[MUSIC]
Good afternoon, thank you all for
being here this afternoon we
have the great pleasure to
welcome all of you to this event.
This is the 2014 2015 chancellor's
collegium distinguished speaker series.
And this is the sixth season of this.
So I was,
I cannot believe when I read six.
[LAUGH] It has been really great that
we've had this here for such a long time.
And we really enjoy the opportunity
to listen to our speakers, and
also interact with them, here in form of a
conversation, and with you, the audience.
But, also, during the reception after
this event, as you will hear, later.
We started this series primarily because
we wanted to get the opportunity
to hear from people who
have had the roles that
well they led either universities or
other organizations.
Public or private who had the opportunity
to think about higher education and
the various challenges that we are facing.
And we had, I believe I include myself
in that, we have learned so much, I have
been surprised so much to learn many new
things every time we have a new speaker.
And we have enjoyed having all
of you here in the audience,
because I know that the series also
attracts many members of our community.
We are very fortunate today to
have with us Dr. Shirley Tilghman,
a celebrated teacher, scholar and
pioneer in molecular biology and
the first woman to serve as President
of Prist, Princeton University.
I will introduce Dave Biale,
who is the director of
the UC Davis Humanities Institute.
And the Emanuel distinguished
professor of history,
who will then introduce our speaker.
And also will introduce our moderator for
this afternoon for research here.
So with that, I would like to ask Dave
to come forward and again, thank you so
much for being here with us this evening.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Oh, I need the script.
[LAUGH] I could do it
off the top of my head,
but I don't think you'd be very impressed.
[LAUGH] Thanks very much
Chancellor Davis Humanities Institute
is pleased to be co presenter
of the Chancellor's
colloquim with the Chancellor's office.
And welcome to all of you.
Thanks for coming for
this conversation with Shirley Tillman.
Our format this afternoon will begin with
opening remarks by professor Tillman,
entitled, The Best of Times, the Worst
of Times, Life in Biomedical Science,
followed by a discussion
with Vice Chancellor.
Then the audience will, of course,
be given a chance to ask questions.
Allow me to introduce first,
our moderator, Vice Chancellor Harris
in addition to serving as Vice Chancellor
for research Harris Lewin is a professor
of evolution and ecology and holds the
Robert and Roosevelt Osborn endowed chair.
Professor Lewin's current research
interest is in mammalian genome evolution.
He and his collaborators are studying how
mammalian chromosomes evolve in the role
of chromosome rearrangement and
adaptation, speciation, and
the origins of cancer.
Lewin is founding Co-editor of
Annual Reviews of Animal and
Veterinary Biosciences, Section Editor of
the journal an, Animal Biotechnology and
has served on the editorial board
of Physiological Genomics and
Annual Reviews of Genomics and
Human Genetics.
In 2011, Lewin was awarded
the Wolf Prize in Agriculture.
And in 2013 was elected to
the US National Academy of
Sciences I'm honored now to introduce our
distinguished guest, Shirley Tilghman.
A leader in the field
of molecular biology,
Professor Tilghman served on the Princeton
faculty for 15 years before being named
as the university's 19th
president on May 5, 2001.
During her tenure she oversaw the creation
of major new academic programs,
including the Princeton Neuroscience
Institute, the Andlinger Center for
Energy and the Environment, and
the Lewis Center for the Arts.
Upon completion of her term in June of
2013, Tillman returned to the faculty,
during her scientific career as
a mammalian developmental geneticist.
She studies the way in which genes
are organized in the genome and
regulated during early development.
Member of the National Research Councils,
committee that set the blue print for
the United Sates effort In
the Human Genome Project.
She also is one of the founding members
of the National Advisory Council
of the Human Genome Project for the NIH.
Thank you being with us Dr. Tilghman.
I turn over the podium to you now.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Good afternoon, everyone.
>> It is a pleasure to be
here at Davis once again.
I have been here before as
a faculty member, and so it's,
it's wonderful to return after
a hiatus as a faculty member again.
I want to thank so much for
the invitation to speak in this series.
As I look at the individuals
who have spoken in this series,
I'm a little intimidated but
I'm hoping, that I can,
this afternoon, spend,
a few minutes before,
the conversation with the Vice Chancellor,
talking about this strange topic
that I chose for the lecture.
The Best of Times: The Worst of Times.
And it really, the genesis of
the topic comes from this very unusual
experience of leaving my career as
a biomedical scientist 13 years ago and
spending 12 years, largely not focused on
my own discipline of molecular genetics,
but spending time learning about what
a hedge fund was, which I did not know.
And thinking about athletic conferences,
which I was happy to know
nothing about until then.
And learning about the Digital Humanities,
which I thought
was a fascinating area of the university
that I knew nothing about as well.
So I was, I was really distracted from
what was going on in biomedical science.
So when I returned, about a year and
a half ago, reentered the department and
began to participate in
the activities of my colleagues,
the thought that kept going
through my mind over and
over again was Charles Dickens' famous
phrase from A Tale of Two Cities,
this is the best of times and
this is the worst of times.
So let me try and
give you a sense of why I thought that.
So, the best of times.
I have never in my now quite
long career in bio-medical
science known a time where there are so
many.
Wonderful opportunities to learn new
things about the natural world and
to translate those things into better
lives for everyone on this earth,
which is really the purpose
of biomedical science.
I'm not going to go through all
of the things on this slide.
But suffice it to say, whether you're
looking at the field or neuroscience, or
my old field of genomics.
Or watching a field like
metabolism which had died, and
gone into a black hole of science, to
suddenly be re-emergent as metabolomics,
and to have everyone excited
about what that meant.
To amazing new tools to
investigate the nature
of genes which is represented by this
diagram on the left at the bottom.
Which is an amazing new tool that I'm so
frustrated I was never able to use.
It just strikes me i, if I were 22 or
23 years old and trying to decide
about what my career should be.
Going into biomedical science just seems,
this is,
the opportunities are almost breathtaking.
The best of times.
So why is it feeling as though
it is the worst of times?
And, and this cartoon which I took
from Science Magazine pretty much
captures the way biomedical
scientist today, right now,
are feeling about what it feels like to be
practicing the art of biomedical science.
Juggling a lot of things, and
doing so with a lot of sweat.
So, I'm going to try in just a few
minutes give you a sense of this peculiar
dichotomy about the best of times,
and about the worst of times.
And the argument I am going to try and
make in just a few minutes is that there
was always a structural flaw in the way we
organize our work in biomedical science.
Which was not super damaging until
very recently but, and I'm going to
then try and make the argument.
Unless we fix this flaw
we are going to have a field that is
discouraging the best and the brightest.
Rather than doing what I would hope
would be happening to 22-year olds
which is getting them really
excited about the idea
of discovering new things
in biomedical science.
So I want to begin with
some history because
our enterprise was really born
after the Second World War.
And the architect of all of federal
research in the United States
was this extraordinary man Vannevar Bush,
who was a faculty member at MIT.
And then became the science adviser to
both presidents Roosevelt and Truman.
And toward the end of the war,
he wrote this remarkable report,
maybe the most influential
policy report that has ever been
written about science in the United States
called Science, the Endless Frontier.
Where he'd laid out a blueprint for
how the United States could
make investments in science.
Because after all, in, in the minds
of many people, the Second World War
had proven the power of science to
change the direction of history.
And, and
Bush was a real proponent of this.
