Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/515661
t m c » p u l s e | m a y 2 0 1 5 11 the hallways and could instantly sense the same kind of collaborative spirit. It's what they told me in my interviews here, 'This is a really collaborative place!' One might think they are just trying to sell you on the place, but you could just feel it in the way people seemed to genuinely care about what everyone else in the place was doing. I think it's about the faculty. And I think that's true across the medical center. Just consistently attracting people who are not so egotistical—to the exclusion of everyone else—but they are genuinely interested in science and biomedicine. They are just genuinely col- laborative. And it's a spirit that has been maintained throughout my 21 years here. And you really learn about the robustness, about academic structures, when you go through the economic downturns. You know, we are just coming out of 10 years of rough financial times, since losing our primary affiliation with the Methodist Hospital System. What I learned in this time is the robustness of the academic enterprise, being rooted in the faculty. Our faculty members didn't waiver, and not that many left. They just put their noses to the grindstone and kept getting the grants and driving their programs forward, in spite of the financial challenges. And that's what carried us through—on the research side, on the educa- tion side, and on the clinical service side. It was a great thing to witness. Q | Collectively, the research engines on this campus are number two in NIH grants—second only to Johns Hopkins. Is there also a compendium effect of having these other institutions on the same campus? A | People think we are hyper-competitive, and maybe we are on the private clinical side. But in research, the TMC is one of the most collaborative places in the world. Our faculty members collaborate with every other institution equally well. There are few bound- aries or feelings of antagonism or competition. And we have lots of cancer folks—about a quarter of our research is in cancer—and yet there are substantial collaborations between MD Anderson and Baylor in research and education. There is a huge amount of col- laboration between Rice and Baylor, of course. So the TMC really functions as one big research ecosystem. Sure, at the executive level there is some friction about the movement of faculty, or programs, but even there it is becoming more collaborative. There is sort of a renewed spirit of collaboration around commercialization, and that's very healthy. I think that has also spurred on the collaboration around the research cores, and sort of a shared interest in trying to make all of the resources of the individual institutions available to everyone. This is all funded by either public money or local philanthropy. I very much view the whole TMC enterprise as a communal endeavor, and Houston is competing with the rest of the world. Q | As you are responsible for all research at Baylor, how do you find the time to conduct your own research? A | Some people would call what I do now vanity research, because although I have a federally funded lab, I can only actually physically be in it about four hours a week. I have to fit my manuscript and grant writing in at nights and on weekends because I have at least eight hours of meetings every day, plus 'home work' stemming from my role as senior vice president. Q | Is that hard for you as a dedicated researcher? A | Most folks in my position live with a conceit that they will eventually go back to the laboratory. And see- ing that Harold Varmus did, after running the NIH and the National Cancer Institute, go back to running a lab at Cornell gives me hope. You see this kind of example and think, 'That's me! I am going to go back to the lab eventually.' I worry a bit about losing the possibility of going back to research full time and I worry about maintaining credibility in my field. Having said that, I love what I do now. When they asked me to interview for the chair of biochemistry, I had no thought of going into admin- istration, although I was program director for the graduate program for 10 years prior. I had enjoyed helping students and mentoring students and making sure they were taken care of and that they were in laboratories that were best for them, and that they were progressing toward their degree. I knew I enjoyed mentoring students, but I was not sure I would enjoy being chair of biochemistry. However, I found that I really loved it. Just as a lab head worries about how their postdocs and students do in the lab, as a chair you worry about how your assistant professors do; you mentor them, read their manuscripts and their grants and try to give them advice that will advance their career. I found that I really loved the chair role. When they asked me to come downstairs, I thought, 'Well I liked organizing science at the department level, let's see how it would be at the college level.' I was appointed by Bill Butler, who was the interim president at the time. I quickly learned that being a corporate officer, a fiduciary of the institu- tion, is very different from being a department chair. There was a steep learning curve. Paul Klotman, the current president, came just a few months after I was appointed, so it wasn't clear at all that I would be continuing. One of the first conversations I had with Paul was along the lines of, 'You don't know if you want me to be dean of research, and I don't know if I want to continue to be dean of research. So let's talk in six months.' He agreed and about six months later, February 2011, he asked me to stay on and I have been doing it ever since. I wondered initially whether I could have an impact and help to guide the institution in research. No one is irreplaceable and I knew that if I were unable to do this, I would step aside. But it has been very rewarding, interacting with the leadership at other institutions within the TMC and around the state. Trying to develop programs within Baylor and with other institutions. Under Dr. Klotman's leadership, the executive team has been trying to effect the kind of change that I think most people would agree needs to happen in science today. We need to operate more efficiently, develop new sources of funding to drive program development, while still allowing the faculty to drive the science and set the direction. That's what we are trying to do. Q | What do you see changing over the next five years, relative to the research program at Baylor? A | From a technical management point of view, we are working towards becoming more service-oriented around clinical trials. Clinical research in terms of reaching outside the institution. We have a pretty big operation: 4,000 human subjects protocols, 11,000 patient accruals a year, with about 4,000 of those having therapeutic intent. But our support infra- structure is pretty decentralized. This is not necessar- ily a bad thing, but if you want to present a positive, user-friendly face to the outside world, if you want interact productively with industry more, it requires that you centralize resources and have master agree- ments that don't have to be negotiated independently for every trial. This is an operational improvement that we would like to make. On the scientific side, we are paying more atten- tion, and allocating resources, toward taking our basic science toward the clinic. That's not an original idea— everyone is tying to do that. But we have been a great basic science research institution, so this is a change in direction. We used to joke that we discover a drug target every week, but we don't do anything about it. And that certainly was true 10 years ago and even five years ago. I very much view the whole TMC enterprise as a communal endeavor, and Houston is competing with the rest of the world.