WEBVTT 00:00:06.740 --> 00:00:08.740 today is May eight 2019. I am Kathleen Church, retired professor of 00:00:15.970 --> 00:00:18.806 genetics and administrator. 00:00:18.839 --> 00:00:25.556 Um The technical support staff today include Barry McNeill, who is the 00:00:25.589 --> 00:00:32.807 video history project chair, john McIntosh on camera, 00:00:32.840 --> 00:00:40.840 roger carter on audio and linda vance. Coy doing everything 00:00:45.240 --> 00:00:51.177 to begin with. Would you introduce yourself and tell us what position you 00:00:51.210 --> 00:00:59.210 held at A. S. U. When you retired? I'm charlie Arnson. Uh When I retired I 00:00:59.450 --> 00:01:05.546 was a professor in the school of Life sciences and a scientist in the bio 00:01:05.579 --> 00:01:13.579 design institute. Uh I had uh no, I was stopped. 00:01:14.739 --> 00:01:19.206 Can you tell us a little bit about your early childhood where you grew up 00:01:19.239 --> 00:01:24.947 ? What were your interests? What compels you to become a plant 00:01:24.980 --> 00:01:30.296 physiologist? Well, first of all, I grew up in the prairies of western 00:01:30.329 --> 00:01:37.137 Minnesota, small family farm, a wonderful life. But I think my interest in 00:01:37.170 --> 00:01:42.766 science was piqued. When my dad took me out in one of the first evenings 00:01:42.799 --> 00:01:47.596 when Sputnik went over. Uh some folks in my age will remember that it was 00:01:47.629 --> 00:01:53.607 pretty dramatic phenomenon of seeing this thing streaking across the sky. 00:01:53.640 --> 00:01:58.247 And he said uh someday you're going to be an engineer and you'll 00:01:58.280 --> 00:02:04.486 understand all this. So he he was directing me. Uh don't plan to be a 00:02:04.519 --> 00:02:08.906 farmer, you're going off to college and you know, learn to be an engineer. 00:02:08.939 --> 00:02:14.406 Now that said, I did go off to college, but engineering wasn't what I 00:02:14.439 --> 00:02:21.906 pictured. I had also gotten my dad's love of rocks but geology and I 00:02:21.939 --> 00:02:25.837 decided I was going to be a geophysical engineer. I wanted to go off and 00:02:25.870 --> 00:02:31.077 explore for oil. This was back in the time when uh there's all sort of 00:02:31.110 --> 00:02:36.346 romantic notions about finding oil in Saudi Arabia and so I wanted to be 00:02:36.379 --> 00:02:44.379 uh geophysicist. Um I pursued that first at Oxford College, then the 00:02:44.449 --> 00:02:52.066 University of Minnesota until I got married in my, I guess it was 3rd Year 00:02:52.099 --> 00:02:59.196 After High School. Uh And then my wife and I have had a wonderful life for 00:02:59.229 --> 00:03:03.696 Together for 56 years since that time. But one of the first things she 00:03:03.729 --> 00:03:09.346 suggested to me that her idea of going off into a desert looking for 00:03:09.379 --> 00:03:14.547 petroleum was about the farthest thing away from reality that she could 00:03:14.580 --> 00:03:20.147 imagine. So I switched degrees. Uh and at the time I went into mathematics 00:03:20.180 --> 00:03:26.397 , didn't enjoy that very much, but I started working and worked for a 00:03:26.430 --> 00:03:31.307 plant biologist at the University of Minnesota and fell in love with what 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:36.786 he was doing. It was just fascinating to me and it sort of brought back 00:03:36.819 --> 00:03:40.936 the plant biology that I'd grown up with on a farm, but in a different, 00:03:40.969 --> 00:03:45.136 quite a different way, much more of a molecular cell biology way of 00:03:45.169 --> 00:03:52.307 thinking about things uh being in that environment allowed me to take a 00:03:52.340 --> 00:03:56.976 course in electron microscopy. Uh The guy who was teaching the course, 00:03:57.009 --> 00:04:04.196 Bill Cunningham became a mentor of mine as much as my advisor. Uh He 00:04:04.229 --> 00:04:10.106 introduced the love of ultra structure and seeing small things and cells. 00:04:10.139 --> 00:04:15.247 Um And essentially arranged for me to go and do my PhD with his former 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:20.277 mentor at Purdue University. So I did, I completed a bachelor's and 00:04:20.310 --> 00:04:25.467 master's at the University of Minnesota, took me about seven years to do 00:04:25.500 --> 00:04:30.846 all that. I should add that one year. I wasn't in school because they 00:04:30.879 --> 00:04:36.046 kicked me out because my grades were so bad. But that was before I married 00:04:36.079 --> 00:04:41.387 my wife, subsequent after marriage, I was a minus student the rest of the 00:04:41.420 --> 00:04:46.406 way through. So I just needed a little bit of mental discipline guidance I 00:04:46.439 --> 00:04:51.817 guess you'd say. But I went off to Purdue, finished my doctorate there in 00:04:51.850 --> 00:04:59.606 about 2.5 years uh and did a postdoctoral study at the Charles Kettering 00:04:59.639 --> 00:05:05.017 Institute in Yellow Springs Ohio, which led to a position at the 00:05:05.050 --> 00:05:09.007 University of Illinois. My first academic position. 00:05:09.040 --> 00:05:14.717 Well let's start then with your academic position of the University of 00:05:14.750 --> 00:05:22.267 Illinois and kind of trace your career path. But what you did between the 00:05:22.300 --> 00:05:29.147 time you or at the University of Illinois and ended up in the desert at A 00:05:29.180 --> 00:05:35.687 S. U. My career path has been a long and tortuous one. So bear with me. 00:05:35.720 --> 00:05:41.616 But I started the University of Illinois teaching introductory botany. Um 00:05:41.649 --> 00:05:46.036 It was interesting for me because I'd really never had a good course in 00:05:46.069 --> 00:05:50.926 introductory introductory botany. So I studied in the evenings and stayed 00:05:50.959 --> 00:05:58.397 uh chapter ahead of the students for the first year. Um But anyway did 00:05:58.430 --> 00:06:05.127 well at it. They raided me well as a teacher. Uh I was gradually moved up 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:12.007 in the ranks at the University of Illinois. But after five years I was on 00:06:12.040 --> 00:06:16.166 a committee that worked with the U. S. Department of Agriculture at that 00:06:16.199 --> 00:06:21.517 point in time. In the mid seventies, USDA was under intense scrutiny by 00:06:21.550 --> 00:06:27.226 the general community of saying you don't do enough basic research. Uh And 00:06:27.259 --> 00:06:34.476 the head administrators in our Illinois area agreed and they came into my 00:06:34.509 --> 00:06:39.277 office one day and said we'd like to offer you a position with the U. S. D. 00:06:39.310 --> 00:06:44.726 A. And in a nutshell, the offer was simple. My salary would increase. I 00:06:44.759 --> 00:06:49.017 get some guaranteed research funding and I could stay in the same office 00:06:49.050 --> 00:06:53.156 in the same laboratory at the University of Illinois and it was a no 00:06:53.189 --> 00:07:00.976 brainer to me. I said yes I'll be happy to do it. Um So I was five years 00:07:01.009 --> 00:07:05.697 with the university in the university and then five years at Illinois with 00:07:05.730 --> 00:07:11.967 U. S. D. A. At the end of that period. I had gotten to full professor, I 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:16.267 would say one thing about Illinois, I never realized how good the 00:07:16.300 --> 00:07:21.786 university of Illinois was as a broad ranging school as a, you know, 00:07:21.819 --> 00:07:26.397 narrow focused assistant and working my way up professor, I never looked 00:07:26.430 --> 00:07:30.356 around to see what a great school was, but I looked back those years, I 00:07:30.389 --> 00:07:36.306 started at Illinois were wonderful. Um I had been supported quite well by 00:07:36.339 --> 