So I want to give you a sense
of what was in this report and
how it influenced us going forward.
So the, the vision for
the endless frontier began and I read
this report about every ten years to be
inspired because it's truly inspirational.
So it says, and
I'm going to have to get my glasses
out because I can't see anymore.
It's, so the first thing he says is that
the federal government should support
basic research and
provide incentives to the private sector
to fund applied research and development.
So he saw the role of the government
to support sort of basic and
fundamental research.
And, and he was really talking about
creating an ecosystem, a research
ecosystem where the public and the private
sector collaborated with one another.
And one of the great examples of the
success of this ecosystem that he proposed
was the discovery in the 60s and
70s by the two gentlemen in the slide
Werner Arber and Ham Smith, of enzymes.
That were used by bacteria to
fight infection by viruses which
are what are those little green things
trying to attack that bacterial cell.
About as fundamental as you could ever
get research, it was curiosity driven.
How do bacteria protect
themselves from infection?
Well, that discovery led in relatively
short period of time to the dis,
to the discovery of the recombinant DNA,
to the formation of the biotech industry.
The first company, of course,
you in California know all about this,
the formation of Genentech in 1976.
And the first biotech product,
which came on the market in 1982,
which was human insulin.
So the ecosystem was working.
This is exactly what Bush imagined.
Fundamental discovery
supported by the government.
Development supported
by the private sector.
Now, the second thing that Bush
proposed was maybe less obvious.
And that is,
he proposed that those federal dollars,
those taxpayers' dollars, should be
directed towards research universities.
Academic medical centers and
research institutes and not federal labs.
Up until this point,
that's where federal dollars were going,
into federal laboratories.
But he wanted to link
the conduct of research with
the education of future scientists,
particularly graduate students.
And so he said in his report,
the conduct of research should be
tied to the education of future
scientists, graduate students.
And here's the phrase that we forgot,
but only that
proportion of the youthful talent
appropriate to the needs of science.
So what happened after this report
was issued and was largely adopted,
it took a few years, but
it was largely adopted by the government.
Well, there was a very dramatic expansion
in federal investments in all research.
This represents all of research and,
and the,
the, I realize it's hard
to see these categories.
But the one to pay the most attention
to is the one in grey, in the middle,
which is the part of the budget
that was really growing.
And that is the federal support
that went to universities.
The support to i, intramural programs
which were the federal labs.
It's the bottom dark blue band,
which you can see, increased a little
bit over the years but not very much.
So we did pretty much
what Bush recommended.
We invested in universities and
we linked research to the training
of future scientists.
Now, we did this in a way that was not
equal across all of the scientists.
So if you look in 1976 on the far left,
you will see that the support for
the various federal agencies
was pretty even, you know?
With some of the agencies, USDA,
the Department of Defense, NASA,
DOE, NSF, NIH, we're getting roughly
similar amounts of federal support.
But as you can see,
that changed very much.
Almost a, a,
a beginning in the early 1980s,
where clearly,
the National Institutes of Health,
which is the primary support
of biomedical science Expanded
very much its budget, and
it became the primary fed,
federal agency that was receiving that
was giving out support for research.
So biomedical research really grew and
grew very fast.
And given that the plan of
Bush was to link research and
the training of graduate students,
it will not surprise you that at the same
time of course, the number of students
studying to be biomedical scientists
really grew rapidly at the same time.
And that's the blue line, the only
line that is really moving upwards
on this graph and
you can see how dramatic it was.
It wasn't constant, there was kind of
a slow growth through the 70's and
most of the 80's, and then a couple of
really major expansions in the number
of graduate students that were
supported in the United States.
Now, you can see that's really in
contrast to some of the other sciences.
The purple line is chemistry.
The number of graduate students in
chemistry stayed pretty constant
throughout all of this period, as did,
interestingly, the number of MDs that were
awarded in this country, despite the fact
that the population was increasing
during this period, the number of MDs,
were not increasing.
So it looks like a system that
was in reasonable balance.
We're going to support
research in universities.
We're going to do it by
training graduate students.
But there was a problem brewing.
And the problem was that the number of
graduate students was growing faster
than the budget.
So how could that happen and how is,
how were those graduate
students being supported?
And the answer is, they were being
supported in a way that Vana,
Vannevar Bush did not anticipate.
So his report asked that federal students
should be supported with individual
fellowships that are awarded to the best
and the brightest of their generation.
So he wanted to give these
students independence and
he wanted to give them a student
status with their own fellowship.
But in fact, this big increase
that we saw in the last slide,
in the number of graduate students,
was not funded with fellowships.
So if you look back to 1979,
you can see there
were a lot of ways graduate students
were being supported in universities.
But by 2009, and
this is continued until this day
the, the only source of increase, to allow
this number of students to increase,
were support on individual research
grants of individual faculty.
Now that seems reasonable,
the faculty are conducting research,
they need people,
graduate students to conduct the research.
What is wrong with having
them supported in this way?
Well, the answer is that
graduate students transformed
from being trainees to being workers, and
that has had a very significant effect
on the culture of biomedical science.
And to give you a sense of
the problem that it has created,
we have created a system
that is Malthusian.
And the Malthusian system looks something
like what I am showing you on the top of
the slide, which is you have sort
of an average laboratory that might
have four graduate students who graduate
to become five postdoctoral fellows.
And only two members of the lab are
actually permanent members of the lab or
people who are not preparing for
other jobs.
And that is maybe one technician and
then the principal investigator himself.
But you realize that this system only
works if you're creating jobs for those
nine individuals who are in training at
the same rate that you were training them.
It's the only way that you get
that nice pipeline that looks so
nice and well-regulated in 1975,
but by 19, 2015,
the pipeline looks very different,
it has a big fat bulge in it.
And the bulge are largely
the post doctoral fellows for
whom there are no jobs.
And so they are staying longer and
longer in these research
laboratories as trainees,
being relatively poorly paid, and,
and with little prospect of
graduating to a job in which they
could take of the education that you, the
taxpayer, have paid for over the years.
Now, this problem would've existed even
if we had not then faced the toughest
budget woes that the NIH and for, for
all of the federal budget has ever faced.
And all of us know what that is,
which is the recession of 2008.
Now, a strange thing happened to
biomedical science right before that
recession, which is, there was
an actual doubling of the NIH budget
between 1998 and 2003,
which is the yellow line going up.
Now all my behavioral psychology friends
at Princeton told me at the time
that this, doubling was happening,
they said beware of
a rapid doubling of a budget,
because the day that doubling ends,
the Congress is going to say, okay,
we took care of biomedical science.
They're, they're in great shape.
We don't have to worry about them anymore.
Now we can pay attention to other things.
And of course that, plus the recession,
is exactly what happened.
And so literally the day
after the doubling stopped,
the value of the NIH budget began
to decline, in real dollars,
to the point that today,
coupled with the sequester,
we are now basically back to where we
were before the NIH budget doubled.
But in the meantime, a lot of universities
and medical centers hired new
faculty admitted more graduate students,
and in a way,
this doubling simply exacerbated this
Malthusian problem that already existed.
So what is the evidence that, that
this problem predated the doubling and
the sequester and, but has been sort
of brewing for a very long time?
I think this is the best evidence.
I know that, that is the case.
This is an amazing piece
of data from the NIH,
which shows you the percentage of NIH
investigators, sort of getting their,
who have a grant who
are younger than 36 years old.
