Why Scientific Public Service?

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00:00:06.25 Hi, my name is Jon Lorsch and
00:00:08.13 I am the director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH.
00:00:13.02 I am here today about why you might want to consider
00:00:15.22 spending part of your career doing scientific public service.
00:00:19.17 And I want to start by telling you how I got to be at NIGMS.
00:00:23.04 It all started with this thing here, a cow’s heart.
00:00:26.24 When I was 4 years old,
00:00:28.06 a teacher came to our classroom and
00:00:29.25 brought with him a cow's heart.
00:00:31.19 And while all the other students were probably screaming
00:00:34.13 and maybe a few of them retching,
00:00:35.20 I was fascinated by this thing with all its chambers and flaps.
00:00:39.12 And I decided on the spot
00:00:40.23 that I was going to become a Scientist and study biology.
00:00:44.15 And that led to a whole series of chemistry sets and
00:00:48.13 chemistry experiments done mixing things together on our kitchen table.
00:00:52.26 My mother was a very patient woman.
00:00:54.27 Eventually that then led to some summer jobs working in labs in high school.
00:01:00.29 When I got to college,
00:01:02.14 I was lucky enough to work for these two people,
00:01:04.27 Judy Voet and Nancy Hamlett and
00:01:07.21 in their lab they were studying a new bacterium
00:01:11.00 that Nancy had discovered from a sewage contaminated salt marsh
00:01:15.29 which was resistant to mercury.
00:01:18.00 And my job was to purify the enzyme, mercuric reductase,
00:01:21.14 out of this bacterium that made it resistant to mercury.
00:01:24.16 And through this work I became fascinated with the molecular and atomic underpinnings
00:01:29.14 of living systems which is what I still continue to study in my lab today.
00:01:34.20 Now, just as an aside, I will point out
00:01:36.23 for those of you who are struggling away in labs,
00:01:39.18 wondering if your research was ever going to be published or not,
00:01:43.02 that this work with Nancy and Judy I started in 1986 and
00:01:47.15 it was just published actually this year in 2013.
00:01:51.12 There I am, right there.
00:01:53.29 So have faith if you are worrying about whether or not
00:01:57.03 your research will ever come to fruition.
00:02:00.18 Now after college I followed the career path
00:02:03.19 that I had been planning for some time.
00:02:05.09 I went to graduate school.
00:02:07.10 I then went to a postdoc.
00:02:08.22 And I was lucky enough to get a faculty position as an assistant professor.
00:02:12.26 From there I climbed the academic ladder to associate professor.
00:02:16.18 And eventually professor with tenure.
00:02:19.14 So this was the career path I had been hoping for,
00:02:21.29 and envisioned where I was going to focus on research and
00:02:24.29 spend most of my time in the lab.
00:02:27.09 But actually a funny thing happened on the way to that career path.
00:02:30.08 Right around the time I started as an assistant professor,
00:02:33.27 I was thrown into a small group room with a group of medical students
00:02:40.01 and told that I was supposed to teach them biochemistry.
00:02:42.15 And they seemed like nice kids and very smart kids
00:02:45.17 and although I wasn't quite sure it was something I wanted to do,
00:02:48.17 I had always thought I was gonna focus on research,
00:02:50.20 I decided that I better try to do a good job.
00:02:53.21 So what I discovered was that if I tried hard to help them,
00:02:57.06 they actually responded very well and they learned the material.
00:03:00.18 And not only did they learn the material but they seemed to begin to enjoy it.
00:03:04.20 And I discovered through this that I really had a love for teaching and for education.
00:03:09.01 And this started a second career track for me in education.
00:03:15.16 Through my work in education,
00:03:17.28 that then got me involved increasingly in these 3 things,
00:03:21.24 administration, management and leadership.
00:03:25.10 Because as I started out I was just giving a few lectures,
00:03:29.01 doing small group teaching, but soon I had took on more responsibility
00:03:32.15 and began running a block of the course and
00:03:34.16 eventually the whole course.
