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The High Cost of Quality Science
Doing biology or chemistry—or any other science—these days almost always requires sophisticated laboratories and multi-million-dollar equipment. Faced with the possibility of massive cuts in government funding, Yale researchers are coming up with new ways to close the cost gap.
April 1996
by Bruce Fellman
When Margaret “Peg” Riley, an evolutionary biologist, came to Yale in 1991, the cost of purchasing the centrifuges, spectrophotometers, test tubes, and the like that her research required came to roughly $200,000. The University picked up the tab—and then some. Her workspace in the venerable Osborn Memorial Laboratories had just been overhauled as part of a $3.1 million renovation. And to help launch her research career, her department gave her a light teaching load for her first few years on the faculty. “The junior people are really sheltered to give them a head start,” she says.
In an era of multi-billion-dollar “big science” projects, the cost of getting Riley into the research business might not seem like much—until one compares it with the tariff associated with outfitting a humanities scholar, who often needs little more than office space, a word processor, and access to a library. Science, even relatively small-scale work like Riley's, is increasingly expensive. The tools of the modern scientific trade tend to be exotic, and costly. So costly, in fact, that Yale officials expect to spend an average of $300,000 to attract a junior faculty member in the sciences to Yale; equipping a laboratory worthy of a senior-level scientist can exceed $2.5 million.
In the past, federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health made it possible to look at these up-front costs as a kind of long-term investment: Good science—and scientists—attracted grants, and this money often more than made up for any initial expenses.
In Peg Riley’s case, for example, the fact that she walked into an up-and-running lab enabledher to start generating research results immediately, and, because she had time to seek out grants instead of teaching, Riley could turn her data into proposals for funding. “Yale’s support provided me with access to opportunities,” she says.
Riley’s science did the rest and has garnered sufficient funds, largely through the NSF, to carry her until the year 2000. Nor is her experience unique at Yale. A substantial amount of money flows through the Washington pipelines, says theoretical physicist Pierre Hohenberg, deputy provost for science and technology. During the last fiscal year, direct and indirect support for research brought $269 million to Yale. While the majority of the grant money was awarded to scientists at the Medical School, almost $64 million came to researchers on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. This figure represents, says Hohenberg, 22 percent of FAS income. “The only thing that brings in more money is tuition,” he notes.
But some members of Congress are proposing massive cuts in federal support for the kind of basic research practiced by academic investigators, and while no one can predict precisely what kind of budget will emerge, scientists at Yale and around the country are looking for ways to cope with what everyone expects will be a decline in support. At the University, this predicament arrives in concert with another high-cost problem. “Our standing in the research community is in many cases hampered by our facilities,” says Hohenberg.
To be sure, Science Hill is home to some superb labs. There’s the $35 million Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology, which was completed in 1993 and is clearly an example of that overused term, “state-of-the-art.” In addition, recent renovations of parts of the Osborn, Kline Chemistry, and J. Willard Gibbs buildings have brought the refurbished sections up to scientific muster. But this work, says Hohenberg, is just the beginning, and at present, he and a team of administrators and researchers are developing a master rehabilitation plan that may cost an estimated $200 million and take ten years to complete.
“We’re determined to go beyond simply keeping the engine running,” Hohenberg says. “We’re making a major commitment designed to significantly improve things, particularly in chemistry, forestry and environmental science, and biology.”
There is already an effort in the works to create an environmental science center in conjunction with the Peabody Museum of Natural History and Yale’s Institute for Biospheric Studies. And although at least some of the scientists who reside in the Kline Biology Tower have called for abandoning the building in favor of a new structure that better meets their needs, a program of extensive renovations to KBT is currently underway.
Some Science Hill buildings can be made to work, but others have simply outlived their usefulness. The Forestry School’s Greeley Laboratory needs to be replaced, says Hohenberg, and among the options under consideration is renovating the rest of Osborn and moving forestry research there, or building a new facility.
The neo-Gothic Sterling chemistry lab, however, is an example of a building that, though still sturdy enough, was designed for a breed of science that time has passed by. “The fate of Sterling is up in the air,” says Hohenberg, who explains that while planners have come up with “a broad spectrum of scenarios, all of which are, at the moment, feasible,” a likely strategy for improving chemistry involves both the renovation of the 1960s-vintage Kline chemistry lab and new construction.
But bricks and mortar are only part of the story. Equipping a laboratory can put a strain on any budget, particularly these days, when it is no longer possible to assume that federal grants will, as they have in the past, provide the funds for instrumentation and upkeep. In this era of uncertainty, Yale has, through a combination of financial muscle and a willingness to take risks, enabled researchers like Kurt Zilm, a professor of chemistry, to obtain costly equipment that instantly makes the University number-one in a particular area of science. Zilm, and at least half-a-dozen colleagues in chemistry, physics, molecular biochemistry and biophysics, and the Medical School, work with what is called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to dissect and understand the behavior of atoms and molecules.
Researchers at Yale have used NMR to study everything from the structure of nucleic acids involved in the genetic code to how thoughts are formed in the brain. The technology enables Zilm to understand the ways in which various metals interact with hydrogen, and this study in basic chemistry has practical applications in such areas as fuel cell technology, materials science, and drug development.
Pursuing such studies meant getting a more powerful machine, but money was an object. However, at the time Zilm began to look into fundraising options, the National Science Foundation had in place a program that provided matching grants for equipment. Money from the University helped attract a considerable amount of foundation and corporate support, and as a result, the chemist and his colleagues were able to add to their analytical arsenal not just the one advanced technology NMR machine they sought, but four NMR instruments, including one that is in its final stages of development. This 800-megahertz machine, the first of its kind, will form the core of the University’s High-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Laboratory, a modern facility that occupies retooled headquarters in the Kline chemistry building.