And that's the blue line.
So in 1980, when I was just starting
out my career, I was 30 years old.
So I was significantly under
the age of 36 and I wa,
had a lot of friends who
were roughly the same age.
You know, we were 16% of
the workforce at that point.
Today, individuals who are under
the age of 36 are 3% of the workforce
of independent investigators from the NIH,
and 1% of the NIH budget is now being used
to fund individuals under the age of 36.
So, there are no individuals
basically under the age
of 36 anymore in this system.
And of course,
what has happened is the percentage of
investigators who are over
the age of 66 has risen very,
very dramatically from You know less than
1% today to now in the neighborhood of 7%.
And there are now more
investigators over the age
of 66 than under the age
of 36 in the NIH system.
This is not a picture
of a healthy system and
it's being caused by that bulge
in the pipeline where young
investigators are stuck as postdoctoral
fellows, waiting for their chance.
I call it the LaGuardia effect.
Their circling LaGuardia, and they're
waiting for their opportunity to land.
And this is just another
example of the same,
the same phenomenon that shows
the aging of the work force.
The, the very pale red line
is the age of it's faculty
medical centers in this country at
the time that I was beginning my career.
And I was, you know, roughly in yeah,
toward the middle of that those
two peaks in age at that time.
The dark red line is where we are today,
and so you can say there's been a very
significant der, demographic change
that leaves many young investigators in
limbo waiting to find a place for
them in the system.
So, where do we stand?
So, Bush's vision, and I'm going to
read you one last statement of,
of Bush which I think is very,
very important.
He said,
basic research must be unfettered.
Curiosity-driven.
Requires long horizons.
The supreme importance of affording
the prepared mind complete freedom for
the exercise of initiative.
A wonderful sort of phrasing
of what it means to,
to create an environment in which
the very best science can be conducted.
So, today I would argue that there is now,
because of the mismatch between supply and
demand of PhDs, there has been created
a hyper competitive environment
that is not conducive anymore to
producing the very best science.
As competition for research grants has
become fierce with success rates dipping
close to single digits, researching
grant reviewers have become risk-averse,
the worst thing you can be as a scientist,
threatening the quality of discovery.
And because of this competition,
scientists are spending greater
percentage of their time writing and
rewriting grants and papers instead
of thinking about their science.
So the question is, is this a career path
that is going to continue to attract
the best and the brightest?
And this is a problem that
I began to think about as I began
to re-emerge into the field.
And began having conversations with
three long time friends and colleagues.
Harold Varmus, who's head of the National
Cancer Institute Marc Kirschner,
who's head of Systems Biology at Harvard,
and
Bruce Alberts the former president
of the National Academy of Sciences,
and we decided after meeting
many times to talk about this.
To write a paper,
that would try and lay out,
what we saw as some of the problems,
and then to offer some solutions.
Not because we knew the answer,
we didn't, but because we were hoping to
stimulate discussion within the community
about what needed to be done to,
to right the ship,
if you want to think about it that way.
So here's some of the things that
we are opening up for discussion.
Some of it is dead easy.
Transparency, graduate
programs need to provide
accurate career outcomes for
perspective graduate students.
Students need to know what they're getting
into before they apply to graduate school.
Diversification in training.
15% of current PhD's will
actually become faculty.
Despite the fact that about 80% of
them start graduate school thinking
that's what they want to do,
they need to know that, but
they also need to know all the other
things that you can do with a PhD and
begin to think about how to do those
things well before they receive their PhD.
Their, the NIH is now has a,
a grant mechanism that's
encouraging graduate programs
to think about how to do this.
I think we have to re-imagine
the Master's program because not
all biologists need to have Ph.D.'s.
There are wonderful careers available for
people with Master's degrees, but
we don't produce use enough of them,
I think.
We need to significantly increase the use
of training grants as the preferred
mechanism for graduate support,
because that brings graduate students
back to being trainees as opposed to
being workers on research grants,
and it allows for
a lot of other things to happen.
And I think we need to begin to,
reserve the postdoctoral fellowship
period, which is where the big bulge is,
for those who are certain they want to
go onto research careers as, as is,
as opposed to all the other things that
it's possible to do with PhD's And
too often today, it's a default decision
as opposed to a proactive decision.
One of the things that we're very pleased
about is that there has been a lot of
attention being paid in recent years in
the last couple of years, to this problem,
including this wonderful report that
the national academy of science has
just produced called the post
doctoral experience revisited.
Which came out with a number of very
good recommendations including doing
something about the scandalous pay for
post doctoral fellows.
And, and, and a recommendation that I want
to just pursue for one minute further,
because I think it is actually
a very powerful recommendation,
one that's been made many times but
has never been taken up.
And that is to really think about what
is the ultimate structural flaw here,
which is the lab, and
to think about restructuring it in
a way that fewer of the people who
are conducting research are in
the process of being trained to,
to succeed their mentors.
And so, this is sort of a this
is the Malthusian lab that I
just showed you a few minutes ago.
And here's what that report
was recommending and
which we certainly strongly endorse.
Which is not a Malthusian laboratory but
a sustainable laboratory.
A laboratory that is better balanced for
the production of science which
is critically important and
the production of future scientists.
And, and the key here is to move
some of the trainees into more
permanent positions,
staff scientists, technical staff.
And fewer of them in the pipeline
on their way to jobs that,
frankly, right now do not exist for them.
So, we're hoping that this idea of staff
scientist is something that the scientific
community will really take up.
There all kinds of arguments
that could be made against it.
But I think it is a great opportunity for
us to really get at the heart of
the flaw here in the current system.
And the reason we all at least, my,
my coworkers and I wish to do this,
is because we really do believe
that this is the best of times.
And we really do believe that the problems
are ones that the next generation
are just champing At the bid to solve but
we want to give them a fair chance
to train to be biomedical scientist,
and then have an opportunity to
actually practice their science.
I want to thank you all for
coming today and for listening.
And I look forward to the conversation
with the Vice Chancellor, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Good afternoon everybody and
thank you Shirley for
your very thought-provoking talk.
It's been the topic of many conversations
around the country including in,
within the halls of the national
academy where Bruce Alberts presented
the your plan a couple of years ago.
I think it's time for
this discussion to be had.
You are, it's amazing of course,
you're one of the very few who has gone
over to the dark side and returned.
>> [LAUGH] Alive.
>> Alive.
>> [LAUGH]
>> To, to the Academy.
And I want you to put that dark
hat on again, for a moment.
And I'd like to ask you because you, you,
you talked about the kinds of things that,
that can be done at, at the level of NIH.
But as a university president,
you have a responsibility to your
students and to your staff and to the,
to the students at the university and
the post docs and the staff.
What kinds of institutional
policies should we have?
Yeah.
>> To to insure that
the trainees that we have
will become members, productive
members of the, of the workforce.
May join industry or
the, or, or academia and
will have jobs when, when they're done.
Is, because there's big money.
Let's put it there.
That climb has put everybody in the game.
>> Yeah.
>> This university has a huge
biomedical research enterprise and
there's a lot at stake because
these are the best of times.
>> Yeah.
>> And there are so
many great research opportunities and
which continues to draw
more students to the field.
So.
>> Right.
>> What what are the policies
at the institutional level that
we should have to protect our trainees and
students?
>> So let me generalize the, the, the
answer to the question, if you don't mind.
Because you did ask me to
put my university hat on.