00:03:35.29 Then eventually the first year curriculum followed by
00:03:38.17 becoming the chair of a number of committees that
00:03:41.05 oversaw various aspects of education at the school.
00:03:44.09 I was involved in a number of curriculum reform efforts.
00:03:47.10 And now most faculty, if you talk to them,
00:03:50.01 or at least some faculty will tell you that these words are in fact bad words.
00:03:55.09 You don't want to become involved in these things and
00:03:57.03 the people who do it are suspect.
00:03:58.27 And that was kind of what I thought going into it,
00:04:01.01 but what I discovered the more I did leadership and
00:04:04.21 management and administration was that
00:04:06.24 in fact these were not bad words at all.
00:04:09.14 But they in fact were ways in which you can have a very big,
00:04:12.24 hopefully, positive but potentially negative impact if the wrong person is doing them
00:04:17.06 on a large number of people.
00:04:20.07 And the more I did them, the more I realized that
00:04:21.27 I could have a bigger impact on biomedical research and potentially society
00:04:27.21 through leadership, management and administration
00:04:31.00 than I could by just focusing on my own lab research.
00:04:34.12 So when the opportunity arose to apply for the job as director of NIGMS,
00:04:39.24 I decided that it was the most important thing I could do with my time.
00:04:44.05 Now let me just tell you a little bit about the National Institutes of Health.
00:04:48.15 The National Institutes of Health is made up of 27 institutes and centers shown here.
00:04:53.00 Centers are smaller than institutes.
00:04:56.20 National Institute of General Medical Science is here and
00:05:00.00 is one of the institutes and is shown here next to the
00:05:02.05 National Eye Institute and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
00:05:08.10 NIGMS is the fourth largest institute in terms of budget.
00:05:13.01 We really have two missions, two overarching missions.
00:05:15.24 The first is to promote fundamental research on living systems
00:05:19.15 in order to lay the foundations for advances in disease diagnosis,
00:05:23.21 treatment and prevention.
00:05:25.21 The second mission, which is related to the first,
00:05:28.21 is to enable the development of the best trained, most innovative and
00:05:32.07 productive biomedical research workforce we possibly can.
00:05:36.17 Now I'll just highlight this phrase here,
00:05:38.26 lay the foundation because that really is fundamentally what we are doing.
00:05:43.29 The research that we fund in universities across the country,
00:05:47.13 the training that we fund at universities and schools across the country
00:05:51.02 is designed to lay the foundation on which the other institutes
00:05:56.17 which are focused on diseases and organ systems build their research efforts.
00:06:02.07 NIGMS has 5 scientific divisions.
00:06:05.27 They are the division of Training, Workforce Development & Diversity,
00:06:09.29 Cell Biology & Biophysics,
00:06:11.26 Genetics & Developmental Biology,
00:06:14.12 Biomedical Technology, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology and
00:06:19.07 finally Pharmacology, Physiology & Biological Chemistry.
00:06:23.19 Each of these divisions has a variety of program directors
00:06:26.27 who work and manage grants in particular areas of science within those divisional boundaries.
00:06:33.13 In 2014, NIGMS's budget was $2.36 dollars and
00:06:40.18 this pi chart shows how we spent that money,
00:06:44.15 how we invested that money.
00:06:46.19 89% of those funds went in to support extramural research.
00:06:51.02 So that is research that is conducted by professors, investigators all over the country,
00:06:56.02 universities and other research institutions outside the walls of NIH.
00:07:00.26 About 8% of the budget is invested in training and workforce development.
00:07:05.14 Again at universities and other schools across the country.
00:07:09.14 A small fraction of about 3% is required to run the institute and a very small fraction
00:07:15.07 much less than 1% is invested in a very small amount
00:07:19.09 of research that goes on on the NIH campus.
00:07:21.25 And actually almost all of that is devoted to a
00:07:23.24 single postdoctoral fellowship program called the PREP program.
