Scripps Research Scientific Board Meets in Florida
The Scripps Research Institute's Board of Scientific Governors
convened last week for the first time in Palm Beach County,
Florida, where a new Scripps Research campus is planned.
"Members of the scientific board were engaged and thoughtful
in discussions about how best to approach the new Florida
operations," says Keith McKeown, vice president of communications
and public relations. "They were eager to learn about the
opportunities in Florida and to help the institute with their
ideas and suggestions."
The Board of Scientific Governors—which is composed
of 17 members, 11 of whom are Nobel laureates—meets annually,
usually in La Jolla, California, to advise the institute's
president on matters of scientific inquiry and policy.
In the meeting last Thursday and Friday at the Breakers
hotel in Palm Beach, the group heard presentations from Scripps
Research scientists. Professor Peter Schultz, Scripps Family
Chair who is also member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical
Biology at Scripps Research and director of the Genomics Institute
of the Novartis Research Foundation, spoke on his lab's work
on adding a 21st amino acid to organisms. Professor Steve
Kay spoke on his lab's research on circadian rhythms. Professor
Charles Weissman, who was recently appointed head of Scripps
Florida science, spoke on his work on prion disease, a timely
topic given the recent identification of mad cow disease in
the United States.
Members of the Scripps Research scientific board also toured
laboratory space on the main campus of Florida Atlantic University
(FAU) in Boca Raton. Scripps Research scientists in Florida
will first be working at FAU's Boca Raton campus, then at
FAU's Jupiter campus, while permanent facilities are being
built. Construction of the new facilities is scheduled to
be complete in late 2006.
On Thursday evening, Governor Jeb Bush hosted a reception
and dinner for the members of the Scripps Research Board of
Scientific Governors, community leaders, local legislators,
and members of the Scripps Florida Funding Corporation, the
state board that controls the state's grant to the institute.
The events were covered in the local Florida press. Headlines
in The Palm Beach Post read "Nine Nobel Laureates Coming
to Palm Beach" and "Science Heavyweights Hitting Palm Beach."
A Sun-Sentinel headline announced "Scientists Weigh
in on Future of Scripps."
New members of the Board of Scientific Governors are Raymond
Dwek of Oxford University, who is an eminent biochemist; Sir
H.W. Kroto of Engand's University of Sussex, who won a Nobel
Prize in 1996 for his discovery of a molecular form of carbon;
and Sydney Brenner of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA,
who won a Nobel Prize in 2002 for discoveries concerning genetic
regulation of organ development and programmed cell death.
Other members of the Scripps Research Board of Scientific
Governors include:
- Nobel laureate Gunter Blobel of The Rockefeller University,
New York, NY;
- Nobel laureate Michael S. Brown of The University of
Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX;
- Jean-Pierre Changeux of the Institut Pasteur, Paris,
France;
- Samuel Danishefsky of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center and Columbia University, New York, NY;
- Mitchell Feigenbaum of The Rockefeller University, New
York, NY;
- Nobel laureate Edmond Fischer of the University of Washington,
Seattle, WA;
- Nobel laureate Wally Gilbert of Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA;
- Nobel laureate Joseph L. Goldstein of The University;
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
- Nobel laureate Paul Greengard of The Rockefeller University,
New York, NY;
- Nobel laureate Har Gobind Khorana of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;
- Nobel laureate Aaron Klug of the Medical Research Council
Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England;
- Nobel laureate Phillip A. Sharp of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;
- George Whitesides of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA;
- Semir Zeki, University College, London, England.
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Dr. Walter Gilbert (left) and Dr. Gunter
Blobel at the Board of Scientific Governors meeting.
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