>> [LAUGH]
>> You know, I think it is
very important for
a university to take responsibility for
ensuring that it is educating
graduate students in particular, for,
for productive careers.
And one of the things that I was
most proud of Princeton in doing
is every year we would as
a group of senior administrators
go through every single department looking
at the placement of our graduate students.
And asking are we placing all of our
graduates students in appropriate
positions and you know, without judging
what is appropriate but making sure that
they are getting to employment that made
sense given their graduate education.
And clamping down on departments
who were unable to demonstrate
that their students were going out
into the world and being successful.
So we really controlled the number
of graduate students and
which was not popular
with some of the faculty,
who wanted dollars to drive the number
of graduate students and, and our policy
was we were not going to let research
dollars drive the number of students.
That's number one.
Number two was preparing our students for
the workforce and, and
some of the departments that I
admire the very most at Princeton,
in this regard actually, David,
were the Humanities departments.
You know there, all of us know that
finding a job as a Humanities PHD is
a very difficult thing these days but
our faculty in many of
the Humanities department would have
placement officers who worked very closely
with their graduate students as they got
to the point where they were
going to go on the job market.
Had them do practice talks if they
were going to go for job interviews.
Go over all of their materials and
really took it as a,
as a responsibility of the department to,
to give our students the very best
chance to be employed in the future.
So I think faculty responsibility
is the second thing I would say.
And then the third thing which I really
think is, is, is specially true in our
field in, in biomedical science, is
giving students an opportunity to explore
all of the options that are available for,
to use a PhD in biomedical science.
You know, when only 15% of
them are likely to replace us,
that means 85% of them are going to
be doing something else.
And they need to be thinking about
what does it mean to work in industry?
What does it mean to you know, to,
to get a job where you were
writing about science.
What does it mean to do
science policy work?
How you know,
would I enjoy doing science policy work.
And if we don't give them opportunities
to make those explorations,
they're going to do what all fu,
past generations did,
which is make the default decision
to be a post-doc and create the.
So, I think those are the things that
I think universities should be doing.
>> Excellent.
Let me ask you to keep your black
hat on here [LAUGH] for a minute.
And so, given that,
what do you think the institutional
approach should be if you're
sitting there as president,
or chancellor, or provost toward you know,
toward hiring faculty.
What is the strategy that you use?
Do you go if the average age is 42.
And you're looking at a post doc.
Maybe you know, a 30 [LAUGH] year old,
have you looked at that at Princeton?
Do you know of the average,
is it the same?
Or are you lower?
Or are you just waiting for the,
to, to catch the ripe fruit.
>> Yeah.
>> From the trees and
pick off people from UC Davis,
[LAUGH] and, and around the country, and
then really just go for the,
the very best who are already well funded.
What strategies do you use at Princeton?
>> So, I'm, I'm afraid that I think, one
of the things that this hypercompetitive
atmosphere has done is create a very
risk averse mentality in faculty hiring.
So, you're saying, you know,
only 10% are going to get a grant.
We, you know, isn't it better
to hire who already has a grant?
Come to Davis.
Find, you know, your best junior faculty
and we'll go after that junior faculty.
I, I think it's a,
a strategy that's going to come back to
bite us all if we continue to do this.
And actually the, the grants that I
am most excited about at the NIH, and
there are too few of them.
I'd love to see them increase
tenfold are called kangaroo grants.
I think they're K00.
>> K00.
>> So they've been called kangaroo grants
which fund the last couple of years of
post doc and then the first three years,
I think, as a, as a faculty member.
And the whole point of those grants
is to find the young post doc and
get them out of their post doc.
And into a faculty position
as young as possible.
I mean, all of us of my generation and
I can certainly say, because the four
of us talk about this all the time,
you know, we were in our late 20s and
early 30s when we were running our labs.
>> Right.
>> And, and, and it was an incredibly
exciting and productive time.
And I think you're different
when you're 38 or 42.
You just are.
You have different responsibilities
You're probably a lot more risk averse.
So we've got to find a way to get those
young people into being independent
investigators sooner.
>> Right.
That's wonderful.
I agree with you.
You, you did, discuss some potential,
you know, solutions,
ways to approach the problem.
There is a recent paper by,
by Ron, Ron Daniels.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> Which, had some of the figures that
you showed, an article in, in PNAS,
which really followed on the study.
>> Right.
>> That you and, and, and Bruce did.
And, you know, one of the things,
that, that Ron pointed out at the end.
he's the President of Hopkins.
Pointed out at the end was that we just
lack a pol, we lack a national policy,
a national
>> Yeah.
>> A national science policy.
And he recommended that there be some kind
of, of committee, a standing committee.
At the level of the, of the,
Federal government within NIH or
maybe OSTP or elsewhere.
Didn't really specify.
That would be looking at,
at these problems.
Are we in need of of a national policy?
And where should it, how should it be set
up so that we can deal with this problem?
>> Yeah.
>> More effectively on a national scale.
>> You know, I'm, I'm a little averse
to setting up another committee.
Because truthfully,
we have a lot of government committees
who should be taking this
on as their responsibility.
But I'll tell you,
because I've been on more studies of
this question than I care to think of.
What is really missing is good data.
And, and if, if I had one, sort of,
wish list that for, for a group who,
who would, take on the question of,
you know, what should our policy be in
creating the most productive
biomedical enterprise that we could?
I would say the first thing we've
got to have is much better data
about the system itself.
It's shocking, shocking the things
we cannot say about our system.
For example, we have no idea
how many post-docs there are.
Absolutely none.
And, and it, there are lots of reasons
because different institutions call them
different things and so, you know,
trying to get some kind of
standardization makes that kind of
data collection very, very difficult.
But now, more than half the post docs in
this country are coming from overseas.
We don't know where they're coming from.
We don't know where they
go when they leave.
>> [LAUGH]
>> If, and
we don't even know if they leave.
We have no idea.
If you don't know where, you know, a
significant fraction of your work force is
coming from, and where it's going,
it's really hard to develop good policy.
>> Yeah, right.
It's true.
And we've, we've sort of created our,
our own our own method now.
>> Yeah.
>> We have to figure out how to,
to, to clean it up.
I'll ask you to take off your,
your administrator hat now and
lets get down to Shirley the person.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Okay?
Which is I think what a lot of
people here and the community,
I see many members of the community
have come to hear this talk
which is a wonderful thing about
the chancellors colloquial series.
Can you tell us as a,
as a really as a role model for
female scientists in the US and
all around the world.
Can you tell us who your earliest
role models were for you growing up?
>> Well, [COUGH] of course,
there were no women scientists.
So, I didn't have a woman
scientist as a role model.
But I did have a history teacher.
Strangely enough.
Who probably was the most
influential person,
who at the beginning of grade 10, when I
was just starting high school, took my
my parents aside at Parents' Night where
my parents had been used to hearing what
a good student I was, and a nice girl,
>> [LAUGH]
>> And you know,
they would come home all oh!,
you know, and he said to them,
if she doesn't wake up soon she's
going to be brain dead in 10 years.
>> [LAUGH] You were a dreamer.
>> And he was right.
>> [LAUGH]
>> He was right and what he meant
was that I was sailing through life
you know, life was kind of easy.
And I was living in Winnipeg,
Manitoba which doesn't sound easy if
you know the weather in Winnipeg.
But he meant that I wasn't
interrogating my world.
And he then provided a way for
me to do that.
