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After several years under acting presidents, the Salk Institute finally has a full-time leader: cell biologist Thomas Pollard. His agenda includes beefing up the endowment and expanding the research base
LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA-One day last April, Thomas Pollard found message slips on his desk from two prominent researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the acclaimed basic research institute here that regally looks out on the Pacific Ocean. Pollard, then head of the cell biology and anatomy department at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, thought it odd to hear from these two men in the same day. "This was highly suspicious," says Pollard. "I might get a phone call from one of them every 2 years." He soon learned the reason for their calls: A search committee had identified him as the lead candidate to be the Salk's president, a job opening the committee had mightily tried to fill with a high-profile scientist-ideally a Nobelist-since 1994. The job, says Pollard, "had never crossed my mind."
The name Thomas Pollard had never crossed the minds of many of the more senior people at the Salk, either. Although the 54-year-old Pollard is a respected authority on how cells move about and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, many researchers at the Salk had never even heard of him. "He's not a household name," acknowledges the Salk's Anthony Hunter, one of the researchers who had phoned him that day. But the Salk staff is roundly delighted that Pollard decided in June to take them up on their offer, and they have high hopes that he can help right the institution's long-standing financial woes and provide a coherent vision of where it is heading scientifically. "Suddenly his name came up and it seemed so obvious," says search committee member Bart Sefton, a 22-year veteran of the Salk who studies how cells multiply.
One reason that Pollard seemed such an obvious choice, at least in retrospect, is his extensive involvement in the world of science outside his own lab: His background includes stints as president of both the American Society for Cell Biology and the Biophysical Society, and he currently chairs the Commission on Life Sciences at the National Research Council. "I think...