00:07:40.647 the department of Energy that this was the basic research section and they 00:07:40.680 --> 00:07:45.937 were interested in solar energy conversion. So I was well funded through 00:07:45.970 --> 00:07:50.937 their grants and a position came open at Michigan State University. It was 00:07:50.970 --> 00:07:55.637 called the A. E. C. Plant Research Laboratory. Atomic Energy Commission 00:07:55.670 --> 00:08:01.366 which soon became the Department of Energy uh plant research lab. The 00:08:01.399 --> 00:08:05.257 director of that was retiring and they asked me if I'd be interested in 00:08:05.290 --> 00:08:10.137 moving up there. Kathie, my wife and I went up took a look at the area. 00:08:10.170 --> 00:08:16.187 Michigan state is beautiful campus. Um And so we moved to michigan State 00:08:16.220 --> 00:08:22.806 University. I was at Michigan State University uh expanding my research 00:08:22.839 --> 00:08:26.906 career but no longer teaching because I was now responsible for this 00:08:26.939 --> 00:08:31.476 department of Energy lab. It was the only D. O. E. Labs in the country 00:08:31.509 --> 00:08:36.407 that's focused on plant biology. So we had a lot of attention and sort of 00:08:36.440 --> 00:08:40.476 a lot of demands. And I really thought I was going to be staying there for 00:08:40.509 --> 00:08:46.496 a long time. But all of a sudden because of the research we were doing the 00:08:46.529 --> 00:08:51.756 Dupont company became interested and I got a call and said would you mind 00:08:51.789 --> 00:08:58.167 coming in and giving us a seminar in Wilmington Delaware. And while there 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:02.717 I was invited to go in and talk with Ed Jefferson the ceo of this whole 00:09:02.750 --> 00:09:08.636 vast company and he explained to me that he was trying to diversify Dupont 00:09:08.669 --> 00:09:14.837 , They were strictly a chemical company. He had a big study done and the 00:09:14.870 --> 00:09:20.057 one of the areas they thought they should get into his biotechnology and 00:09:20.090 --> 00:09:24.707 skipping all the details I happen to be doing things that were related to 00:09:24.740 --> 00:09:29.096 plant improvement, crop improvement. And so they heard me as a director of 00:09:29.129 --> 00:09:35.006 a new division. I moved after four years of Michigan State move to Dupont. 00:09:35.039 --> 00:09:42.476 Um I was uh in the first two years there I recruited 57 new scientists to 00:09:42.509 --> 00:09:49.846 start building a division uh that was affiliated with but not part of 00:09:49.879 --> 00:09:55.077 their agricultural division. And anyway, it was a marvelous period of time 00:09:55.110 --> 00:10:01.037 for me. I learned multidisciplinary research, I learned organism, you know 00:10:01.070 --> 00:10:05.687 , corporate organization of research. I learned how big teams of people 00:10:05.720 --> 00:10:10.057 can work together and the problems of how you try to get people to work 00:10:10.090 --> 00:10:13.746 together and cooperate. I learned about intellectual property and 00:10:13.779 --> 00:10:20.636 patenting and Dupont for me was like getting a master's degree or an MBA 00:10:20.669 --> 00:10:26.516 on steroids. It was a wonderful place to be. Um and then Ed Jefferson 00:10:26.549 --> 00:10:32.626 retired. We've got a new ceo uh he raised big questions of whether or not 00:10:32.659 --> 00:10:38.037 the company really had a future in biotechnology and I could understand we 00:10:38.070 --> 00:10:43.467 didn't have any medical division, we didn't have any seed division that 00:10:43.500 --> 00:10:51.136 would deliver improved crops. And uh I looked around at the time and by 00:10:51.169 --> 00:10:56.207 happenstance, a colleague of mine from texas a and M. University called up 00:10:56.240 --> 00:11:00.037 and he said, I'd like to fly up and just chat with you about what, what's 00:11:00.070 --> 00:11:04.417 happening at texas A and M, skip all the details. They offered me a 00:11:04.450 --> 00:11:10.657 position as Deputy chancellor for agriculture at texas A and M. Uh it was 00:11:10.690 --> 00:11:15.067 an uncertain time at Dupont. I didn't know if there was ever going to be a 00:11:15.100 --> 00:11:20.016 future for me there, which was a mistake. Two years later they bought high 00:11:20.049 --> 00:11:24.226 pioneer hybrid corn should have stuck with him, although I then I would 00:11:24.259 --> 00:11:31.667 have moved to Iowa and uh anyway, it, it ended up at texas A and M. Uh 00:11:31.700 --> 00:11:36.817 Again for me, one of the best things was a responsibility for me was to 00:11:36.850 --> 00:11:42.827 set up an institute in the medical center in Houston. And the idea was to 00:11:42.860 --> 00:11:47.726 bridge the animal science programs, the veterinary medicine programs of 00:11:47.759 --> 00:11:52.837 texas A and M. With the medical research community in this huge complex in 00:11:52.870 --> 00:11:58.496 Houston, it was great fun. We, I worked with the architects designed, I 00:11:58.529 --> 00:12:01.577 think it was a nine or 10 story building right in the middle of the 00:12:01.610 --> 00:12:07.047 medical center. And again when that building was finally finished, I 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:12.667 transitioned, moved set up a lab in that facility and was in there for 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:19.827 about three years. And then again I got another call this time from the 00:12:19.860 --> 00:12:24.967 Boyce, Thompson Institute at Cornell. Boyce, Thompson was a philanthropist 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:31.677 , started an institute in Yonkers new york, which he transitioned out to 00:12:31.710 --> 00:12:36.677 Cornell. It's a private 00:12:36.710 --> 00:12:42.657 not for profit organization They had at the time about a $65 million 00:12:42.690 --> 00:12:47.356 dollar endowment. But the endowment as I discovered when I got there was 00:12:47.389 --> 00:12:54.596 struggling a bit. Uh I I spent five years at the boys Thompson. I loved 00:12:54.629 --> 00:12:59.667 Cornell University and I loved that institute uh and had to go through 00:12:59.700 --> 00:13:04.047 some hard decisions but it taught me some new things how to phase out 00:13:04.080 --> 00:13:10.976 programs. Uh Set up an early retirement program. I think eight people took 00:13:11.009 --> 00:13:16.917 early retirement transition it all around started fundraising and built 00:13:16.950 --> 00:13:20.896 their endowment up almost doubled their endowment before I left. So I left 00:13:20.929 --> 00:13:27.846 them in a healthy state but I did leave and that relates to A. S. U. In 00:13:27.879 --> 00:13:31.337 that period of time when I was up there I came down and did a program 00:13:31.370 --> 00:13:37.167 review down here at A. S. U. I've gotten to know the campus, I certainly 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:43.567 knew the community because my mother and father, it was a photosynthesis 00:13:43.600 --> 00:13:50.157 program at A. S. U. That was scattered between chemistry at the time. The 00:13:50.190 --> 00:13:55.557 botany department, microbiology. There were departments at the time and uh 00:13:55.590 --> 00:13:59.876 it was a very strong program and it was supported well by milk click the 00:13:59.909 --> 00:14:05.787 provost and others. Uh And and they were looking to expand and if I 00:14:05.820 --> 00:14:09.157 remember correctly at the end of this review I was offered a position to 00:14:09.190 --> 00:14:13.807 come down and join them as a faculty member. But I was having too much fun 00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:19.726 at Cornell. It didn't seem like a good time to be thinking of moving, 00:14:19.759 --> 00:14:25.366 although I was impressed with the program