And I think, you know, I,
I'd be living in Winnipeg
right now if it weren't for
that man saying,
there's a world out there that you need
to explore and interrogate and question.
And stop accepting everything.
And he was great, so, he was my guy.
Mr. Orlicko
>> Mr Orlicko, everybody has one.
Mine was Mr. Seedo, my science teacher.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But you made it through,
and you had many fantastic,
Phil Leader was one of your mentors.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> At Harvard.
I know, and you had many great male
mentors along the way in your career.
What, what, what do you tell your,
your, your female students today and
how do you approach,
mentorship given the complex environment?
When we started.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And we got our first grant,
NIH grants at 27 years old and 28.
>> Yeah.
>> It's a lot different.
>> Right.
>> Than, than the environment today.
What do you tell Your students, and
what do you tell your female
students in particular, who face
many different challenges than, than your,
your male students and post docs?
>> So the first thing I tell all students,
who come and
want to talk through do they want
to become a biomedical scientist,
is that don't do it unless
you have fire in the belly.
You know don't do it unless when
you wake up in the morning,
you just can't wait to get into the lab
to see how that experiment turned out.
You can barely get your coat off
because you just want to know.
You can't stand not knowing.
Because I think it's too hard and
the rewards are too modest.
If you're doing it, sort of halfheartedly,
so first of all make sure
you really want to do this.
>> Fire in the belly.
>> Fire in the belly.
That used to be my test.
>> Yeah.
>> Was what they did when they did
when they came in the morning.
If they, if, if.
>> And what time they went home at night.
[LAUGH]
>> No, the morning was the best test.
>> If they did at morning.
>> I, I found was the best correlation.
You know, if they came in and
sort of grabbed the New York Times,
and wanted to chat about
last night's baseball game.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Forget it.
>> [LAUGH]
>> The second is,
don't let anyone turn you into a victim.
>> Hm-mm.
>> And that's for women.
>> That's good.
>> Scientists.
>> Hm-hm.
>> You can waste a lot of time and
energy, eh,
worrying about what somebody said.
Or, what somebody meant.
I, I honestly believe that
the thing that got me through that,
my early education, was great mentors.
There's no question.
Pick your mentors well.
But, the other is kind of like,
I had blinders on.
I just wasn't, I just wasn't
going to listen to that, you know,
if someone saying I had a physics
professor who came by at one
point when I was doing something really
stupid in the lab, and it was stupid.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And
said that's why there
are no women physicists.
You know, and you could, you could've
taken that and let it grind you down.
Or you could say I didn't hear that.
I don't care.
It was stupid.
I won't do it again.
So, I think that's a,
a really important thing.
And then, and
then be prepared to defend your turf.
>> Yeah.
>> I think you really have to learn
in science to defend your turf.
And I don't mean be, be territorial,
but, but if you have a view
be prepared to speak out and
defend it and articulate it.
>> Right.
And you see that many times in,
in, in the laboratory in the daily
life of students and, and and, and, and
just the laboratory ecology, that those
that are willing to defend their ideas.
The strongest of those are the ones
who will, will go on and succeed.
>> Yeah
>> And if you're not willing to defend
your own data.
It's, pretty tough to survive.
So you really have to
believe in your data.
>> Right, and then the last thing, don't
ever let anybody tell me, tell you that
you cannot combine family and work
>> It happens all the time.
>> Well you answered that, almost
answered the, my next question there.
[LAUGH] And, of course, so
the question again since we're on the,
have your faculty hat on now is thinking
back to the time when you were approached
to be the president of Princeton,
which I guess was a great shock to you.
>> [LAUGH] Yes.
>> At that time.
And, because you've written about it.
And so why did you do it?
>> And, and how did you balance
your research, interests and
your responsibilities as an,
as an administrator and
your family life at that time,
which was sort of in the, right in the
prime years of your, your, your career?
If you would picked.
>> Well, so, so I,
I think the answer to the question
of why did I decide to do it eh,
was really.
I had at that point, just was in the
process of starting a genomics institute.
So I was doing a lot of
administrative things.
I was building a building.
You know I was hiring faculty,
I was raising money, and as a consequence,
I was not thinking about my
science as much as, as I used to.
And I was,
if I did a really honest self-assessment,
I had the feeling that I had already done
the best science I was ever going to do.
And that I, and that for
the next few years,
I wasn't going to embarrass Princeton.
You know,
I was a Howard Hughes investigator.
[LAUGH] I was, I was well funded.
But I wasn't likely to make the big
discoveries that I made in the past.
And so when I weighed that against
the possibility of helping
an institution that I adored,
and that had been wonderful for me and
my family, to become a little bit better.
It, it just looked like an easy decision.
>> Mm.
>> So, it was really those two things,
it, it, being balanced that made me
decide to do it despite the fact I had not
the slightest idea what a president did.
[LAUGH]
>> And
how did you achieve the balance with your,
your children and your family life?
>> Well my children were,
were pretty much grown by then.
My daughter was in college.
My son was about to go to college.
And, and so
I felt that it was a very good time.
For me to take on.
>> You can do it.
>> A new responsibility.
>> Wonderful.
Candid answers.
So my last question before we'll
open it up to the audience.
Would you do it again?
>> In a heartbeat.
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE]
>> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH]
>> [NOISE] Thank you so much.
Really wonderful.
And illuminating and heartfelt.
Answers, thoughtful answers
to those questions.
We have time to take
questions from the audience.
I see Pam Ronald raised her hand first.
Pam, you want to step
up to the microphone?
Please each of you who have a question,
step up so everyone can hear your your,
your questions, Pam's one.
>> Hello, we're so happy to have you
here and thank you both for this forum.
I'm very interested in the points you made
about graduate students and the need for
permanent staff but I also think about
senior level people that have been in
the lab for 10, 15 sometimes 20 years
as permanent staff but on soft money.
>> Mm-hm.
>> So for
example National Institute
of Health funding.
And then when the PI retires or suddenly
is not able to obtain funding anymore,
there's no, no place for those really
incredibly valuable staff to go.
And I wonder if,
if this has come up in your discussions.
>> It has come up.
And, and I think there are, there are a
number of issues that, around the staff
scientist position that are going to
have to be jointly thought through,
both by institutions as well as by federal
agencies that might fund these positions.
And I think you've identified
the most difficult one.
There is, I don't think,
any way that you can create
these positions with permanence.
I think, frankly, most universities in
a heartbeat would take away tenure.
And so we're not going to create
a new position with tenure.
So, so it is going to be
creating an environment where
those people are so valuable.
And individuals who have such people
in their lab wax poetic about the,
the, the value of those
people in their laboratories.
I, I was lucky enough to have such
a person for my whole career and
you know, I wouldn't trade him for
any graduate student or post-doc.
So I think, I think once we can
get over the idea that a technical
position is a temporary position.
And we can build the, the immense
value that I think they do have.
I think things will change.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah.
Excellent answer.
Please step to the microphone if you can.
If you're not we'll recognize you after.
Let, let's, get a question here.
>> Well, my, my name is David Flint and
I am a professor emeritus
in the medical center.
And [COUGH] the, the system you describe,
of course, our residents and
house staff you know, do work, but
what you're describing more is a European
system of senior registrars who may
stay in a position for many years.
But in my lab, we faced a real dilemma.
If we were to hire a technician.
They were very expensive
because of the benefits and
all of the things that they had.
