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As I complete my first month as
president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, action potential
provides a metaphor for what may be my most important leadership
responsibility: making it possible for compelling and creative ideas to
propagate through our institutional nervous system—the broad and
interconnected network of HHMI laboratories and programs in the
United States and beyond. It's hard to imagine a more exciting job
description or a better job in U.S. science.
For two decades, I have been part of the HHMI community as
an investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. I managed,
over that period, to avoid formal administrative responsibilities. So it's
fair to say that I will have a lot to learn in this new role. I fully expect
to make mistakes—and to hear about them when I do—but I also
expect that everyone at HHMI will be fully engaged in supporting
the work of this remarkable organization, known around the world for
the quality of its research and educational programs. To appropriate
terminology from my research field—biochemistry—I expect to see
high specific activity across the Institute. That expectation squares
well with our mission: to catalyze the pioneering discoveries that
will ultimately yield new medical treatments by supporting the best
scientists possible and the best science that can be done.
These are challenging times for HHMI, given the state of the
U.S. economy and the impact of the uncertain financial markets on
our endowment. Although our endowment is substantial, prudence
dictates that we prune spending across the full spectrum of HHMI
activities so that we can prosper in the future and continue targeted
investments in new programs. Spending for our core research
programs—specifically, HHMI investigators and the scientists
at Janelia Farm Research Campus—represents the bulk of the
Institute's expenditures and will be subject to modest reductions.
We have trimmed generous allocations for new equipment this year
and will reduce budgets in the upcoming fiscal year but will cushion
the impact on our scientists by granting them greater flexibility in
how they manage funds from year to year. Even in this climate, a
modest reallocation of current funds may enable us to undertake two
important activities that will serve HHMI investigators and others:
expansion of our support for postdoctoral fellows and reintroduction
of a fellowship program for doctoral students.
In short, we're not standing still and that's a good thing. Thanks
to the visionary leadership of my predecessor, Thomas R. Cech,
we'll soon be welcoming 50 early career scientists to the HHMI
community. These impressive scientists, chosen from among 2,100
applicants, have already begun to make their mark in U.S. science,
and we expect much from them over the next six years. You can read
about four of them in this issue of the HHMI Bulletin and see the
entire class on our website, www.hhmi.org.
Photo: Barbara Ries
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