Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/515661
t m c » p u l s e | m a y 2 0 1 5 10 Q | I want to hear about your early days growing up in California… A | I grew up in a small beach community, north of San Diego, surfing and skateboarding. In junior high, I became interested in biology. I was inspired by a very dynamic high school biology teacher who had a master's and whose husband was a professor at the University of California, San Diego. So from a very early time, I guess the ninth grade, and being five miles from one of the great research universities, I just assumed I would go in that direction, and sure enough, I did. Immediately I wanted to do bench research, so I latched onto a laboratory, run by Bill Loomis who had a very infectious enthusiasm, and who really cared about what people did in his lab. It seemed like a great place to work, and it turned out it was. The focus of his lab was developmental biology, using the social amoeba as a model. Very quickly, I turned into a lab rat. College classes became secondary, and I was usually running out of the lab arriving late to my lectures, and then running back to finish my experiments. I published a paper and was thinking about going to grad school when Bill Loomis advised me to think about the Stanford Biochemistry Department, which was one of the great departments of that era. It had a small number of fac- ulty, but they were all excellent and each of them cared about training future scientists. I did okay in college— Mostly As. But I didn't think I had a shot at getting in a top graduate school. I remember asking one of the postdocs in the Loomis lab about it. I said, 'You know, Stanford biochemistry gets 400 applications and they take four students. What are my chances?' And he looked at me and said, 'You only need one slot.' So I applied and got in. Training at Stanford was a transformational experience. You don't really real- ize it when you are in the middle of it, but looking back—10, 20 years later—you realize. I was discussing and debating scientific concepts with the folks who would be the leaders in American science for the next 40 years, and sure enough, almost every person that I ADAM KUSPA, PH.D., SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND PROFESSOR OF MOLECULAR AND HUMAN GENETICS AT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, SAT DOWN WITH TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF STRATEGY AND OPERATING OFFICER WILLIAM F. McKEON TO DISCUSS A RENEWED FOCUS ON COLLABORATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION, AND HOW AN EXCITING JOINT VENTURE COULD HELP OPEN NEW DOORS IN MEDICAL GENETICS. interacted with in that department 20 years later was in the National Academy, or a department chair, or a professor at MIT, Harvard, and so forth. The intel- lectual atmosphere was so enriching and so exciting, you couldn't wait to get to work. You couldn't wait to interact with your colleagues. And that's why I'm here, actually. I did a postdoc- toral period back at UCSD, the same where I was an undergrad with Bill Loomis. It's just hard to find a mentor who is just as interested in every single exper- iment as you are and who wants to discuss things with you every day. It's hard to get that kind of mentorship and support. I did a lot of good things with him, but when I was looking for jobs, I thought I would do a little prelim- inary job search—just a limited number of applica- tions. I didn't think I would get a job. But I ended up interviewing at 11 different places, and had three offers: Duke, here and the University of Connecticut. And The Texas Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine just instantly felt like Stanford. I just walked TMC SPOTLIGHT