Wise Young from Rutgers gave yesterday’s Friday Evening Lecture here at MBL and it left me, frankly, much more optimistic about stem cell research than I’ve been in in some time. Particularly interesting to me is the notion that potentially all somatic cells have the ability, under the right circumstances, to become stem cells and subsequently to repair an organ. While this was clearly speculation, the mere fact that investigators are thinking this way now, I think bodes well for the field.

The most interesting result that he talked about wasn’t even from his lab. It was the observation that radial glia in the developing neocortex can sometimes, bud off a neuron, which then makes it way along the radial glia, guided to its target in the conventional fashion. But this really throws our classical perspectives on six-layer cortex development for a loop–the radial glia are essentially becoming stem cells–if I understood Professor Young correctly–rather than simply being the guidance system that we were taught about in grad school.

The photo should be captioned: what MBL scientists and their kids, do in their down time. It was taken right out my window here at the Swope Conference Center.

I’m watching a large contingent of Sudexho workers (yes, they use that company here also) prepare the annual MBL alumni picnic in the center of the quad, outside my office window. It’s very distracting from the matters at hand, which involves expediting a review of a paper that a Nobel Laureate is submitting to the journal (needless to say, we”ll have expedited review).

This morning was the annual MBL Corporation meeting–the 700 scientists who make up the Corporation that is called The Marine Biology Laboratory come together to discuss and vote and even admit new members to our community. New flash: we voted in everyone recommended by the Science Council to be voted in. Which brings me to my central point. Sitting through the entire two and a half hours of the meeting this morning, I was reminded by how similar their institutional/cultural concerns were to our very own. In fact, I suspect entire paragraphs could have been lifted from the discussions and with appropriate redaction, been applied to Krasnow.

All of this is very good news. Scientists have similar concerns about their institutions–particularly the ones that they work at. And those of us in management would do well to listen very carefully.

Ocean is blowing up quite a bit of an on-shore breeze. It feels great coming down the hallway–we have the firedoor open to our offices here.

Jim

So there’s a Woods Hole traditio: taking advantage of the late afternoon hours to swim at the MBL’s private beach–to clear your head–all before heading back into class, seminar, or the lab until midnight. I just took advantage of that tradition and found that I’d forgotten how enjoyable a brisk swim can be. It really does get you ready for working late.

It’s been a busy day here already–Bartlet Mel gave a talk on dendritic computation and Josh Sanes talked about mouse models of CNS synaptogenesis. I’m already enjoying the return to a routine of constant science sixteen hours a day. It’s exhilarating of course.

Jim

Well, I’ll be in Woods Hole as of tomorrow. I’ll stop back at Krasnow a week from this Friday and then a week after that, also on a Friday. In the meantime, I intend to keep on blogging, take some spectacular pictures from my office window, looking out on Great Harbor, and hopefully connect up with some good science.

As I head out, a couple of items to think about:

First: how do we keep balanced in terms of our science portfolio? We’re not a purely neuroscience institute. Rather we’re an institute that focuses on cognitive science–from social complexity to consciousness and all the way to neurophysiology. Along the way, we also study machines–how they might emulate human minds, and how they can come to solve similar problems to the ones our own brains solve.

Second: how do we engage scientifically more with one another. How do we achieve the goal (often talked about but achieved more rarely) of talking across the disciplinary boundaries that separate us? How do we create a culture of trans-disciplinary collaboration. I’ve often said this, I’ll write it again: I think that it’s at these boundaries that the most significant discoveries are likely to be made.

I wish all of you a very pleasant August.

Jim

Today, one of our postdocs asked a question that related, not to science, but to America in general–which is somewhat new to him. I think I was able to help–given my past experiences in non-academic jobs in this country, I’ve had quite a lifetime of stories to tell. Which brings me to the point of this short epistle: if you have such a question, one that relates perhaps to the day-to-day life issues which one faces in this Country, but not necessarily to science or the academy, I’m happy to help out….