they had now but I was familiar 00:14:25.399 --> 00:14:31.126 with this area because my father and mother in law, Cathy's parents lived 00:14:31.159 --> 00:14:37.787 in Mesa Arizona and so we would come down, not surprisingly we'd come down 00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:43.067 this christmas and and easter and when the weather was nice and well, I 00:14:43.100 --> 00:14:50.006 love the desserts as did Kathy. So after being at Boyce Thompson five 00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:57.006 years I was eligible for a sabbatical. And so I asked them for a 00:14:57.039 --> 00:15:00.547 sabbatical and I called people down here at A. S. U. And said could you 00:15:00.580 --> 00:15:05.827 find me space? I've got some grants, I'll move my money down there and 00:15:05.860 --> 00:15:10.976 bring some people along and spend a year with you guys. Uh and I came down 00:15:11.009 --> 00:15:18.167 to sort of firm up the things and somebody, I think it was the chairman of 00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:23.636 the botany or plant biology department ken, huber who set up a meeting 00:15:23.669 --> 00:15:29.476 with milk click and remember the details but it went something like milk 00:15:29.509 --> 00:15:34.476 saying, well why do you want to come down here and why only for a year, 00:15:34.509 --> 00:15:38.717 why don't we just give you a job and you can stay here which was milk 00:15:38.750 --> 00:15:44.907 Glick ish sort of behavior. It will just come right to the point and 00:15:44.940 --> 00:15:49.557 anyway they offered me a presidential endowed chair, I guess that was 00:15:49.590 --> 00:15:53.967 really laddie cours decision But between the two of them laddie and Milk 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:59.537 black. They they spelled out the details of an endowed chair. I've never 00:15:59.570 --> 00:16:03.756 had one sounded wonderful. There was some guaranteed funding that came 00:16:03.789 --> 00:16:11.789 with it every year for exploratory research. And uh and I asked my wife 00:16:12.039 --> 00:16:16.927 how would you feel about moving down to Arizona and it took her about 15 00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:22.376 milliseconds to say let's go. Uh frankly she didn't enjoy the winters up 00:16:22.409 --> 00:16:29.667 in uh Ithaca new york and was delighted that I would leave. Uh And it's 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:33.207 another place I have been in several places where I really thought I want 00:16:33.240 --> 00:16:37.126 to spend the rest of my life here, I loved Cornell, I love the area. But 00:16:37.159 --> 00:16:43.427 then a s. You came along and uh no at this point in my career I'm not 00:16:43.460 --> 00:16:48.106 moving again and I know I wouldn't get my wife to budge so. Well I I see 00:16:48.139 --> 00:16:53.457 from your credentials here that you've spent more time at a. S. U. Than 00:16:53.490 --> 00:16:58.837 any other one spot in your career path that says something about how much 00:16:58.870 --> 00:17:05.937 I like something right here. Yes. Well tell me about Milk and Laddie and 00:17:05.970 --> 00:17:13.970 Proposition 301. Well 1st of all I had instant feeling of harmony or 00:17:15.250 --> 00:17:19.607 something with milt and and uh I mean I didn't interact with laddie nearly 00:17:19.640 --> 00:17:24.986 as much but when I did I I thought he was so impressive. Just a delightful 00:17:25.019 --> 00:17:30.157 individual, so articulate and I like milk because he came to the point, 00:17:30.190 --> 00:17:33.927 there's no messing around, let's let's get to the point and get something 00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:40.697 done. I like the way both of them work. And in my case, I I really wanted 00:17:40.730 --> 00:17:45.617 to come down, I had a very active research program going and this is in uh 00:17:45.650 --> 00:17:51.147 1999. 2. Came down here in 2000. It was well funded. I just really thought 00:17:51.180 --> 00:17:56.617 , gosh, this is a time for me to focus on research. And then we got here, 00:17:56.650 --> 00:18:03.806 the november elections came along and Proposition 301 was on the ballot. 00:18:03.839 --> 00:18:09.076 And I started looking at a little more and discovered that I guess it was 00:18:09.109 --> 00:18:12.836 the latter in particular and Milton and the administration at A. S. U. 00:18:12.869 --> 00:18:18.157 That had been in a leadership role of getting this proposition to support 00:18:18.190 --> 00:18:23.326 expanded education in the state of Arizona sales tax increase with money 00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:27.766 going to the school system, The K through 12 school system. And then a 00:18:27.799 --> 00:18:33.786 portion I think I remember it like 15% of the total money would come to 00:18:33.819 --> 00:18:38.637 the three universities, University of Arizona, A S. U and N. Au. So anyway 00:18:38.670 --> 00:18:46.670 , that was happening and it passed and I don't know the next steps. But 00:18:46.940 --> 00:18:53.236 somehow, when I I'm quite good at figuring out where money is going and 00:18:53.269 --> 00:18:58.187 that's I've had enough experience with multiple jobs and managing budgets 00:18:58.220 --> 00:19:04.847 and all that. And uh some somehow or other. I was able to make a proposal 00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:10.187 to latvian milk and say let's use this money and create a new biomedical 00:19:10.220 --> 00:19:15.816 institute. And you probably will recall laddie at the time had expressed 00:19:15.849 --> 00:19:20.756 interest in having a medical school at A S. U. And in a sense I think he 00:19:20.789 --> 00:19:27.506 saw that this idea of a biomedical institute was a step towards that or 00:19:27.539 --> 00:19:32.256 something. Anyway, he liked the idea And so they took a substantial amount 00:19:32.289 --> 00:19:38.397 of the new money which came in in 2001 and put it towards the Arizona 00:19:38.430 --> 00:19:45.197 biomedical institute. Or as bio in my license plate on my car still says Z 00:19:45.230 --> 00:19:51.506 bile because I came in as the founding director to get this off the ground. 00:19:51.539 --> 00:19:59.539 I spent the first year in laying out a plan for what Az bio might be at A 00:20:00.039 --> 00:20:07.776 S. U. And and Cathy you'd probably remember this was at the time that this 00:20:07.809 --> 00:20:12.576 university was very department centric, everything happened in the 00:20:12.609 --> 00:20:19.857 departmental organizing organizing units. And I propose that we look at 00:20:19.890 --> 00:20:27.276 institutes like the sock or uh in the institute at M. I. T. And and other 00:20:27.309 --> 00:20:33.226 institutes that were parallel to but not part of the university 00:20:33.259 --> 00:20:38.627 departmental structure. We should set up a freestanding institute and laid 00:20:38.660 --> 00:20:43.177 out the idea that we would have our own building and uh and and a separate 00:20:43.210 --> 00:20:48.367 organizational structure. And for the first year I went around to the 00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:54.357 campus. I don't know how many departmental stops I made making this 00:20:54.390 --> 00:21:00.147 telling this story about how this was going to expand the influence of s 00:21:00.180 --> 00:21:04.607 you create a new way of bringing in grants support, etcetera, etcetera. 