But a post-doctoral graduate
was about half the price.
And because there was a lot of pressure
of course with other responsibilities.
In terms of getting funding and
getting grants.
That we quite honestly looked in our lab,
for
post, post doctoral students,
because we couldn't afford, ford it.
>> [CROSSTALK]
>> And you know, and then,
then they did stay, and
they came for a variety of reasons.
I wish you would Comment on that as
the pressures have changed on faculty
to get funding which of course
determined our merit in promotions,
which indirectly being merit
has affected our retirement.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And the dilemma that we
face in terms of the funding.
Of technicians and hiring them versus
using post doctoral graduates as we use-.
>> Sure.
>> House staff in medicine.
>> So you have described perfectly
why the Malthusian system exists,
which is, is graduate students and
post-docs are cheaper-.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Than staff scientists.
See, you've,
you've perfectly described it.
So, so, the argument that I,
I, and I've heard,
you know, discussions of this
kind over and over and again.
And, and here's where I think we have
to have, sort of think very hard.
I don't know how many graduate
students you, trained in your lab.
And one of my ex-graduate
students is here and
I hope she's not going to be
offended with what I'm about to say.
But it takes about three years
before they're productive.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Right?
>> [LAUGH]
>> So
the truth of the matter is
>> Yeah, you agree, right?
She agrees.
And, and so
I think we have this mythology.
That somehow or other, there, to equate
someone who's very professionally trained
and who is very experienced, that,
that they are not worth more to you.
And I would argue they are,
then a beginning graduate student who
is going to make mistake
after mistake after mistake.
And, and, and you know, not really start
being productive for some period of time.
And I would say the same is true of
most beginning post-doctoral fellows.
>> So I think we have to look hard
at what, what is the real value
of having different kinds
of individuals in your lab.
With different kinds of experience,
and different kinds of longevity?
And, and I think what we have done
in this country is, we have gone so
far in one direction, which is the
direction of turnover, constant turnover.
That, that, that, and I'm not advocating
that we go to a, a system that was the old
European system where everyone was
a permanent member of the laboratory.
I think we've got to find
a balance in between.
And if we can get a balance in between,
I think we'll actually produce better
science and
that's really what we're trying to do.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
I came to this lecture out of curiosity.
Because my knowledge about biology
is limited to a seventh grade
working with a frog.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I'm an economist,
particularly on financial institutions, so
I can explain something to you
about hedge funds earlier on.
[LAUGH]
>> Hedge funds.
>> You and Vice Chancellor Louis
discussed a responsibility
of universities on a subject.
I want like to solicit your views
on why you were working with your
three other colleagues about
mapping out what this industry or
this [INAUDIBLE] should do as to
provide the best and the brightest.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Go through the track of basic research,
and the others would have
good career opportunities.
>> Mm-hm
>> After spending years working in this
field.
I would imagine you might have talked to
leaders in the biotech industry-
>> Mm-hm.
>> Itself, because they are the ones
who are going to provide the bulk
of the career opportunities for
most our students in this field.
I'm interested to hear
what is their response,
what's their recommendations,
and make good sense to you.
And most importantly,
they will be utilizing the very talent
that universities are building for them.
>> Right.
>> What kind of responsibility they feel
that they should contribute to build
a future for those young people.
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
Thank you for that question.
>> Excuse me.
I have to sit.
>> [LAUGH] We have actually,
spoken to people who were,
leaders in both the pharmaceutical and
the biotech industry.
One of the things that has exacerbated
the size of the bulge
is that both of those
industries have been in decline.
In terms of the number of
people that they are hiring.
And so at a time when, you know, 10, 15,
20 years ago that was a growth industry.
And one of the reasons the pipeline worked
was because a lot of students were able
to go into those industries.
You know that is not happening anymore.
So they are not, they are not numerically,
at least, contributing to the solution.
But what they do tell us, and it's very
interesting having conversations with
them, is that they are,
unhappy with training.
That the people they do employ in their
industry are, have received from us.
And, and, one of the things that I think
we need to really be in much closer
dialog, with both of those industries,
both pharma and biotech.
To be sure that we understand
what are the skill sets that
they want their future
PhD scientist to have.
And I will give you the number one thing
that comes up every time you talk to them.
Well, actually two things that come
up every time you talk to them.
One is the ability to work
as a member of a team.
That is what they want, because that
is how science gets done in industry.
And they feel that what they get from us
are people who are used to, you know,
holding onto their own project and,
and working as single individuals.
That's number one.
And number two is communication skills.
The ability to both write and
speak very well.
And, despite the fact that many of
us believe we are doing things to
prepare our students to
be good communicators.
In their minds, we're not doing as
good a job as we probably should.
So its, it was a very good question,
thank you.
>> Thank you.
My name's Eldridge Moores.
I'm a re retired geosciences
professor here at UC Davis.
I came here fresh out of my post-doc and
PhD from Princeton.
>> Hm.
>> But obviously your, your thought,
talk is very thought provoking.
And I have some idea that a similar
kind of running off the rails of the van
of our Bush vision for
fits in my general field of science and
probably many other fields
of science as well.
And can you comment on that?
And what would you do about that?
>> Yeah.
So, eh,
I've had conversations with chemists,
with physicists, with geoscientists at
Princeton about their perception of it.
>> I don't think any of them feel the,
the, that their field is as extreme,
as what is happening, in,
in biomedical science.
In part because many of those fields,
as you well know, are at steady state.
>> Right.
>> Right?
You could see, you know, the,
the number of that,
that, there, there was no big growth
the way there was in biomedical science.
But one of the most interesting stories
that I heard as I was having these
conversations is what happened in,
in nuclear physics
after the cancellation of the
superconducting super-collider in Texas?
So you know, there had been a huge buildup
in the number of students in physics who
were doing particle physics.
And, and of course with
the cancellation of that project
the possibility of employment
in that area really declined.
And the American Physical Society actually
collectively brought together the,
the, the leading graduate
programs in the country.
And they collectively reduced
their graduate admissions for
the next few years.
In recognition of the fact that,
that the prospects for
jobs were going to be very poor.
Now you, whenever I mention that to
my colleagues in biomedical science,
of course, what they say is, okay, phys,
particle physics is a very coherent field.
You know, you can gather all of the
propon, you know, practitioners, probably,
in one huge auditorium.
Our field is huge and diffuse.
And so the likelihood that we could
actually do anything as coherent as that
is, is unlikely.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah.
Yeah, I was, I was going to follow up on,
on what you just said at the end of that
answer, and in your paper, you advocated,
you and your co-authors advocated that we
drastically reduce the number of,
of PhDs entering biomedical sciences.
And to me, that seems like it would push
the hyper-competitiveness to 20 year olds.
Which are very difficult to
predict who's going to succeed.
>> Right.
>> And, and yeah,
just your thoughts on, on that.
>> Yeah, so it's, so
we've had a lot of conversations
since the paper was
published with a lot of
colleagues communities and I,
I would think it's fair to say.
We just had a,
a meeting last Sunday in New York.
That we are,
we, we've had many arguments about where
the constriction point needs to be.
And I think we're now persuaded that
probably not at the point of graduate
admission.
For the simple reason that I
completely agree with you.
It it's very hard to predict
who is going to be successful at
the point of graduate admission.
Which is why we kind of like masters
programs that aren't default.
That you know,
that aren't sort of consolation prizes.
