I had the pleasure yesterday of visiting HHMI’s new Janelia Farms Research Campus for an open house. Located just north of Dulles Airport’s runways along the Potomac River, the facility is truely a marvel. I had visited the site during the initial construction phase–the finished facility is really both an architectural landmark and also potentially a new international nexus for neurobiology.

On the virtual side, I had my first tour of the new Allen Institute’s mouse gene atlas which in its own way is equally extraordinary.

Money quote:
“By mid 2006, the Atlas project will have completed mapping gene expression in approximately 20,000 genes all of which will be available through our site.”

Go check it out, they’re all there.

Jim

There is an important editorial in this week’s Journal of Neuroscience about the changes that are affecting how science gets disseminated. While I don’t necessarily agree with the authors, I do feel that change is in the air–ten years from now, I think scientific journals will look very different from the way they do today.

The key point that is missed by many of the folks who are advocates of open access is that there is a value-added component to a publication that arises out of the editorial process (all the way from peer review to archiving) that costs real money. If the money isn’t going to come from subscriptions (open access) then it must come from somewhere else. Most current notions of a solution come down to page charges of some sort.

The question is can those real costs be lowered using technology? Certainly at my own journal, we are finding that our new on-line editorial system is making the process much easier (and hence probably less expensive). But there are aspects of the editorial process which are don’t seem to have much technological cost elasticity (e.g. peer review). I don’t see how a robot reviewer is going to replace a human scientist any time soon.

Jim

Congratulations to our nearby colleagues at the Carnegie Institution of Washington for the news this morning that Andrew Fire is sharing 1/2 of the Prize for work he did while at Carnegie on RNA interference.

Jim

Today the science leadership of Krasnow took lunch together (as we do every semester) at a wonderful Turkish restaurant down the road. The conversations were substantive ranging from Rob Axtell talking about using agent-based modeling in the context of theoretical medicine to Avrama (Kim) Blackwell expressing the hope that we would one day, really understand the cellular basis of both classical and operant conditioning. There are now 17 PI’s at Krasnow–there were perhaps five, when I took the job of director in 1998. With a total staff of around 60, the Institute has really grown.

Jim

One of our own will be speaking soon at Mason’s Vision Series–a series of lectures open to the public. If you live in the National Capital Area, consider putting it on your calendar.

Towards Virtual Brains

Giorgio Ascoli, Krasnow Institute
Monday, October 23, 2006 at 8 pm
Center for the Arts Concert Hall

For decades, the construction of a computational model of the brain has been a kind of “holy grail” in both brain science and computing. This lecture offers an overview of the architectural principles underlying the complexity of the human and mammalian nervous system, and how they relate to electrical activity and cognitive function. Following this introduction, we will consider how computer simulations based on detailed experimental data can advance our understanding of how the brain works, with potential benefits for both biomedical and computational science.

Jim

Tomorrow evening promises to be an interesting one, even for a place as unique as the Krasnow Institute. Faculty from the George Mason philosophy department and others with like-interests will enjoy a wine and cheese gathering with their Krasnow colleagues to discuss different approaches to understanding and studying “mind”. We’ll gather tomorrow evening in the Krasnow Great Room at the first of several year long events to celebrate the Institute’s scientific program. Harold Morowitz, Clarence J. Robinson professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy will get the event started with some preliminary remarks and then the rest of the time will be spent talking about mind–often across great disciplinary divides. Should be fascinating.

Jim

One of the challenges that we face at Krasnow is matrix management. Essentially Krasnow is a project-driven sort of place, but our faculty also report to function-driven line managers (also known as deans and department chairs). There are lots of models for matrix management–but they all seem to require a bit of tolerance for ambiguity. Seems to me that this is one of the prices we pay for being an integral research unit of a large university.

On the other hand, our sister stand-alone institutes, have to worry about funding their entire program from endowment and soft money. That’s a recipe for a bit of ambiguity also.

The real key to successful matrix management is a close collaborative relationship between the project managers and function managers on issues related to evaluations and raises.

Jim

We had a wonderful talk yesterday to kick off the Krasnow Monday
Seminar Series for the Fall. Chet Sherwood, newly arrived in the
department of Anthropology at George Washington, gave a fascinating
talk on neuroanatomical clues to what separates humans from the great
apes and our immediate evolutionary ancestors. Chet has had a slew of
recent high impact papers on the evolution of human intelligence that
are central to the scientific focus of the Krasnow Institute.

Our next speaker will be Guinevere Eden, from Georgetown who will
speak on “The functional anatomy of typical and impaired reading”.

These talks are always open–every Monday at 4PM. We typically draw
cognitive folks from all over the National Capital Area.

Hope to see you there,

Jim

One of the big drivers of resources in science is perceived prestige. I use the word “perceived” because perception is not necessarily related to reality–particularly as far as research institutions are concerned.

But what drives the perception of prestige? In the world of car advertising, unit cost is a big component. The fact that a premium brand costs a factor of two or so more than a less prestigious brand is actually a big driver of the perception of prestige.

I’m convinced that in the world of higher education, cost is also a factor in people’s perceptions of prestige. Amherst College costs a whole lot of money in tuition, and oh, by-the-way, it’s also a very prestigious undergraduate liberal arts college.

This is not to say that cost stands alone as far as cars and colleges are concerned. Amherst’s reputation is also tied up in what it’s alumni have done, and various other metrics that range from endowment/student to its physical plant.

What about science?

One aspect of science funding that is quite interesting is the fact that not all sponsored research support is equal. There’s nothing quite as prestigious as dollars from Howard Hughes Medical Institute or NIH in biomedical research. Same dollars coming from a US National Lab or a congressional earmark are viewed very differently.

By the same token, the same science published in PNAS is viewed through a different prism than if that work were published in say…Nature.

Scientist pedigree also plays a role in the perception of prestige. Knowing that a body of work was produced by a very famous scientist’s trainee as opposed to someone without that background matters a lot.

Should science care about the perception of prestige?

Jim

I direct you to a relatively new blog by the manager of cognitive computing at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha. You’ll find there some excellent links to the 2006 Institute I attended earlier this year.

Here is Dr. Modha’s official home page.