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:12.640 And I would say I met about 95% skepticism, or worse, it was. Most 00:21:13.509 --> 00:21:17.576 departments said, we've got brilliant people here, why don't we just take 00:21:17.609 --> 00:21:20.857 this new money divided up among all the departments and will do great 00:21:20.890 --> 00:21:28.117 things with etcetera, etcetera? And both Milt and laddie knew that that 00:21:28.150 --> 00:21:33.107 was not the way they wanted this to happen. It was to start something new. 00:21:33.140 --> 00:21:38.437 So I kept plowing ahead. I worked with the architects, we tried to find a 00:21:38.470 --> 00:21:44.506 spot of land to build a new institute. Fortunately it was chosen that it 00:21:44.539 --> 00:21:49.016 was going to be right in the corner on the edge of the Tempe campus, right 00:21:49.049 --> 00:21:54.467 across the street from the old where the law school used to be. Uh And I 00:21:54.500 --> 00:21:58.627 worked with the architects to lay out the first of these buildings and 00:21:58.660 --> 00:22:03.907 went with them. We traveled to the Salk Institute, we went up to Monsanto 00:22:03.940 --> 00:22:09.006 to see their labs in ST louis and came up with the idea that we build a 00:22:09.039 --> 00:22:16.016 building with a core open laboratory concept, which if you go over there 00:22:16.049 --> 00:22:21.816 and see it, it's the buildings that are built, have this pattern which was 00:22:21.849 --> 00:22:27.127 totally different from departmental structure. If we were bringing a new 00:22:27.160 --> 00:22:31.207 assistant professor into one of the traditional departments, he'd get a 00:22:31.240 --> 00:22:36.796 cubicle space, maybe, you know 600 square feet of lab with an adjacent 00:22:36.829 --> 00:22:42.766 office. And the implication that I was used to in academia was you're 00:22:42.799 --> 00:22:46.617 gonna spend the rest of your career in here so get settled and enjoy this 00:22:46.650 --> 00:22:53.476 space in these walls define your life. We set up an institute where there 00:22:53.509 --> 00:22:58.167 were no walls, it was like a bowling alley and all the lab benches were on 00:22:58.200 --> 00:23:02.306 wheels had quick connect of coming down from the ceiling. We could 00:23:02.339 --> 00:23:07.306 reconfigure space overnight if we needed to and the offices were in a 00:23:07.339 --> 00:23:11.877 across an open hallway along the side of the building with cubicles 00:23:11.910 --> 00:23:16.756 outside them for students and postdocs etcetera. But the whole concept was 00:23:16.789 --> 00:23:22.407 , anyone coming into this building is renting space, You have to have 00:23:22.440 --> 00:23:27.177 grant support and you have to generate. I think we started out with 00:23:27.210 --> 00:23:32.857 something around 275 or $300 of grant support per square foot of space 00:23:32.890 --> 00:23:38.026 that you were allowed and there was some breathing room. If a grant 00:23:38.059 --> 00:23:43.756 stopped but not for long term, if anybody lost their grant, don't worry, 00:23:43.789 --> 00:23:50.407 we'll find your space down campus somewhere. But it kept the pressure on. 00:23:50.440 --> 00:23:57.806 Um And again this wasn't necessarily a widely 00:23:57.839 --> 00:24:04.496 recognized or enthusiastically endorsed thing across campus because a. S. 00:24:04.529 --> 00:24:09.586 U. Like most universities at the time was very very traditional and had a 00:24:09.619 --> 00:24:17.066 history behind it. But I would say if you jump ahead To today or almost 20 00:24:17.099 --> 00:24:22.677 years later, The Bio Design Institute has expanded dramatically. The whole 00:24:22.710 --> 00:24:29.967 university now is bringing in over $600 million 2000, 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:35.796 but it was a small fraction of that and it's, this place has changed 00:24:35.829 --> 00:24:42.756 dramatically and so I'm proud, I guess is the term that I was involved in 00:24:42.789 --> 00:24:49.236 helping define a new strategy for A S. U. That was non departmental. And 00:24:49.269 --> 00:24:54.937 we had three goals of the bio or Arizona biomedical institute. One was 00:24:54.970 --> 00:24:59.657 that we would do multidisciplinary research. The second was that we would 00:24:59.690 --> 00:25:04.576 emphasize program projects, large projects that brought in support from 00:25:04.609 --> 00:25:09.447 multiple individuals. And the third point was, we would do things in 00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:14.226 collaboration with industry, would emphasize making industry academic 00:25:14.259 --> 00:25:21.746 teams that would uh uh preferentially go after projects, It had an outcome 00:25:21.779 --> 00:25:26.177 that was good for society or good for the environment or have a practical 00:25:26.210 --> 00:25:32.907 purpose to it. And I think those broad goals have stuck since that time 00:25:32.940 --> 00:25:37.476 now, I came in and I said to Milt, I want to be a founding director, I 00:25:37.509 --> 00:25:43.357 don't want to do this forever. Uh And then Michael Crowe came in 2002. I 00:25:43.390 --> 00:25:47.377 started, I got to know Michael very quickly because he wanted to know what 00:25:47.410 --> 00:25:50.437 we're doing, where he's spending all this money, da da da da da, Michael 00:25:50.470 --> 00:25:58.316 wanted to know what was going on and It took him maybe two months to with 00:25:58.349 --> 00:26:03.266 me talking about the Arizona biomedical institute for him to say that name 00:26:03.299 --> 00:26:09.207 has to go, we are a global university. Arizona is too restricted, 00:26:09.240 --> 00:26:14.187 biomedical is too restricted. We are going to deal with everything from 00:26:14.220 --> 00:26:19.316 environmental to whatever this is, this is an institute that's going to 00:26:19.349 --> 00:26:23.457 have a broad impact. So he's essentially telling me, don't be so limited 00:26:23.490 --> 00:26:28.097 in your thinking. And and and and my question was, well, what do you think 00:26:28.130 --> 00:26:34.006 we should call it? Bio design institute was Michael's response and I 00:26:34.039 --> 00:26:40.726 that's weird, you know what, what's that mean? It uh but I must say he 00:26:40.759 --> 00:26:45.367 gave me a couple of days think about it made sense to me. Nobody else had 00:26:45.400 --> 00:26:50.107 a bio design institute. It was used that the idea was to use the 00:26:50.140 --> 00:26:57.086 principles of biology to design solutions to practical problems and he 00:26:57.119 --> 00:27:02.627 emphasized that we were not just a blue sky institute, we were trying to 00:27:02.660 --> 00:27:07.367 expand the economic base of Arizona and the United States and have a 00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:15.400 global impact and that uh we should be interested in projects that somehow 00:27:16.369 --> 00:27:23.207 had a positive impact for the world at large in Arizona in particular. 00:27:23.240 --> 00:27:29.917 I think that you've described Michael very well, uh 00:27:29.950 --> 00:27:37.357 speaking of that, you worked with Crow and Glick and you worked with 00:27:37.390 --> 00:27:43.826 Laddie and Glick, ah, were there major differences that you observed in 00:27:43.859 --> 00:27:48.427 the dynamics between Kroll and Glick and Laddie and Glick and how they 00:27:48.460 --> 00:27:56.460 approach things. Well I don't know enough about Laddie and melt working 00:27:56.880 --> 00:28:03.336 together. I when I saw them They were approaching me for either recruiting 00:28:03.369 --> 00:28:09.717 me or responding to my thoughts about Proposition 301 funding. But they 00:28:09.750 --> 00:28:17.750 seem to mesh easily. Um I well I think everyone understands Michael Crowe. 