Zilm, who will direct the new lab, explains that going after such high-tech—and high cost—equipment was a gamble. But because “Yale understood the risks and was willing to back us,” he says, “we’re positioned very well for the next ten years.”
The University was not always so supportive, notes D. Allan Bromley, dean of engineering. In fact, science at Yale has suffered as a result of what he calls “bad decisions” made right after the end of World War II. “Many of the Ivies, and schools like MIT and Caltech, recruited scientists from the Manhattan Project and received whole trainloads of war surplus laboratory equipment,” says Bromley. Yale, however, didn’t jump on the research bandwagon. This hesitancy might have gone on forever, but in the late-1950s, nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was called in to evaluate the University’s scientific prowess. “Oppenheimer told the Corporation that the quality of science here was appalling and that Yale should be ashamed of itself,” says Bromley.
One way to upgrade would have been to follow the example set last decade by the University of Texas, the dean notes. Its science programs were lackluster, but armed with determination and about $150 million in state funding, that university “simply bought a bunch of Nobel laureates” and other scientific superstars, along with the equipment they required. “Money alone can do the job—if you have enough of it,” notes Bromley.
But these days, money is too tight here to pursue a similar strategy. To cope with the current funding environment, scientists must be both realistic and creative.
At Yale, the overall plan is to concentrate on strengths, while growing only in certain narrowly defined areas. For example, in engineering, the dean’s focus is to maintain excellence in the department’s already-established-and well-equipped programs in such areas as combustion, microelectronics, laser diagnostics, and acoustics. “Trying to become MIT makes no sense at all,” says Bromley. Still, he would like to expand somewhat and add specialties in environmental and biomedical engineering. But rather than rely on large infusions of cash, these new programs would take advantage of the “tremendous synergism” at Yale that enables researchers to cross disciplines and link up with existing people and equipment.
Another potential way to bring the high cost of science down is to pursue areas of inquiry that have money-making potential. “We estimate that Yale research will generate about $5 million in license fees and royalties in 1996,” says Gregory Gardiner, director of the Office of Cooperative Research, the University’s liaison between Yale researchers and businesses interested in the commercialization of science.
Ironically, perhaps, there has been an unforeseen benefit to such academic and corporate relationships. Numerous companies are dismantling substantial portions of their research facilities, and this trend has created opportunities to procure what Dean Bromley calls “first-rate instrumentation” at bargain basement prices. “We’ve been very adroit at getting surplus machinery at low-or no-cost,” he notes, pointing to valuable equipment that Yale recently obtained from both Nanometrics and Amoco. In 1986, Bromley, who served as science adviser to George Bush '48 and is no stranger to the inner workings of the federal government, wound up with a NASA cast-off that vastly improved the University’s program in probing the structure of the atomic nucleus. And while he acknowledges that the prevailing budget-slashing orientation of Congress may lead to the closing of some of this country’s 726 federal laboratories—a possibility the dean terms “painful”—Yale will be first in line for any equipment that becomes available. “We’re prepared to move fast,” says Bromley.
Besides developing innovative funding packages, pushing scientific discoveries in a profit-making direction, and seeking out high-quality surplus, the University has found other ways to make science more affordable. One time-honored method, of course, is to cooperate with other institutions. This strategy has already resulted in the recently completed WIYN telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona. Yale invested $3 million, which gives it a 17 percent share in the sophisticated instrument, a joint venture of the University, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the universities of Wisconsin and Indiana. Because the instrument will soon be fully accessible from special computer terminals in New Haven, astronomers won’t even have to leave home to view the heavens.
Because of computer networks, “where you are is often irrelevant,” says Sabatino Sofia, chairman of the astronomy department. Sofia’s work, which involves making precise measurements of the changes in the sun’s diameter—research of key importance to scientists studying the Earth’s climate—is itself an illustration of the science-without-borders cooperation that many see increasing in the future. The astronomer’s laboratory is actually located at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Sofia gathers his data with an instrument he designed for use on high-altitude balloons launched by NASA in their facilities in the southwest.
In addition to this sharing of equipment and laboratories, both among departments and among other research institutions, another certain area of growth in these challenging times, say scientists and administrators alike, is putting discoveries and technologies developed for one purpose to new uses. For example, two years ago, Charles Baltay, chairman of the physics department, was perfecting instruments known as CCDs, which were to be used to detect the subatomic particles created by the Superconducting Supercollider, a giant atom smasher designed to reveal details about the fundamental nature of matter. The $11 billion project died when Congress eliminated its funding, but Baltay and Sofia are currently attempting to modify the CCD technology the physicist devised and use it to search the edges of space for answers to questions about the age and fate of the universe.
Such surprising utility is, after all, why basic research, however expensive, continues to be considered a worthwhile investment. A case in point can be found in Peg Riley’s lab. Her seemingly esoteric studies on the evolution of self-defense strategies among intestinal bacteria were sufficiently well funded that the biologist was able to apply her expertise to a project that, at first glance, appeared to have nothing whatsoever to do with her specialty. Riley is now working on understanding and chronicling the emergence of a lethal bacterial strain that kills people suffering from cystic fibrosis. “My initial research had no medical relevance,” says the biologist, “but what I’ve found recently may help cystic fibrosis patients lead longer, happier lives. Funding pure science can have unexpected results.”  |
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