00:07:27.14 So you can see that 97% of our budget goes to fund extramural research.
00:07:33.07 I just want to point that that $2.36 billion is not monopoly money.
00:07:39.01 This is hard-earned taxpayer money.
00:07:41.09 We take that very seriously at NIGMS and at NIH as a whole.
00:07:45.26 And our roles as good stewards of the taxpayers' money are really critical.
00:07:50.09 Fundamentally what our job is to ensure that the taxpayers' money is invested in
00:07:55.11 fundamental biomedical research in the most efficient and effective way as possible.
00:08:02.01 So one of the things we have been focusing on for a long time at NIGMS
00:08:07.08 is question-driven, investigator-initiated research.
00:08:11.01 Investigator-initiated research means that it is research which
00:08:15.11 the investigators decide would be good to do.
00:08:18.03 They are interested in certain questions.
00:08:20.00 They propose those questions and strategies on how to solve them.
00:08:23.13 Those proposals are reviewed by a panel of experts who decide
00:08:26.23 which are the best questions and the most likely to yield in important answers and
00:08:32.02 then we fund the best of those depending on how much funds we have available.
00:08:36.27 The alternative is what we call programmatic research in which
00:08:40.29 some group advices the NIH that we should fund particular areas
00:08:45.05 because of its importance for curing a certain disease for example.
00:08:48.24 And therefore we put investments in those targeted areas of science.
00:08:52.29 Now why do we focus so much on investigator-initiated research,
00:08:57.06 And it's because ultimately investigator-initiated research saves lives.
00:09:01.11 Let me just give you a few examples of what I mean by that.
00:09:04.06 So for example, studies of virus-resistant bacteria led
00:09:08.28 directly to the discovery of restriction enzymes.
00:09:11.26 Restriction enzymes cut up DNA and allow us to put it together in different ways.
00:09:16.28 And the discovery of restriction enzymes led directly to the
00:09:21.10 development of the entire biotechnology industry.
00:09:24.10 And the biotechnology industry as you may know
00:09:26.11 produces a wide variety of drugs and other important materials.
00:09:30.05 So for example, the production of insulin for use medically in humans or
00:09:34.07 human growth hormones or antibodies for medical use
00:09:37.22 all depended on the discovery of restriction enzymes.
00:09:41.27 Similarly studies of bacterial DNA replication led directly to the discovery of
00:09:47.14 cancer drug cisplatin which has saved hundreds of human lives.
00:09:52.28 Studies of proteases and DNA polymerases, enzymes
00:09:56.23 were essential for the development of anti-HIV drugs.
00:10:00.28 And finally the study of enzymes involved in cholesterol biosynthesis
00:10:05.11 and the signaling pathways that control these enzymes were essential
00:10:10.19 for the development of the statin drugs
00:10:12.23 for controlling cholesterol levels in humans.
00:10:16.16 So why we need to focus on investigator-initiated research.
00:10:20.26 We are trying to bolster our support for it and
00:10:24.08 that's because over the years that support has eroded for a variety of reasons.
00:10:28.22 So what this chart shows, on the y-axis here is
00:10:32.01 NIGMS funds that were invested in targeted research,
00:10:35.28 so that is that programmatic research I told you
00:10:38.10 about that is directed to specific scientific areas.
00:10:41.17 And that's these blue bars here.
00:10:43.04 And you can see that in the early 1990s,
00:10:45.09 a very small fraction, a small amount of NIGMS's budget
00:10:49.23 was invested in targeted research.
00:10:52.07 Between 1998 here and 2003 here you can see how it grew dramatically
00:10:59.01 and those were the years of NIH budget doubling and
00:11:02.04 it made a lot of sense when there is always new money coming into the system
00:11:05.03 during the doubling,
00:11:06.06 to invest some of it in these targeted research areas
00:11:09.18 to try to catalyze new areas of research,
00:11:12.01 try experiments in new ways of organizing research for example.
00:11:17.26 At this red line here, which is this other axis,
00:11:20.25 shows the percent of our grant portfolio that was