00:28:18.069 --> 00:28:22.546 He doesn't intend to just mesh easily with anybody. He challenges people 00:28:22.579 --> 00:28:28.806 , he challenges thinking he wants to drive change in a positive way. And 00:28:28.839 --> 00:28:33.286 uh you know I never had any direct interaction when he and Mel were 00:28:33.319 --> 00:28:38.967 working together. But I I think their styles were complementary. And I am 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:42.786 aware of the fact that Laddie and Mill worked together to nurture 00:28:42.819 --> 00:28:47.736 recruiting Michael Crow to this campus say they knew him from earlier 00:28:47.769 --> 00:28:55.197 times. And I think Michael Crowe was the handpicked president that latvian 00:28:55.230 --> 00:29:02.907 milk um picked out and they knew who they wanted to bring in here. In uh 00:29:02.940 --> 00:29:05.207 2000 00:29:05.240 --> 00:29:13.240 I was making a transition in my research. Ah I for the last for the last 00:29:13.509 --> 00:29:18.847 decade prior to that I had been interested in using plants, particularly 00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:26.207 tobacco plants to make protein drugs and especially vaccines. 00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:30.256 And I won't bore you with the details. But we had a sort of a cumbersome 00:29:30.289 --> 00:29:36.046 way of doing it. But in 2000 I discovered a group of people who were plant 00:29:36.079 --> 00:29:41.806 virologists who are using the tools of biotechnology to take a plant virus 00:29:41.839 --> 00:29:46.226 pull it apart, Reassemble it to do something else mainly to make a new 00:29:46.259 --> 00:29:51.806 protein and I just thought this was fantastic. So when I came here to A S 00:29:51.839 --> 00:29:56.996 . U. The beauty of having an endowed chair with flexible money was I could 00:29:57.029 --> 00:30:02.657 go out and try some new projects that would have been crazy to the grand 00:30:02.690 --> 00:30:09.516 panels at NIH or NSF. And so I was in the plant world, I was able to get a 00:30:09.549 --> 00:30:13.887 jump ahead of everybody else because of this endowment funding and I'd 00:30:13.920 --> 00:30:17.236 just gotten it. So I hadn't committed it to anything. So it's it's a 00:30:17.269 --> 00:30:22.006 perfect time to try something new. So now we had a new tool that we could 00:30:22.039 --> 00:30:27.437 use to make therapeutic proteins and it turned out that's both vaccines 00:30:27.470 --> 00:30:32.826 and other drugs like monoclonal antibiotics. So it just started on that. I 00:30:32.859 --> 00:30:39.326 was called into uh testimony in the senate in october that year and 00:30:39.359 --> 00:30:45.137 happened to be in the Senate office building On my testimony was like 9:00 00:30:45.170 --> 00:30:50.127 AM as I was leaving the building, fire trucks were coming, ambulances, 00:30:50.160 --> 00:30:55.546 sirens all over the place and I was smart enough not to stand around and 00:30:55.579 --> 00:30:58.947 look to see what happened. I just got out of there quickly and it turned 00:30:58.980 --> 00:31:05.377 out that's when there was a, this anthrax scare envelopes were delivered 00:31:05.410 --> 00:31:10.117 into offices in the Senate office building essentially closed it down. 00:31:10.150 --> 00:31:15.647 Everyone who was in there was given high dose antibiotics. It was absurd 00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:20.467 behavior. But anyway it was to calm people down. Unfortunately I was in a 00:31:20.500 --> 00:31:26.566 taxi leaving there. But when I got back home and was talking to a number 00:31:26.599 --> 00:31:32.546 of people, the writing was on the wall that mhm the federal government was 00:31:32.579 --> 00:31:38.417 going to have to respond to terrorism in general and bioterrorism in 00:31:38.450 --> 00:31:45.026 particular. Within a month I had written a multimillion dollar grant 00:31:45.059 --> 00:31:50.887 proposal to the U. S. Army. I found a route to submit it in skipping all 00:31:50.920 --> 00:31:56.766 the details. It was funded the following spring. Very fast action. Uh and 00:31:56.799 --> 00:32:04.637 it was to come up with to molecular tools or new vaccines and drugs to use 00:32:04.670 --> 00:32:11.016 in the case of a bioterrorism attack. And we chose to things played for a 00:32:11.049 --> 00:32:16.607 vaccine and Ebola for a therapeutic antibody. 00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:19.506 Well then uh 00:32:19.539 --> 00:32:25.246 Through all this came Zmapp. Now tell us what Zmapp and tobacco have to do 00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:31.707 with the world because I really remember newspaper articles about this 00:32:31.740 --> 00:32:36.707 highlighting your work. Can you tell us just a little about that? Sure. So 00:32:36.740 --> 00:32:44.740 I got this new grant funded and got new funding in 2002 and we teamed up 00:32:45.640 --> 00:32:51.306 as was our plan at bio design with a small company in san Diego called map 00:32:51.339 --> 00:32:54.707 bio farm biotherapeutics 00:32:54.740 --> 00:33:01.907 uh and two guys that I had worked with a long time. We're there. Um 00:33:01.940 --> 00:33:08.536 We also teamed up with a group from the military at Fort Dietrich and Fort 00:33:08.569 --> 00:33:14.847 Dietrich had already been working on Ebola and other Uh strange diseases 00:33:14.880 --> 00:33:18.137 that most of us in the academic community really didn't pay any attention 00:33:18.170 --> 00:33:26.170 to. But Ebola had been identified in the 80s as a bio threat. And later we 00:33:26.660 --> 00:33:32.036 discovered that the Russians had in fact tried to weaponize Ebola and make 00:33:32.069 --> 00:33:36.207 an aerosol that could be spread etcetera. So I almost certainly the 00:33:36.240 --> 00:33:41.347 military knew about this. They had a pioneering research program. They 00:33:41.380 --> 00:33:45.417 developed a mouse model so that they could mice would normally not suffer 00:33:45.450 --> 00:33:50.117 from Ebola. They figured out how to set up a mouse model so they could 00:33:50.150 --> 00:33:55.607 test Ebola. And in the process they showed if mice had antibodies against 00:33:55.640 --> 00:34:01.526 the virus they could prevent disease. So we used their data in our grand 00:34:01.559 --> 00:34:06.536 proposal and particularly I worked with a woman by the name of mary kate 00:34:06.569 --> 00:34:12.217 Hart who was a lead science virologist, scientist with Fort Dietrich and 00:34:12.250 --> 00:34:18.557 she had a series of antibodies from mice. I won't bore you with details 00:34:18.590 --> 00:34:22.776 but we took those antibodies and humanized them made them so that they 00:34:22.809 --> 00:34:27.637 would work like a human antibody. And then we better gene for that. Put it 00:34:27.670 --> 00:34:34.436 into this new system. We had put it into a plant virus infected the plants. 00:34:34.469 --> 00:34:39.287 And now the plant became a manufacturing system and would make massive 00:34:39.320 --> 00:34:44.736 amounts of protein. So a tobacco plant would start making more monoclonal 00:34:44.769 --> 00:34:49.767 antibody than you and I are could make because that's all this tobacco 00:34:49.800 --> 00:34:54.756 plant did over a three week period. Both ultimately would kill the tobacco 00:34:54.789 --> 00:34:59.907 plant. But before it did we grind up the plant purify the antibodies. 00:34:59.940 --> 00:35:06.477 Zmapp was a cocktail of three different antibodies which were tested first 00:35:06.510 --> 00:35:14.177 in mice and then in nonhuman primates at Fort Dietrich um delightful 00:35:14.210 --> 00:35:20.247 results because we could prevent Ebola in the rhesus macaques which is the 00:35:20.280 --> 00:35:26.197 best human analog in the animal world. They also suffer from death from 00:35:26.230 --> 00:35:31.486 Ebola. Anyway, we've got very good results. So all this was Sort of 00:35:31.519 --> 00:35:36.267 percolating along. We thought Gosh, maybe we'll get some more funding in 00:35:36.300 --> 00:35:40.546 10 years. We could perhaps even do a human clinical trial on this. And all 00:35:40.579 --> 00:35:45.456 of a sudden in East Africa, particularly starting in Liberia. The Ebola 00:35:45.489 --> 00:35:50.956 epidemic kicked off late in 2000 and 13. By 2000 and 14 essentially the 00:35:50.989 --> 00:35:56.177 whole world was worried about it. Quarantining quarantining people that 00:35:56.210 --> 00:36:02.197 didn't want to travel from the infected areas into the U. S. And elsewhere. 