New Life Sciences Initiative is still growing ... and looking for support

By Roger Segelken

Cornell's bold attempt to erase interdisciplinary boundaries and explore the biology of all living things, the so-called New Life Sciences Initiative (NLSI), just keeps on growing, initiative leaders told President Jeffrey Lehman at a Nov. 25 briefing in the Biotechnology Building.

Cornell New Life Sciences Initiative leaders, from left, Professors Richard Cerione, Michael Kotlikoff and Nelson Hairston Jr., reported on their focus areas at a president's briefing Nov. 25 in the Biotechnology Building. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

The president listened carefully to descriptions of new focus areas and reports of progress in the "major thrusts" of NLSI and the Genomics Initiative that preceded it. Lehman marveled at his genetic similarities to 80 million-year-old "proto mice," pledged the enthusiastic support of the Cornell administration and told NLSI researchers what they could do to help raise $600 million needed for the initiative.

Plant scientist Steven D. Tanksley opened the morning briefing with an initiatives history lesson, tracing the Genomics Initiative back to 1997 when a "major change in the way we research life" involved about 100 faculty members in six colleges. The Genomics Initiative -- and now NLSI -- will take Cornell "to a place beyond what any other university has envisioned," said Tanksley, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of plant breeding, and he credited the administration with being "incredibly supportive," before introducing Provost Biddy Martin.

"Working with biologists has been one of the most rewarding things I've done on campus," said the provost, who is a German literature and culture scholar. "You [biologists and other researchers] helped train us in the importance of being flexible," Martin said, promising to get NLSI's core facilities in place "as soon as possible" and reporting that the $600 million capital campaign for NLSI was "under way and in the 'friend-making' stage."

Bruce Lewenstein, associate professor of science communication, reported on one of the newer focus areas called ELSI, for Ethical, Legal and Social Issues, and said participating faculty members come from the technical and scientific, as well as the social science and humanities, communities. All ELSI participants have a common goal, Lewenstein said: "To increase the capacity of everyone in the community to have better-informed, richer discussions" about emerging issues in the life sciences.

Representing the Entrepreneurship and Business Innovations focus area, Deborah H. Streeter, the B.F. Failing Sr. Professor of applied economics and management, described efforts to "create a channel between discovery and the marketplace" and curricular innovations to get "scientists learning business and business students learning science." Among them, she said, is a fall-semester entrepreneurship class for freshmen and sophomores and a spring "boot camp" to encourage entrepreneurship in the life sciences.

Reporting significant progress in the major thrust areas were: Michael I. Kotlikoff, in functional and comparative genomics; Nelson G. Hairston Jr., in systems biology; Michael L. Shuler, in bioengineering and related areas; Richard A. Cerione, in physical sciences interface and basic biology; and Andrew G. Clark, in computational and evolutionary biology. More details are at the NLSI Web site: http://lifesciences.cornell.edu/.

Kotlikoff, professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, enumerated "strengths" that make Cornell the best place among its peers for the NLSI but also admitted to three "non-strengths," namely the need for more and better core facilities, a limited program in mammalian biology and insufficient facilities for transgenic mice. He said the newly established Center for Vertebrate Genomics should resolve some of the non-strengths and increase Cornell's capacity to study the genomes of all sorts of animals -- not just mammals and not just mice.

Cerione, the Goldwin Smith Professor of pharmacology and chemical biology, announced the establishment of the Cornell Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, which he said plans to recruit at least 12 new faculty members, and Shuler, the S.B. Eckert Professor in chemical engineering, predicted the start of a new academic department for biomedical engineering (or BME). In the meantime, Shuler said, undergraduates can now minor in BME, while graduate students can pursue that field in a master of engineering program or in a Ph.D. program that includes six weeks at Weill Cornell Medical College, "immersed in the medical-research and clinical culture," he said.

Hairston, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of environmental sciences and chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said three initiative programs -- neuroscience, biogeochemistry and biocomplexity, and molecular and chemical ecology -- that span as many as five colleges "all make Cornell a stronger, more interactive and exciting place for the life sciences."

Lehman, apparently intrigued with the description by Clark, professor of molecular biology and genetics and of ecology and evolutionary biology, of how computational genomics helps evolutionary biologists learn the many similarities in the murine and human genomes, exclaimed that it had taken 80 million years "to find an ancestor of mine that was a proto-mouse." Nevertheless, Lehman said, he is enthusiastic about the future of NLSI, describing himself as "fully committed" and promising that NLSI "is going to be at the center of my presidency."

That didn't stop a skeptical Watt W. Webb, the S.B. Eckert Professor in engineering and professor of applied physics, from asking, during a brief question-and-answer period that followed the 90-minute briefing: "Where are we going to get 600 megabucks?"

NLSI is at the center of fund-raising at the university, Lehman replied, and already "over $100 million is in hand." Referring to coast-to-coast NLSI symposia held earlier this year for Cornell alumni (part of the "friend-making" phase that Martin had mentioned), Lehman continued: "We have to tell the story about what's happening here, a story that is inspiring and exciting to people of means. That [talking up NLSI] is going to be a big part of my role. And yours, too."