00:11:25.16 invested in investigator-initiated research.
00:11:28.01 And you can see again, it's sort of the reciprocal.
00:11:30.11 In the early 1990s, 99% of our portfolio was invested in investigator-initiated research.
00:11:38.01 Again during the budget doubling,
00:11:40.16 this fell to the point today where it is just about 80%.
00:11:46.05 So we went from 99% investigator-initiated to 80% investigator-initiated.
00:11:51.03 Now that the budget doubling is over, it seems quite important that
00:11:56.19 we re-equilibrate the system and bring this red line back up
00:12:01.01 to increase the amount of investigator-initiated research we support
00:12:04.07 and that is going to require bringing these blue bars down.
00:12:07.02 Now couple of other important questions that we are focusing on right now at NIGMS.
00:12:13.26 The first is can we develop more stable, flexible and
00:12:17.24 efficient ways to fund this question-driven investigator-initiated research.
00:12:23.01 In the current system, in which we fund lots of smaller projects,
00:12:27.10 each investigator breaks his or her research up into a number of different projects.
00:12:32.28 That is fairly unstable system because they could lose these grants fairly easily.
00:12:38.20 It is not flexible because the projects are very defined and described in advance.
00:12:43.17 And so we think that may be dampening investigators' willingness to take risks,
00:12:48.02 to be creative and in general
00:12:52.10 making the impact or the ambitiousness of their science
00:12:58.16 not quite as high as we would like it to be.
00:13:01.27 And so we are looking for experimental ways that we can see
00:13:05.13 if we can develop more stable, flexible mechanisms
00:13:08.09 hoping that this will increase the creativity, the willingness to take risks,
00:13:13.04 and the ambitiousness and thus give taxpayers' a bigger bang for their buck.
00:13:18.05 We also think that such mechanisms would be more efficient
00:13:21.12 in terms of allowing us to fund more science for taxpayers' money.
00:13:26.29 We are also asking how we can promote innovation and
00:13:31.04 experimentation in the training arena
00:13:33.27 to find the best models for biomedical education and training.
00:13:37.13 So you may say, well, we have been training scientists for decades
00:13:41.05 why do we need to find new models.
00:13:43.04 Aren't the ones we have perfectly good?
00:13:45.03 Well, let me show you something here.
00:13:46.24 So this is the graph I got from this paper from Biochemical Journal.
00:13:51.21 And what it shows on this axis here is basically
00:13:55.03 biomedical information they called percentage volume
00:13:58.16 which is the percent total defined as what it was in 2010.
00:14:02.10 You could think of it as biomedical information.
00:14:04.23 And it is told in several different lines.
00:14:07.02 The red line here is publications deposited in pubmed, the database.
00:14:13.19 The blue line here is structures of proteins and other macromolecules
00:14:18.17 deposited in the protein databank.
00:14:20.18 And the other lines there are sequence databases and
00:14:23.17 how many structures are deposited there.
00:14:25.25 Now what you can see in all these curves is that before about say 1990,
00:14:30.08 knowledge was growing linearly to some degree.
00:14:34.00 After sometime around 1990, you can see,
00:14:36.08 it takes off like a rocket and grows exponentially.
00:14:40.04 All these curves tell the same story.
00:14:42.20 And so at least the amount of information and therefore
00:14:46.14 some of the knowledge we had changed dramatically in last 2 - 2.5 decades.
00:14:51.27 And I think you will agree that many other things in science have changed as well
00:14:55.12 in that time period.
00:14:56.22 The complexity of what we know, the interconnectedness,
00:15:00.05 the need for inter-disciplinary research etc.
00:15:05.04 Now, if we put another axis on this graph
00:15:07.19 which is some measure of the biomedical graduate education model being used
00:15:13.20 that is the way we in which we teach graduate students,
00:15:17.12 it would tell a very different story.
00:15:19.07 So this graduate education metric would look like this orange line
00:15:23.00 that is completely flat.