And then real diffusion after
the graduate degree, and
only those who really want bench
scientist careers to go on to post docs.
So we think the constriction works
better after graduate school.
>> I, I that's really good.
I'm really happy to hear that and if you
guys could get that out there again.
Especially for the graduate students
who are feeling [CROSSTALK]
>> Yeah.
>> That maybe the shouldn't have
entered because of that part, in part,
I mean many reasons, but that paper also.
Thank you.
>> Yeah, thanks
>> Hi.
Chuck Langley.
I, I, in listening to what you're, is
talking about, I am, of course have read
the papers and am familiar with it and
I, I see all these things every day.
I think it's really important but
this worrying about the demography
interacts with another issue which
I feel more concerned about,
that I wondered whether
you might comment on it.
It has to do with the same phenomena,
and that is Vannevar Bush is,
is probably equally famous for
his inspired understanding of peer review.
As a foundation for American science.
And you didn't bring that up.
>> Yeah.
>> But in my mind that's
probably
>> Yep.
>> His greatest contribution.
>> Mm-hm.
>> The very stark and
clear insistence on it.
And it seems to me that
there are a number of forces
Including the demography that
you’re talking about have,
have put a lot of pressure and a lot of
distortion on the peer review process.
And if you're sort of of been,
if you haven’t been like I do
were there’s a paranoid fear.
You might think that that’s going to
be where the real damage is okay, and
not, because you see a cultural
change which there's no,
these 20 year olds you're talking about
bringing in, they don't know about that.
>> Right.
>> They're not going to
replace it with that culture.
And so, I see the cultural damage
associated with peer review and
with some of the collegial activities and
institutions to be the biggest thread or
the biggest place for damage?
>> Yeah.
And, and
I would say that of the four of us,
Mark Kirschner who is still the most
active scientist among the four of
us feels the most pa,
passionate about this as well.
And, and feels how corrosive the,
the peer review system so,
so the peer review that we're talking
about is both grant review with a level of
the NIA which I think people
had great confidence in.
They may not have liked
the outcome always.
But I think for a long time,
people felt it was a fair system.
It was a system that,
that found the best grants.
But it did it when the success
rate was between, what 30 and 35%.
People had tremendous confidence in it.
We're now approaching 10%.
Nine out of ten grants get turned down.
And, and now the feeling is
that the system is random.
The basic, right?
Is a crapshoot.
>> And risk averse.
>> And, and tremendously risk averse.
And that's deeply problematic.
I, I agree with you completely.
But the discussion that, that we have
amongst ourselves all the time is,
can we cure the peer review if we
don't cure the hyper-competition?
And we can't figure out how to do that.
>> Yeah.
>> And the other pro, problem, which
stunned me, I have to say, when I started
reading journals again, is, is,
what is now required to publish a paper.
Hm.
>> I mean, there,
there are papers now that look to
me like ten papers 20 years ago.
And you know, as things get more
competitive a journal can just
up the ante and
up the ante and up the ante.
And that puts tremendous pressure on the
careers of young people who are trying to
get papers published so
that they can get out and get jobs.
But, but again,
I don't think we can cure this without
curing the underlying problem first.
>> So you don't think some of the
experimental things that NIH has done like
cutting off the top and the bottom score,
they have experimented with that.
Or single reviewer systems, have much
you know of assigning a single review or
two proposals have much future?
>> I don't think we know yet.
I think we have to test them and find out.
>> Mm-hm.
Yeah.
>> You know they just haven't been
tested long enough for us to know.
But, but one of the most discouraging
things was, was honestly talking to
my colleagues and hearing their distrust
in the quality of the peer review system.
And, and, and when that,
when that confidence gets eroded, it,
I, you know,
I'm basically agreeing with you.
It's really a problem.
>> Yeah.
>> Good afternoon there.
Thank you so much for your being here.
You're very inspirational, and we
naturally understand what you're saying.
>> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH]
Chancellor Katehi had a speaker at
the Colloquium, and it was the Ch,
Chanc, Chancellor Emeritus of UCLA.
And he said that the public schools don't
teach their students how to be alumni.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But the private schools do.
[LAUGH]
Meaning
the responsibilities you do have as a,
an alumnus.
Once you get out.
And I, my wife and
I have returned to campus.
I graduated here Political Science and
Music.
Try to find someone to tell you
how to get a job with those.
[LAUGH] But I did.
And I was an okay student but
I've come back and
made great progress in
helping students and all.
So, I, I am here to tell you that you
do have a second chance to make a first
impression.
>> Mm-hm.
Mm-hm.
But the point is the,
right across the street,
the Buehler Alumni Center,
does have these programs.
There was a quote in the Sacramento Bee
by the dean of the school law, here.
They said, we're teaching the law, but
we need to teach them how to be lawyers.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is exactly what you're saying.
>> Mm-hm.
>> How to develop a career?
>> The, [INAUDIBLE] Alumni Association
also has the Aggie Diner.
The Aggie Diner.
And, we sit around a round table and
people of various careers.
My wife is a, in computer science.
And, they asked us,how do you get a job?
>> Hm.
>> And, we explained that to them, and
we do have a system of,
of practice interviews.
And, this is all going on
through the alumni association.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And I wa,
I graduated here in the last century.
No, not the 1800s, the, [LAUGH] the 1900s.
And, I had more opportunities then to
figure out how to get a career because we
had some classes where, in the music
classes, we had three people in the class.
And we're getting private tutoring.
But my point is, the alumni association is
a great resource and if you've graduated
from here, not, I don't work for
them [LAUGH] but, if you've graduated from
Davis and are not a member of the alumni
assotion, association, you should join.
My wife and I are both life members.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[INAUDIBLE] Certainly,
coming from the universities who,
whose alumni are rabidly
in love with the place,
I can tell you how valuable
that is to the institution.
It really matters to
an institution if it has alumni.
And not just for financial reasons,
although that's important.
Let, don't, don't get me wrong here.
But, but who care about
the future of the institution
are willing to work on behalf of
current students and future students.
And, and who keep you honest to be hone,
to be honest as well.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I'm a, I'm a big fan of,
of a strong alumni base.
Hi, I hope you don't mind me asking, but
I was wondering what advice you would
offer to an aspiring scientist.
[LAUGH]
>> You know and,
and I'm thinking again with my,
my ex-graduate student in the audience.
One of, one of the pieces of advice
that I didn't offer earlier but
I really believe in is focus,
focus, focus.
>> Mm-hm.
>> You know, find what it is that,
that really intrigues you,
that you want to understand
about the world.
And then, don't let yourself get
distracted from sort of going after it,
because the deeper you go into a problem,
the more interesting it gets.
It's really true, and
you can make almost anything
interesting if you get deep enough.
But, but, you're going to
care about some question and
you're really going to
want to know the answer.
And just, just, you know, focus.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Jonathan-
>> Hi.
>> Hey Jonathan.
>> Jonathan Eisen.
I'm wondering if you can comment on
another issue that might be related to
many of the issues that you talked
about which is the, what appears to be
a move away from funding individual
research projects like R01
grant to this top down,
really large approach to science,
which is taking up certainly
a significant portion of the budget.
And how that plays in the balance of
training and, and funding initiatives?
>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure I
have a, a lot of anything in wise or,
or, or interesting to say about it.
You know, I,
I tend to be a bottom-up person and
believe that the bottom-up system for
biomedical science, you,
you obviously can't do it
with a linear accelerator,
you've gotta be top down
with a linear accelerator.