00:36:02.230 --> 00:36:10.230 and two American missionaries were in Liberia and got in the news because 00:36:10.230 --> 00:36:17.997 they were infected with the Ebola virus were very sick and 00:36:18.030 --> 00:36:24.017 a whole bunch of details in between. But for reasons of connections with 00:36:24.050 --> 00:36:28.626 the U. S. Military. We had the ability to transfer some of these 00:36:28.659 --> 00:36:32.936 antibodies. We I'm speaking in general census was now the companies that 00:36:32.969 --> 00:36:38.256 we were working with in Fort Dietrich into Liberia. And these two 00:36:38.289 --> 00:36:45.867 missionaries who were sick were given the option of accepting The this 00:36:45.900 --> 00:36:51.577 therapeutic antibody which had been tested in less than 20 animals for 00:36:51.610 --> 00:36:56.706 safety. And they just said it's totally experimental. You guys want to 00:36:56.739 --> 00:37:04.739 give this a try. Both of them agreed. Uh And which was amazing. But and 00:37:04.960 --> 00:37:12.106 you may have seen it on tv but the first guy to get it. Ah But he said 00:37:12.139 --> 00:37:15.807 when he got the injection it's intravenous delivery of these three 00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:21.236 antibodies coming out of the tobacco one. He said he started to shake and 00:37:21.269 --> 00:37:26.997 for an hour it just was his temperature went up, all sorts of things. It's 00:37:27.030 --> 00:37:31.977 no wonder his bloodstream was filled with Ebola virus. We shot in 00:37:32.010 --> 00:37:36.046 antibodies which are glomming up all this Ebola virus going through his 00:37:36.079 --> 00:37:40.686 system. His liver must have been looking like a mess because it it would 00:37:40.719 --> 00:37:45.747 start screening all this stuff out. But within an hour after an hour he 00:37:45.780 --> 00:37:50.206 was able to get up and get out of bed and go to the bathroom and he of 00:37:50.239 --> 00:37:56.137 course recovered. Days later he was on a plane back to the U. S. And both 00:37:56.170 --> 00:38:01.936 of the missionaries were recovered. And unfortunately at the time we only 00:38:01.969 --> 00:38:08.637 had a limited supply of this Zmapp but several more people got it. Uh 00:38:08.670 --> 00:38:13.506 Anyone who was younger, younger young enough to have a good immune system 00:38:13.539 --> 00:38:20.327 uh recovered. Uh We had a couple of cases where an old spanish priest who 00:38:20.360 --> 00:38:27.956 was really sick did not recover. But by and large the press said this is 00:38:27.989 --> 00:38:33.447 amazing. Uh They called the first report in the new york times said a 00:38:33.480 --> 00:38:39.967 secret drug developed by the military? They didn't mention a. S. U. And 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:47.376 there's things uh etcetera. But we had a camera crew from BBC here on 00:38:47.409 --> 00:38:53.287 campus for two days, filming everything we had and they did a show which 00:38:53.320 --> 00:38:58.747 evolved into a nova when our nova show. And so a s you got an enormous 00:38:58.780 --> 00:39:05.526 amount of press coverage in the fall of 2000 and 14. Um I remember in 00:39:05.559 --> 00:39:12.197 particular, my wife and I have a summer place up in Pinetop. And when this 00:39:12.230 --> 00:39:15.347 news before 00:39:15.380 --> 00:39:22.146 the news broke, one of my colleagues over at uh map bio therapeutics sent 00:39:22.179 --> 00:39:25.787 me an email in the morning. He said charlie, I don't know if you've heard 00:39:25.820 --> 00:39:30.606 the news coming out of Liberia, but it looks like Zmapp has worked. And I 00:39:30.639 --> 00:39:35.327 think we should notify the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 00:39:35.360 --> 00:39:38.807 because we had a paper in press, he said they might be interested in some 00:39:38.840 --> 00:39:43.117 press coverage. Well that was an understatement because that afternoon 00:39:43.150 --> 00:39:49.677 every press agency in the world would have picked up on this story. And I 00:39:49.710 --> 00:39:53.146 don't know how many interviews I did sitting in our kitchen up in pint up 00:39:53.179 --> 00:39:58.727 in front of my ipads. So they could do facetime or whatever. No, I did it 00:39:58.760 --> 00:40:01.077 on Skype. 00:40:01.110 --> 00:40:06.847 Anyway, it was an exciting time for our whole research group, but also for 00:40:06.880 --> 00:40:12.867 the whole press group at at A S. U. That was a very very very exciting 00:40:12.900 --> 00:40:19.776 time. What have you been doing since then? Well, you know it was 00:40:19.809 --> 00:40:26.916 That was 2014. That was yes that was the fall of 2014. I still had grants 00:40:26.949 --> 00:40:32.287 going at the time but it was fortuitous in one way because I knew I wanted 00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:37.586 to retire. I hadn't planned to go that long but everything in research was 00:40:37.619 --> 00:40:44.296 going. So but what can you do to top producing a drug that saves lives? I 00:40:44.329 --> 00:40:49.376 mean there's just no point in sort of chasing after something else. So uh 00:40:49.409 --> 00:40:57.409 I did then start the final phase and In 2016 I did the formal retirement, 00:40:58.719 --> 00:41:05.477 stepped down as Professor Emeritus School Life Sciences. 00:41:05.510 --> 00:41:13.510 Tell me about your serving with Bush on p. Cast. What was that all about 00:41:13.510 --> 00:41:21.037 in 2000. Uh well that election in November George Bush came in the 00:41:21.070 --> 00:41:26.717 following spring. I was contacted I believe because I was on several 00:41:26.750 --> 00:41:32.126 committees that people knew of my research and they asked if I would be on 00:41:32.159 --> 00:41:37.276 the presidential council of advisors on science and technology or podcast. 00:41:37.309 --> 00:41:44.217 And I would emphasize it's a non political and I think half the people on 00:41:44.250 --> 00:41:49.847 the bushes advisory committee were democrats by voting category. But 00:41:49.880 --> 00:41:55.686 anyway it was it was a group of people who knew science and were picked to 00:41:55.719 --> 00:42:01.907 try to advise what the federal government should be doing In the fall of 00:42:01.940 --> 00:42:04.046 2001. 00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:09.756 We were going to have our first meeting in Washington. And then it was 00:42:09.789 --> 00:42:16.947 going to be late September September 9 11 came along. All hell broke loose 00:42:16.980 --> 00:42:21.227 in Washington, you couldn't even fly. Their meeting was called off 00:42:21.260 --> 00:42:26.697 etcetera etcetera. We had a series of meetings starting in the spring of 00:42:26.730 --> 00:42:32.197 2002. We helped write, I was on the subcommittee that wrote a whole 00:42:32.230 --> 00:42:37.577 section On project bioshield, which was included included in the 00:42:37.610 --> 00:42:42.657 presidential state of the Union discussion. And led to a new funding, a 00:42:42.690 --> 00:42:47.416 $10 million dollar fund, $10 billion funding. There's a big difference 00:42:47.449 --> 00:42:52.827 between M's and B's $10 billion new program and bio threat reduction 00:42:52.860 --> 00:42:59.336 called project bioshield. And uh I would say that was the biggest new 00:42:59.369 --> 00:43:05.307 infusion of money in the biological sciences in a long time. And we were 00:43:05.340 --> 00:43:11.736 poised to make use of our system. It had a big impact on us and our 00:43:11.769 --> 