The rockefeller university

After a series of weekly meetings held throughout the fall and winter, the university’s strategic planning committee, chaired by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has identified several themes that will likely become central elements of the plan’s first draft. The final plan is to be presented to the Board of Trustees in June.

The planning process began with discussions of Rockefeller’s identity and mission, and the committee quickly reaffirmed the university’s long-standing commitment to fundamental science and its application to human biology, along with the more recent focus on fostering collaborations both internally and externally.

Although the committee is also looking into many aspects of the university’s operations, including its facilities, fundraising plans, graduate and postgraduate education programs, core resource centers and long-term finances, a major emphasis of the new plan will be on faculty recruitment, which is critical to sustaining the university’s scientific mission. “The strategic planning committee has strongly endorsed the open search for tenure-track faculty, which has been a great success and has led to numerous exceptional hires,” says committee member Cori Bargmann, head of the Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, who is also chair of this year’s faculty recruitment committee. “The search has taken advantage of the wisdom of the entire faculty, who have been involved in all stages of the process. Where there is room for improvement is in our ability to reach all of the best candidates across all fields, beyond those who respond to our ads.”

The committee has also addressed questions of how many faculty members the university should be recruiting annually, and what should be the mix between tenure-track and mid-career hires. “Rockefeller has been well served by mid-career hiring in the past, and it provides an opportunity to fill in demographic or scientific gaps and create new prospects for collaboration,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. The committee is considering recommending that about a dozen tenure-track and perhaps half as many mid-career hires be made over an eight-year period.

To that end, the 2011–2012 open search for tenure-track faculty is already well under way (see “Faculty recruitment to benefit from $10 million gift,” page 2), and a process for identifying potential mid-career hires will be created. Current faculty have already submitted around 140 names of distinguished scientists who might be recruitment targets. “We intend to consider these in small groups based on a variety of criteria including field of specialty, in order to generate a short list that can then be reviewed by a committee representing all areas of research,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. Although a precise mechanism has not yet been identified, the strategic planning committee also recommends continuing to pursue exceptional individuals in an ad hoc way when the opportunity arises.

A second key theme of the strategic plan will be on strengthening the university’s commitment to science-based medicine. “Increasingly biomedical research is moving from animal models to studies in humans, and our clinical facilities and long tradition of translational studies put us in a unique position to lead this transformation,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. “The ultimate aim is to facilitate and accelerate the application of science to medicine by removing impediments to translation.”

In more concrete terms, this means creating new initiatives to support The Rockefeller University Hospital, lowering barriers to conducting clinical trials and securing funding to move research from the lab to the clinic. Currently or in the recent past, 33 of the university’s labs — nearly half — have or had at least one human subjects research protocol.

    The committee has also suggested the creation of a new research center to be based on a broad but cohesive theme — genetic medicine — which would work to establish the hospital as a leader in translating the clinical implications of DNA sequence variants identified by whole genome sequencing. It is widely believed that this endeavor will in time have a transformative effect on medical practice.

“There’s currently a significant opportunity for a program in medical research that seeks to establish the clinical significance of DNA variants that cause human disease or that contribute to normal phenotypic variation,” says Jeffrey Friedman, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, who chairs a working group devoted to developing the concept. “The implications of this program would be pervasive as this objective is at the core of the concept of ‘personalized medicine’ and is likely to become a key element of many clinical research programs in the coming years.”

Objectives of the Center for Human Variation and Personalized Medicine would be to identify DNA variants that have large clinical effects, establish the distinct clinical features of the patients who carry them and understand how those patients respond differently to specific therapies.

“The new center would provide an intellectual framework for The Rockefeller University Hospital and the university itself, and could serve as a nidus for interactions among Rockefeller faculty and investigators at other New York institutions, including the New York Genome Center,” says Dr. Friedman.

Establishing such a center would require hiring new faculty devoted to the study of genetic disease and bioinformatics as well as enhancing some hospital capabilities. “This not only has the potential to generate breakthrough knowledge about the origins of disease, but it is an opportunity to build our expertise in several important areas, including bioinformatics,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. “It also takes advantage of the unique resources provided by the university’s research hospital, leverages significant existing strengths among the faculty and complements the genomic capabilities of the citywide genome center.”