But I think the bottom-up system
has worked extremely well for
biomedical science and
I would hate to see us, you know,
move too far away from that as,
as a mechanism.
On the other hand, and, and
I really experience this today at
the Genome Center here at Davis.
I think, there are ways of organizing
our work, as biomedical scientists,
in the future that could
be much more effective and
productive if we figured out
how best to organized course.
And, and as sort of things that, that we
don't all have to do to ourselves but
it would be really valuable to have an,
sort of a, a, a, an organization around
us that could help us with our individual
work and, you know, the question I was
exploring at lunch was, you know,
where's the creativity going to come from?
And where does it need to be
most effectively directed?
And as you know, it's not,
you know, sequencing DNA.
[LAUGH] Right?
That's not creative, and we shouldn't be
spending a lot of time doing it anymore.
Individually, as individual scientist.
But, thinking up the experiment you
want to do once that DNA gets sequenced,
that's what you want to
spend your time doing.
So, I think we need to
start thinking about how,
how we can organize ourselves with
collective action within universities, and
even between universities.
So that,
we spend less time doing scout work and
more time doing the most creative stuff.
Do you see where I'm headed?
>> Yeah.
And, so, it seems that some of the large
funding initiatives that have gone to
these top-down approaches also have,
I mean, they're an opportunity in
a way because you could say those
programs have to better balance the
training of students in those programs or
better support staff scientists.
>> Yeah.
>> Just seems like if we're going to do
them, which we are
>> Yeah.
>> That they could be handled in a more
organized manner than they currently
are being done
>> Yeah
>> To fit in
with
>> Right.
>> The,
the problems that you've pointed out.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Hi, I really enjoy the talk and
I like you saying about
the training after graduate.
And, I'm a graduate student from UC Davis,
but fortunately I went to industry
afterwards, I found a job.
So, I went to one of the retreat
of UC Davis of biotechnology.
And, during that retreat, a lot of student
and, some of the organizer came to me and
asked, do you think
there are opportunities?
What do you actually need in your company?
>> Mm-hm.
>> I have very limited experience in
the industry, and I'm not top level
management, but for my experience,
I think there is a lot of needs.
We want to have poster.
We want to have people come in and
we know them before you go and hire them.
The problem is, I read once, sink,
company has big fat wallet [LAUGH] but
the current situation is everyone's tight.
>> Yeah.
So I wonder being a very influential
woman and
a policy maker is that any funding or
any government consideration for
industry to have a poster program or
a program for the near graduate student
>> Yeah.
>> To get a chance To be trained.
>> Probably not as direct
funding to the private sector.
But, having a program at Davis that gives
a post doc a chance to do a three month
internship at a company to find out,
you know, what it is like?
And is this something
that I would like to do?
That makes a great deal of sense.
>> Yeah, I agree on that.
But intern is expensive as well
>> I understand.
>> So, I was trying to see, is there any-
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> Tax or any place actually that the
government think, okay, you know, either,
unless they're trying to
support those post [INAUDIBLE].
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> Or
find some private sectors
to support them as well.
>> Right.
Right.
>> Yeah.
>> I think it's unlikely.
>> Yeah.
>> But.
>> [LAUGH] Let me follow.
>> It's an interesting idea.
>> Let me follow on her question as,
as a president, you, no doubt,
face with many opportunities to,
to develop and
build partnerships between the government
and academian private industry.
>> Mm hm.
>> Can you talk about your, your views and
thoughts about that in the modern
continuum versus at the,
the age of the, that of our bush.
But where we sit today, the importance
of that given the funding climate, and
the kinds of issues you think
that universities face in,
in constructing partnerships.
In a way that protect the rights
of faculty and students.
>> That's, yeah.
No, I think you put your finger on the,
on the the major issue that you face
every time there's an opportunity to have
a partnership with the private sector.
And, you know, Princeton,
like all good research universities have
very successful partnerships
with private industries.
But the issue that always has to be worked
out at the very beginning is to protect
the intellectual freedom,
particularly of the students and fellows.
The faculty can, you know,
frankly, take care of themselves.
If they're willing to sign an agreement
that says they won't publish for
six months, God bless them.
That's their business.
But, I think you do have to protect
the students and the fellows.
And so, that's, you know,
where we look most closely.
And then, the other issue is always one
of who owns the intellectual property
rights if they're going to be generated
in the, in the collaboration.
And, you know,
I just came off a major Study
from the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, a very good study,
that, that looked at government,
university research partnerships.
And what was really fascinating,
and you may have seen this.
Is the folks from industry who were on
this panel were intensely critical of
universities for being difficult
on intellectual property issues.
And, the folks from the universities
were deeply critical of industry for
being difficult on
intellectual property issues.
And so, there's clearly, as the old
saying goes, a failure to communicate
between the two that,
that is unnecessary in my view.
I think there are places that
do this exceedingly well, and
we just need to, to promulgate
their practices and policies to
places that are still trying to figure out
how to have those kinds of interactions.
But, but I think in this,
in this era of limited federal funding,
that doesn't look like it's
increasing anytime soon.
Every university chancellor and
president is talking about how to
diversify their research revenue.
>> Right.
>> And, and sort of getting industry,
stepping up
>> Yeah.
>> More is, is something that I think is,
all of us have to be thinking about doing.
>> Yeah.
And as the, as the federal
funding you know, plateaus or
declines, actually
the demands by industry on
intellectual property-
>> Right.
>> And and, and publication constraints
actually, you know, their demands go
up, because they have more, more influence
because the dollars are shrinking.
And, and that presents a tremendous
challenge for many universities.
So on that, you know, the time for
example the time constraints.
Did, have you seen that at Princeton?
You know, it used to be thirty days or
sixty days, and now we see periods.
Is there, and this is what is, this issue
is being wrestled with by our academic
senate, of course, all the way up into
the, into the system wide senate.
Is, you know,
is there a reasonable time frame and
what that, should that time frame be,
in terms of limitation on publication?
You have a, in biomedical science,
it could be different in different fields,
but-
>> You know, I,
I, I think it is different
in different fields.
>> Yea.
>> I think different fields have different
publication pressures on them,
and rates of publication.
You know, m, my,
my optimal number is zero.
>> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] I, mean-
>> Yeah.
>> It, I would prefer to
have no constraints on when
a student is able to publish their work.
You know, I start from that premise,
and then work backwards.
>> [LAUGH]
>> How far did you go?
>> You know, I think three months.
>> Yeah.
Let's see.
Very interesting.
I mean, we deal with that question very,
very frequently from the faculty.
>> Yeah.
Yeah.
>> And, and very often
you find yourself negotiating-
>> Right.
>> On the behalf of, you know,
students and then faculty.
And it can get very, very murky in those
waters if you're, if you're not careful.
>> Yeah.
>> It's a very important issue.
Okay.
>> All right.
>> Yes, we good?
>> Yeah, we're good.
All right.
>> Well,
let's thank Shirley [APPLAUSE] and,
we'll invite Chancellor McDade to
make some closing comments today.
Thank you so much.
>> Oh wow, your welcome.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Shirley thank you so much for
being here.
Thank you all for staying with us for the
wonderful questions and the discussion.
Please join us for
a reception right after this presentation.
And, I hope to see you back for
the next lecture.
Thank you so much.
>> Thanks.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[LAUGH]
