Getting things done—in the lab and beyond

Abstract

Dr Geoff Watts has been talking to the Spring Meeting’s two keynote speakers, Sir Mark Walport, Chief Scientifi c Adviser to HM Government, London, UK, and Dr Nitzan Rosenfeld, Group Leader, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Cambridge, UK, winner of the 2015 Foulkes Foundation Medal. One of the keynote speakers at this year’s Spring Meeting for Clinician Scientists in Training is Sir Mark Walport, former Director of the Wellcome Trust and now the UK Government’s Chief Scientifi c Adviser. The other speaker is Nitzan Rosenfeld, Head of the Laboratory of Circulating DNA and Molecular Diagnostics at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. Walport has long been involved in helping to fashion a supportive framework for biomedical research; as an active research worker Rosenfeld is, indirectly, among the benefi ciaries of such a framework. A policy man and a practitioner— each contributing to the achievements of biomedical science in the UK. Walport took up the Chief Scientifi c Adviser post in 2013 and now advises not just on policy in biomedicine but throughout the whole of science, technology, and engineering. In the earlier part of his career he too was focussed, like Rosenfeld, not on the big picture but on the particular. In his case it was immunology. With a medical degree from Cambridge, Walport began specialising in rheumatology before consolidating his research skills with a PhD supervised by Prof Peter Lachman, a scientifi c mentor who also taught him, he says, that “careers can’t be planned”. With or without planning he joined the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, becoming a professor of medicine and, by the time he moved to the Wellcome Trust in 2003, Chairman of the Division of Medicine of Imperial College, London. Taking on the directorship of the Trust refl ected his emerging taste for leadership, a taste developed during his time at Hammersmith. He had discovered that he enjoyed getting things done. “I’d sort of begun to categorise the world into two halves. There were people who got together and whinged, and then there are others who felt that if they wanted something sorted out they’d better do it themselves.” First hand experience of research is crucial in directing a body like the Wellcome Trust, says Walport. “It’s very diffi cult to be fair and humane in running a grant funding agency if you’ve never yourself applied for grants and, from time to time, been rejected. And the experience of having been a participant in the research process was absolutely critical.” This familiarity also played into another of his objectives: to promote biomedical research more generally and foster circumstances in which it can fl ourish. While the starting point of UK-based funding agencies is naturally enough to nurture home-grown talent, science is nothing if not international. Rosenfeld is one of countless foreign-born scientists who have thrived in the UK during recent decades. Born in Israel he studied physics at Technion in Haifa, but decided by his second year to move towards biology. He has what he describes as “an affi nity for more tangible things”. By that he means that whereas much cutting edge work in physics is directed at the very large (astrophysics) or the very small (particle physics), he feels more at home in the middle range: something the size of a cell. More specifi cally, in his case, a cancer cell. While working on cell lines as part of his PhD Rosenfeld realised, to his disappointment, how little he knew of practical value to the health of his father, at that time suff ering from lung cancer. “This drove me to do more applied things.” Looking beyond the academic world he joined an Israeli biotech company, Rosetta Genomics, and worked on microRNA-based molecular diagnostics. Although he became the company’s Head opportunities should be seized with both hands. The Academy’s Spring Meeting for Clinician Scientists in Training is a great opportunity to interact with investigators across a wide range of disciplines and to extend your network in a way that will benefi t your future career. Robert Lechler Academy of Medical Sciences, London W1B 1QH, UK; and University College London, London, UK Robert.lechler@acmedsci.ac.uk.