00:15:24.26 So to our first approximation, since 1990,
00:15:27.15 when I started graduate school in fact,
00:15:30.03 very little has changed in how we educate graduate students.
00:15:34.17 And I think the difference in shapes of these two sets of lines,
00:15:38.02 the graduate education model and the biomedical knowledge model,
00:15:42.15 indicate that there may be some disconnect.
00:15:45.25 Things have changed dramatically in science and
00:15:48.19 they have not changed dramatically in how we educate scientists.
00:15:52.05 So I think it is possible at least that we are using the optimal models
00:15:56.02 right now to educate the next generation of scientists.
00:15:59.14 And we should therefore do some experiments
00:16:01.23 to try to find what the optimal models are in this new regime.
00:16:06.11 Now just to end,
00:16:07.28 if I have done my job and
00:16:10.04 convinced you had you should get involved somehow in scientific public service,
00:16:15.05 let me tell you how you might do that.
00:16:17.02 So if you are a trainee, a student or a postdoc in lab,
00:16:21.16 or researcher working full time in lab,
00:16:24.06 that doesn't mean you can't get involved in some way in public service in science.
00:16:28.21 You can, in particular through professional societies, find a wide variety of opportunities
00:16:34.03 to volunteer some of your time to get engaged in making the biomedical research process
00:16:39.08 more efficient and more effective.
00:16:42.21 If you would like to follow a full time track in this regard,
00:16:45.26 there are also a variety of ways you could do that.
00:16:49.02 One again is through the professional societies which have a number of jobs that require
00:16:54.15 scientific training to do.
00:16:56.26 You can also work in foundations that fund biomedical research and
00:17:02.15 help promote it in other ways.
00:17:04.13 If you would like to take the government track, as I have,
00:17:07.10 there are a variety of possibilities for instance,
00:17:09.24 program directors who manage grant portfolios,
00:17:12.22 as I mentioned, and promote science in different areas in a variety of ways.
00:17:16.12 Scientific review officers are essential scientists who run the reviews of grant applications
00:17:23.01 and make sure the best ones are the ones selected for funding.
00:17:27.22 Program analysts do a variety of tasks including evaluating our programs
00:17:32.24 and seeing how effective they are in helping us optimize them
00:17:35.22 if they aren't working as well as we would like them to.
00:17:37.23 And finally a variety of communications field such as writing is required
00:17:42.22 in order to tell the public what the science is that's been discovered.
00:17:47.10 And lastly, if this is a track you would like to explore,
00:17:51.16 couple of resources are the Presidential Management Fellowships
00:17:55.07 and the AAAS public policy fellowships
00:17:58.12 which are very competitive but if you do get one,
00:18:01.11 they are excellent ways to get experience in scientific public service.
00:18:07.01 Thanks for watching.
00:18:08.29 I hope to come back sometime.

This Talk

Speaker: Jon Lorsch

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: March 2014

Talk Overview

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) distributes over 2.3 billion dollars per year to scientific research and workforce development. In this talk about scientific public service, Jon Lorsch, who became Director of NIGMS in 2013, talks about why he transitioned into administration and leadership from a research faculty position and discusses NIGMS’s mission of funding the best question-driven, investigator-initiated research, and training a successful biomedical workforce.

Ask Jon Lorsch your questions about the NIGMS, the NIH and the current state of research and the biomedical workforce, May 7th, 1 PM EDT/10 AM PDT: Jon Lorsch iBiology Live Q&A

Speaker Bio

Jon Lorsch

Jon Lorsch is the Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the National Institutes of Health. As Director, he leads the execution of NIGMS’s mission to promote advances in scientific research and biomedical workforce training. Lorsch came to NIGMS from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a professor in the Department… Continue Reading