Finally, the strategic planning committee is working to develop a master plan for the university’s buildings and infrastructure. Although the most pressing infrastructure issues have now been addressed with renovations to Smith, Flexner and Welch Halls, other facilities will soon need repair. “The development of a master plan will give us a global look at the need for repairs, renovations and renewal of all our buildings in the 5, 10, 20 and 100 year time frames, and give us the perspective to help make decisions about our infrastructure and invest wisely in capital projects,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. The last time a master plan was created was in the late 1990s, under President Arnie Levine.

After evaluating bids from 13 architectural firms, the university’s administration chose Rafael Viñoly Architects to prepare the master plan, and formed a committee to work with them. In addition to Dr. Tessier-Lavigne and five faculty members — Dr. Bargmann, Dr. Friedman, Jeff Ravetch, Vanessa Ruta and Mike Young — the committee includes John Tooze, vice president for scientific and facility operations, Alex Kogan, associate vice president for plant operations, and George Candler, associate vice president for planning and construction. This committee has been reporting regularly to the strategic planning committee as a whole.

Rafael Viñoly Architects, a New York based firm with extensive experience working with educational and biomedical clients throughout the world, will document the current conditions and expected longevity of all the university’s structures, including laboratory spaces, support facilities and housing. They will also conduct an analysis of zoning regulations and air rights to determine where new buildings are feasible. Their final report, to be completed this summer, will include their findings as well as several proposals for how and where the university’s needs for different kinds of space can best be accommodated, and at what costs. Although the architects’ proposals may suggest the placement and size of new buildings, they will stop short of proposing actual building designs.

“The architects’ instructions are to provide us with options at all levels, emphasizing modular forms that could be constructed in phases depending on our needs,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. “We have asked them to be respectful of the unique and historic nature of our campus and of the spirit of the existing Dan Kiley designed landscape.”

A draft report, delivered to the committee in late January, weighed the costs of refurbishing the Bronk building against new phased construction to be located in any of several areas, including over the FDR Drive, where the university owns air rights.

“I want to emphasize that we are looking at this document not necessarily as a blueprint for what we will specifically build in the coming years, but as a tool to help us understand our options,” says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne. “It can also help guide our decision-making about more pressing infrastructure issues such as those we are facing in Bronk and our graduate student residences.”

Although work from the master planning process is informing the strategic plan, it is in many ways an independent project, says Dr. Tessier-Lavigne, and it will continue even after the strategic plan is complete. In the shorter term, the committee is also exploring various ways in which the campus environment might be enhanced in a cost-effective way, increasing its appeal for potential graduate students and faculty recruits as well as current faculty and staff.

Faculty recruitment to benefit from $10 million gift

While efforts to refine the faculty recruitment process continue to be developed by the strategic planning committee, the search for the best and brightest new lab heads continues. A new gift to support faculty recruitment, received from the Robertson Foundation in November, will support that search by funding the establishment of up to eight new tenure track investigators over five years.
The Robertson gift, which is $10 million, is structured as a challenge grant: it will fully fund the recruitment of the first, third, fifth and seventh new faculty member provided that the university is able to raise money for the second, fourth, sixth and eighth. It will pay up to $2.5 million over three years toward startup costs for each researcher it funds.
The Robertson Foundation was established in 1996 by hedge fund manager Julian H. Robertson Jr., and his family, and makes grants in education, the environment, medical research and religion and spirituality. Mr. Robertson, chairman and chief executive officer of Tiger Management, has been a member of the university’s Board of Trustees since 2001.
“Julian Robertson’s generous gift provides support specifically for tenure track scientists just starting out in their careers, when they are engaged in the expensive process of outfitting and staffing their labs,” says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the university’s president. “These young investigators, who are tackling some of the most challenging problems in science, contribute greatly to the university’s intellectual environment.”
“Julian’s timely gift comes just as we have depleted the funds that paid for our previous rounds of faculty recruitment,” says Russ Carson, chair of the university’s Board. “Thanks to his support, the university can pursue its ambitious faculty recruitment efforts and set up its newest faculty members for success.”
The university’s current cycle of faculty recruitment, begun in August, has yielded 508 applicants, of which 11 have been invited to campus for interviews — four women and seven men. As in past years, the search committee consists of subgroups in each of eight fields to identify qualified candidates who are then evaluated by the full committee. The search committee is chaired by Cori Bargmann, head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, and co-chaired by Robert Darnell, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-Oncology; it consists of 20 additional members.
The university’s spring 2012 faculty search begins March 15.