Former Celera IT Guru to Howard Hughes Medical Institute's New Janelia Farm

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced the appointment of five administrators to operate the Janelia Farm Research Campus, which is expected to open later this year in Ashburn, Va.

The campus, fully funded by HHMI, is a kind of 21st Century scientific set dedicated to biomedical research. Like many other new biology facilities across the country, it will have open spaces to encourage interaction between its resident and visiting illuminati.

Scientists at Janelia Farm will not have teaching, grant-writing, and administrative duties, they will have more time for informal interactions with their colleagues. To promote productive “collisions,” we have designed central meeting places, and people at Janelia Farm will have many opportunities to meet one another. These include the dining room, coffee hour, and an evening pub, as well as periodic social events in the evenings and on weekends (open to friends and families). More formal occasions will also be scheduled, such as weekly internal seminars.

A core goal of Janelia Farm is to free scientists from the need to write grant proposals and to allow them the freedom to change research direction without concern for the impact on their funding.

We at New Biology Economy like to think of it as the coffee-pot theory of cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration. Brew a pot of good coffee and the conversations will follow.

The folks who will create the infrastructure supporting this geek bonhomie, as announced by HHMI, follow:

Marshall Peterson, former chief technology officer at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and former vice president for infrastructure technology for Celera Genomics, and an aerospace engineer by education, will serve as director of information technology. Applying his experience in creating the computing infrastructure that supported Celera's private enterprise efforts in sequencing the human genome, Peterson, 58, will direct the design, implementation, and support of the scientific computing infrastructure for the $500 million campus, which will be focused on biomedical research and research on how information is processed by neuronal circuits, and on developing imaging technologies and methods for image analysis.

Reed George, 41, former senior program manager for the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, where he directed the project's DNA sequencing operations and its technology development group, will serve as director of scientific services, overseeing core labs in microscopy, instrument design, and molecular biology.

Joanne Theurich, formerly of DST Health in Williamsport, Pa., will serve as director of administration and finance, duties that will include managing technology transfer.

Howard Day will serve as director of facilities, overseeing the laboratory, conference, and housing spaces on the 300-acre campus along the Potomac River, while Jennifer Farris, former director of catering and conference services for The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, NC, will serve as director of campus services such as housing, dining, and a fitness center.

The organization is hiring. Click here to read more.

See previous New Biology Economy coverage from Thursday, June 30, 2005