due. Now it’s just for fun. I’m also working through a second-book slump. The new project on how culture shapes S&T started out focused on aviation, which is far from my training, and has had to evolve into something more closely aligned with my neuroscience background. That work goes on too.
What comes next will probably be more personal: exploring my own evolution as a discoverer, and making some new discoveries. If only about how to write more effectively.
P.S. I’ll be reposting my Substack pieces here as well, so everything lives in one place. Stay tuned!
