Benchmarking

Agents of Change

Alan Saltiel, LSI Director

The doors of the LSI opened late in 2003. Three years later we find our building almost filled with a group of outstanding scientists that represent a wide array of life science disciplines. While I often talk about the accomplishments of our faculty, students and staff, some of which are detailed in this issue, I am especially proud of our culture of collaboration, trust and creative risk- taking. The Institute has truly developed into a first-rate interdisciplinary biomedical laboratory making great contributions to the University and to science. No small feat.

But our ambitions are greater that that. The Institute was created to transform how we do research in order to enhance and accelerate scientific discoveries and the resulting medical breakthroughs. What will Chapter 2 look like in the LSI story? How will we draw on the extraordinary talent and resources that we've assembled to continue as an agent of change on our campus and beyond? To answer that question, LSI faculty and advisors have been plotting our way forward, and discussing the existing barriers to conducting collaborative research and translating it beyond the lab- oratory bench. Progress in our world requires creative risk-taking and problem solving. This is true from investigating the most basic biological processes to bringing discoveries to patients and markets. Even in the face of the best planning, research is unpredictable, and prepared scientists are always ready to exploit the potential implications and applications. Yet, traditional sponsors of research typically support only projects that employ proven approaches and explore well-established directions. This support mainly falls within a narrow range in the life cycle of a project.

At its core, this is a problem of resources. Overall, research funding in the life sciences is essentially flat or declining. Moreover, major health agencies have no mechanism for funding very early ideas, especially those involving multiple investigators. Even worse, they only rarely fund the critical juncture between discovery and commercialization, and commercial investors are usually not willing to back a project until there is more proof and less risk that the technology has some likely useful application. As a result, the funding "gaps" are holding back progress along the entire continuum of life sciences research.

In the next year, the Institute will launch an innovation fund to support both pilot stage and pre-commercialization projects. The fund will favor ventures that are novel, collaborative and involve investigators from multiple scientific disciplines. We will select projects that with a modest investment from the LSI can reach a "yes" or "no" point for further development by others. We have already begun to talk with our supporters, and the feedback has been positive and helpful. Although details regarding the scope of the fund and its management are still under discussion, I am confident that by funding these gaps, we will be able to accelerate progress in the life sciences and exponentially build upon what we've assembled at the LSI.

These leaps ahead will also require a continued focus on our collaborative centers in chemical genomics, structural biology and stem cell science. These initiatives are truly transformational efforts. They leverage the research of faculty across the campus by applying new approaches and expertise. They create crossroads that allow our endeavors to be more than just the sum of their parts. I expect to soon see projects among and between the centers themselves.

Finally we are also thinking about our students, and ways in which we can prepare them for the new collaborative science. I already get the sense that students in the LSI expect to follow their research in whichever direction it takes them, and are not in any way intimidated by crossing the boundaries that (artificially) separate the disciplines. In this regard, we are about to put into place a new program for student mini-rotations among LSI labs. While the research environment here has provided them with many training opportunities for research in a rapidly changing world, I'm not sure we can say the same about how science is taught in the classroom, particularly for undergraduates. We will challenge our faculty to be a strong voice for curriculum improvement and when necessary, wholesale change.

What major themes will emerge in Chapter 2? Engaging with those outside our disciplines, letting go of traditional psychic and physical boundaries, striving to understand and embrace the different traditions and cultures across the campus, and following the science where it leads, even when that direction carries us outside our comfort zone, will be a crucial part of our lives. It has been a thrill to do that work for the last five years as director. I can't wait to be a part of the rest of the story.

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