Jim

I’m always happy when August rolls around because it means that the Fall semester is just around the bend–we start early at Mason. I find also that if you look closely at our woodlands that surround the Institute, you can begin to see the first hints of the seasonal change that will follow: look for those first bright yellow tulip poplar leaves contrasted against the green grass. Soon also the black gum tree leaves will begin their change to brilliant red and then we’re off to the races (you can see I enjoy Fall more than Summer!).

Of course, we’re now in the phase at the end of summer where we welcome home our faculty from their various travels–I’ve heard numerous reports of very successful conferences and collaborations–congrats to all. And most importantly, we’re about to welcome two new incoming cohorts of doctoral students: neuroscience and computational social sciences. I can’t tell you how excited I am about that.

In the meantime, I hope that you all enjoy the dog-days of summer–when the parking in DC becomes just a bit easier and the traffic on 66 is reputed to lighten up–if just a tad.

Jim

If you’ll link over to the construction blog, you’ll see a wonderful post by Meredith, on the need for common spaces. The concerns that she has synthesized are shared by all of us. Every time, we loose another small bit of common break-out space, I feel a loss as far as the original vision for the Institute.

And yet, we continue to lose such common spaces at a fairly constant rate.

The pressures which create this chronic loss are of course obvious: our scientific program is successful. Success leads to greater need for programmed space–which in turn leads to the pruning of the open spaces.

What to do?

Well, I think that the message about our need for open spaces will definitely be communicated to the design build teams–the plan is for them to be reading these blogs also. So ideally the new space will add some break-out areas. Second, I would be willing to discuss with all the possibility of using our current break out space more efficiently–for example, I heard the comment about the food vending machine in the kitchen loud and clear.

Finally, let’s really think about the Great Room. Maybe it’s time to open our minds to different ways of using that space.

Cheers,
Jim

I thought it might be useful to review what I see as the three primary economic drivers of basic and applied research at research universities, with the notion that this might be useful for driving discussions of how to grow research at our own university.

The first driver is clearly the indirect cost recovery from on-going sponsored research. Most research institutions use these funds to build out and invest in their research enterprise. This is fundamentally the driver behind the success of established institutions–they have the seed money to increase their research footprint into new areas.

The second driver is, interestingly enough, land assets held by the institution. Institutions with valuable land assets have historically leveraged these holdings to create the necessary income to build out research infrastructure and to hire in selective areas. Generally these assets are used in a hybrid fashion: some of them are used to generate income, other assets are used to site new capital infrastructure necessary for supporting the new areas of research.

The third driver is intellectual property. The institutions that do this well are often just plain lucky–only some IP is really valuable. Licensing a faculty member’s invention produces a revenue stream which can be re-invested in research. The best institutions often have a large portfolio of such intellectual property, each of which is generating licensing income. Sometimes these dollars can be enormous.

Just a final thought: the data shows that institutions with medical schools have, in general, an order of magnitude more sponsored research–this is the classical rationale for institutions acquiring a medical school in order to build out their research.

Jim

At a budget presentation yesterday, I was struck by the qualitative increase in Krasnow’s program, particularly when I think back to arriving here in July of 1998. This increase in activity seems to be quite uniform across all of our research domains: computer science, neurobiology, and behavioral biology/cognitive science. At the moment, as we integrate two new Centers, and prepare for a significant increase in our space, the question of how large is too large once again becomes salient.

My own sense of when a research institute becomes too large stems from my own background, particularly at Woods Hole. One of the very enjoyable things about that place, in the early 1990’s, was the “flatness” of the bureacracy. By that I mean, that in any particular support function, there was basically one person, not only in charge, but who also made the decisions and actually did whatever needed to be done. So for example, if you had a problem with ordering a radio-labeled chemical, instead of a department there was one person, the radiation saftey officer, who could say yes or no, and who would personally take care of following up on anything that had to be followed up on.

In contrast, at Michigan or NIH, that same decision involved a vast bureacratic structure, with layers upon layers of org-charted individuals and where decisions followed complex flow charts that I could never completely understand.

Here at Krasnow, we’re still largely flat, I’m pleased to say. But a Krasnow with perhaps 100 folks instead of 50? At that point, I would be worried about maintaining support functionality without falling into the org-chart trap.

Jim

Check out the new posts and comments at: http://krasnowconstruction.blogspot.com/

– Meredith