00:43:18.916 funding at at at a S. U. In the bio design institute ramped up from, you 00:43:18.949 --> 00:43:24.447 know, sub million dollar to like 2 to $3 million a year of funding over 00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:30.017 the next several years. So it was a very good time for us. And uh through 00:43:30.050 --> 00:43:35.606 that period I had the delightful experience of being on the podcast. The 00:43:35.639 --> 00:43:39.956 main good thing about it is they would hold meetings four times a year. 00:43:39.989 --> 00:43:47.376 We'd come in, we'd be briefed by the secretary of any anything and his 00:43:47.409 --> 00:43:52.637 staff and others what they're doing. And a lot of our focus was are the 00:43:52.670 --> 00:43:57.686 agency's interacting across the way, how are we going to coordinate things 00:43:57.719 --> 00:44:02.356 like bioterrorism? And then it went on into the next phase, which was nano 00:44:02.389 --> 00:44:10.389 technology. And anyway it was a wonderful time. I got the administrative 00:44:10.809 --> 00:44:15.586 high level policy reviews for free. I didn't have to read it, you could 00:44:15.619 --> 00:44:20.517 just be there and and hear what was going on and and try to offer useful 00:44:20.550 --> 00:44:26.296 comments on on all this area. One of the things I wanted to ask you, I I 00:44:26.329 --> 00:44:33.276 read your list of honors and I was particularly impressed by the fact that 00:44:33.309 --> 00:44:39.677 you have received three honorary doctorates, one from uh the Hebrew 00:44:39.710 --> 00:44:46.106 University in Israel, You were elected to the National Academy of Sciences 00:44:46.139 --> 00:44:51.657 three years after you reach full professorship and then there's this award 00:44:51.690 --> 00:44:59.057 which I have to read awarded by Fast Magazine for the most creative person 00:44:59.090 --> 00:45:04.767 in business in 2015. Now, which of all of those awards, are you most proud 00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:10.697 ? Well, first of all, the Fast magazine, I had never even heard of Fast 00:45:10.730 --> 00:45:15.006 magazine until they contacted me and told me they wanted to develop this 00:45:15.039 --> 00:45:20.106 proposal to have me included in it. I have hold it since, it's really a 00:45:20.139 --> 00:45:25.526 very good tech based thing for the tech community etcetera. But of all the 00:45:25.559 --> 00:45:31.146 awards I would say the one that uh certainly did my career the most was to 00:45:31.179 --> 00:45:35.126 be elected in the National Academy of Sciences was 41 years old when I got 00:45:35.159 --> 00:45:41.617 elected. Uh you know, do you ever deserve all these things? Who knows? But 00:45:41.650 --> 00:45:47.066 it gave me instant credentials. I don't think they were warranted. But 00:45:47.099 --> 00:45:50.767 when you are a member of the National Academy of Sciences, people say oh 00:45:50.800 --> 00:45:55.727 this if he must know what he's doing well, whether that's true or not is I 00:45:55.760 --> 00:46:00.847 think really in doubt. But it gave me credentials and it did allow me to 00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:05.227 um it helped going to Dupont. It certainly helped going to texas A and M. 00:46:05.260 --> 00:46:10.247 And cordell etcetera. And I'm sure it helped influence Milton laddie here 00:46:10.280 --> 00:46:17.146 in offering a position at sc Do you think A. S. U. has made progress in 00:46:17.179 --> 00:46:24.686 the last 20 years? That's a that's not even a question. It's just this 00:46:24.719 --> 00:46:32.719 place is exploding with excitement and and and uh for better or worse, uh 00:46:33.090 --> 00:46:38.847 Michael Crowe wanted a new american University, a different model of 00:46:38.880 --> 00:46:46.697 education. I personally think it's for the better. I think I look at lots 00:46:46.730 --> 00:46:52.626 of state universities around the country and worry that there's uh 00:46:52.659 --> 00:46:58.247 atrophying on the spot because they aren't evolving their funding from the 00:46:58.280 --> 00:47:05.436 state is diminishing and it's just a tough time. A small number of schools 00:47:05.469 --> 00:47:09.486 are gonna continue to survive. You know, the University of Illinois's and 00:47:09.519 --> 00:47:15.896 and Davis and Berkeley etcetera will survive because they're so good and 00:47:15.929 --> 00:47:21.557 they're going to maintain it. But there's somebody that won't, I think ASU 00:47:21.590 --> 00:47:29.117 was not at that quite at that tipping point but we could be so much less 00:47:29.150 --> 00:47:33.787 today than we are now. It's this is clearly one of the best universities 00:47:33.820 --> 00:47:39.447 of the public universities in the United States. I mean all the different 00:47:39.480 --> 00:47:45.217 criteria that you use to look at universities as says that I've been in 00:47:45.250 --> 00:47:50.126 Illinois was very impressed by Illinois, was at Cornell, wonderful school 00:47:50.159 --> 00:47:58.159 and Preston. But being here now at S. U. I'm more proud of a issue than 00:47:58.409 --> 00:48:05.836 especially The core margins at Cornell which is it's stuck in one place 00:48:05.869 --> 00:48:11.717 and this place is not stuck. It's it's just it's like there are no limits 00:48:11.750 --> 00:48:18.807 to what we can do and just everyone just going after all the wonderful 00:48:18.840 --> 00:48:22.836 things we do. I love the fact that 00:48:22.869 --> 00:48:27.247 as opposed to most universities we have an organizational structure based 00:48:27.280 --> 00:48:34.066 on schools and programs now that encourage people to work together. I 00:48:34.099 --> 00:48:39.347 talked to you earlier, Kathy about early in relatively early in the middle 00:48:39.380 --> 00:48:44.086 of my career when I was at texas A. And M. I stopped essentially taking 00:48:44.119 --> 00:48:52.066 graduate students myself. I really started trying to organize my research 00:48:52.099 --> 00:48:58.626 program around recruiting non tenured faculty and postdocs people that I 00:48:58.659 --> 00:49:03.376 could mentor and teach them how to interact with each other and how to 00:49:03.409 --> 00:49:08.967 interact with industry and how to start large programs. So I think we have 00:49:09.000 --> 00:49:11.236 such 00:49:11.269 --> 00:49:16.287 an excess of graduate students and postdocs who are fighting their way 00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:21.637 through the system trying to grab one of the last academic professorial 00:49:21.670 --> 00:49:26.546 positions that are out there And they aren't trained well enough to think 00:49:26.579 --> 00:49:31.026 of all the other opportunities that exist. And so I've spent really my 00:49:31.059 --> 00:49:37.997 last 25 30 years focusing on mentoring people. To think of the whole 00:49:38.030 --> 00:49:42.546 universe of things that can be done. And I'm thinking the way I look at A 00:49:42.579 --> 00:49:49.666 . S. U. Is that mentality is really in place here. And it's I would say as 00:49:49.699 --> 00:49:54.186 opposed to many schools where it's hard to get tenure if you haven't just 00:49:54.219 --> 00:49:59.657 published single author papers or you and your graduate students that used 00:49:59.690 --> 00:50:03.447 to be used to be the way you would get tenure in a say a biology 00:50:03.480 --> 00:50:07.217 department that we know you had to prove that you had done it 00:50:07.250 --> 00:50:15.250 independently. That's antiquated today. I I I see tenure committees 00:50:15.900 --> 00:50:19.617 although I haven't been on one for 34 years now. But they're starting to 00:50:19.650 --> 00:50:27.650 look at how did this individual uh contribute to a team activity and what 00:50:27.880 --> 00:50:32.756 would happen without that individual. And that sort of thinking it's 00:50:32.789 --> 00:50:38.776 thriving at A. S. U. I think and were unusual in that sense. And because 00:50:38.809 --> 00:50:42.827 of it so much better 00:50:42.860 --> 00:50:47.117 with all of the 00:50:47.150 --> 00:50:54.077 advances that S. U. Has made and your institute has made. And do you think 00:50:54.110 --> 00:51:00.197 that this would have happened had Michael Crow not come here Or is a lot 00:51:00.230 --> 00:51:06.026 of it due to Michael Crowe? I think that, mm hmm. 00:51:06.059 --> 00:51:11.356 Well, as I said earlier when I in the first year when I was being the 00:51:11.389 --> 00:51:16.876 founding director of this new institute, I went around campus and you know 00:51:16.909 --> 00:51:22.827 , describe this vision of a department free independent entity etcetera. 00:51:22.860 --> 00:51:30.427 And overwhelming lack of enthusiasm for this idea. Um 00:51:30.460 --> 00:51:35.856 but I think that was really driven not by the fact that faculty, the 00:51:35.889 --> 00:51:40.177 faculty members at A S. U. It wasn't they were against an institute, but 00:51:40.210 --> 00:51:45.796 academics and I are one, as we always said, when we see new money, we want 00:51:45.829 --> 00:51:52.776 part of it. It's just it's it's just simple that once the it had been 00:51:52.809 --> 00:51:57.677 established that new money coming in was going to go into this matrix of 00:51:57.710 --> 00:52:03.117 large projects, interdisciplinary research etcetera. 00:52:03.150 --> 00:52:07.316 I think anybody didn't it didn't have to be Michael Krol, anybody who came 00:52:07.349 --> 00:52:13.436 in who continued to support this idea would have helped to change the 00:52:13.469 --> 00:52:18.927 culture in such a way that an institute would be successful. No, Michael 00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:24.697 Crow helped a lot because he pushed it vigorously. 00:52:24.730 --> 00:52:29.796 I mean the whole idea of creating schools sustainability institute, all 00:52:29.829 --> 00:52:34.227 these sorts of things that are interdisciplinary, not locked into 00:52:34.260 --> 00:52:41.186 traditional departmental silos. I think Michael Crowe has clearly pushed 00:52:41.219 --> 00:52:47.046 that faster than any other president or provost anywhere in the US and 00:52:47.079 --> 00:52:51.506 interact with the Defense department, what part did you play as opposed to 00:52:51.539 --> 00:52:59.539 the Defense department? Right, well, in the development of Zmapp Uh we had 00:53:00.599 --> 00:53:05.097 a three way partnership Department of Defense. It was really the 00:53:05.130 --> 00:53:10.827 department of Army, their research headquarters in Fort Dietrich. Uh This 00:53:10.860 --> 00:53:18.077 company in SAn Diego biotherapeutics and A. S. U. Um And so when we wrote 00:53:18.110 --> 00:53:22.747 the grant proposal we have stipulations in it about who was responsible 00:53:22.780 --> 00:53:30.780 for each each part part of this program A. S. U. By definition we were the 00:53:32.340 --> 00:53:38.666 exploratory new technology development arm of it. For one thing we 00:53:38.699 --> 00:53:42.947 couldn't do anything in animal testing because we had no facilities to 00:53:42.980 --> 00:53:48.506 deal with Ebola. It's very dangerous and all sorts of things. Uh So the 00:53:48.539 --> 00:53:53.617 animal testing was all going to be there. And our friends at in san Diego 00:53:53.650 --> 00:53:57.816 I knew these two guys who were probably among the very best in the country 00:53:57.849 --> 00:54:04.287 in designing antibodies as therapeutics. So their skill set was to take 00:54:04.320 --> 00:54:10.776 our basic technology tools and we would write a report to the U. S. 00:54:10.809 --> 00:54:16.046 Military every six months about what progress we were making. And this is 00:54:16.079 --> 00:54:21.367 at a time that they would read our reports and respond because 00:54:21.400 --> 00:54:28.566 bioterrorism was so high up on their interest on on their radar. Uh We got 00:54:28.599 --> 00:54:32.927 a lot of interest and as it turned out as we were pointing animal studies 00:54:32.960 --> 00:54:39.316 I went into Fort Dietrich quite a few times to reach agreement on how we 00:54:39.349 --> 00:54:45.617 were going to do the animal trials, how much material we needed. And and 00:54:45.650 --> 00:54:49.336 as part of that is we've got data how we're going to publish our data who 00:54:49.369 --> 00:54:52.626 was going to be on authors and publications and things like that. And it 00:54:52.659 --> 00:54:57.427 was very collegial interaction. They had to submit all their papers 00:54:57.460 --> 00:55:02.057 through the U. S. Military to get approval before publishing but that we 00:55:02.090 --> 00:55:07.956 expected we we had set that up in advance so it was a really a collegial 00:55:07.989 --> 00:55:12.276 interaction with the group at Fort Dietrich although they were under 00:55:12.309 --> 00:55:20.309 pressure to deliver some data more pressure than I think we felt here. But 00:55:20.320 --> 00:55:25.706 not that I wasn't interested. It's just I was used to the slow pace pace 00:55:25.739 --> 00:55:33.597 of drug development and I Would never have anticipated that we could start 00:55:33.630 --> 00:55:41.630 a project on a bench in bio design in 2002 and have that in people By 2014. 00:55:42.440 --> 00:55:49.887 Just unheard of. Uh so but part of that was encouraging just ending that 00:55:49.920 --> 00:55:57.920 now uh we transitioned out of that project after five years at that point 00:55:58.139 --> 00:56:02.347 the funding had been coming from initially from the U. S. Army and then 00:56:02.380 --> 00:56:08.967 from DARPA which is the applied research arm of the military but then it 00:56:09.000 --> 00:56:14.287 transitioned into Barda which is there, I don't even remember what Barda 00:56:14.320 --> 00:56:19.887 stands for but it's their business arm which rights contracts to provide a 00:56:19.920 --> 00:56:26.296 supply of material. So today Barda is supporting all research on Zmapp 00:56:26.329 --> 00:56:32.537 there is a stockpile. I have no idea how large it is there is ZMApp 00:56:32.570 --> 00:56:39.227 available in in africa where it can be used as these new outbreaks. Come 00:56:39.260 --> 00:56:44.436 Bart is very interested in seeing it used because it is the only way we're 00:56:44.469 --> 00:56:50.727 going to do human clinical trials with live Ebola. And so they have the 00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:58.097 responsibility of the humanitarian use of this, of this reserve supply. 00:56:58.130 --> 00:57:05.497 And their plan is to make sure we have a supply available in the case that 00:57:05.530 --> 00:57:13.010 some crazy start using Ebola as a bioterrorism agent in the United States. 00:57:13.929 --> 00:57:15.929 Well thank you very much. Thank you and a pleasure. She was uh what what 00:57:19.780 --> 00:57:27.367 what when Kathy was in Milk Glick's office, she regarded her as the key 00:57:27.400 --> 00:57:33.756 person to keep me out of trouble. She was my uh if if something came up 00:57:33.789 --> 00:57:38.697 and I wasn't accustomed to the CSU politics etcetera and I was you know 00:57:38.730 --> 00:57:43.097 chasing after money and trying to set up new things and etcetera. Give 00:57:43.130 --> 00:57:47.057 Cathy a call and ask her. It wasn't a fairy godmother. It was something 00:57:47.090 --> 00:57:52.316 else. I had a phrase for you. I remember what it was. What was it you 00:57:52.349 --> 00:57:58.887 called me, charlie's angels. I think that's what it was. She was the one 00:57:58.920 --> 00:58:03.756 who would guide me and tell me no you gotta be careful there said don't do 00:58:03.789 --> 00:58:09.440 this or don't don't do that. But sometimes I listen to her too. SoMhm