today is May eight 2019. I am Kathleen Church, retired professor of
genetics and administrator.
Um The technical support staff today include Barry McNeill, who is the
video history project chair, john McIntosh on camera,
roger carter on audio and linda vance. Coy doing everything
to begin with. Would you introduce yourself and tell us what position you
held at A. S. U. When you retired? I'm charlie Arnson. Uh When I retired I
was a professor in the school of Life sciences and a scientist in the bio
design institute. Uh I had uh no, I was stopped.
Can you tell us a little bit about your early childhood where you grew up
? What were your interests? What compels you to become a plant
physiologist? Well, first of all, I grew up in the prairies of western
Minnesota, small family farm, a wonderful life. But I think my interest in
science was piqued. When my dad took me out in one of the first evenings
when Sputnik went over. Uh some folks in my age will remember that it was
pretty dramatic phenomenon of seeing this thing streaking across the sky.
And he said uh someday you're going to be an engineer and you'll
understand all this. So he he was directing me. Uh don't plan to be a
farmer, you're going off to college and you know, learn to be an engineer.
Now that said, I did go off to college, but engineering wasn't what I
pictured. I had also gotten my dad's love of rocks but geology and I
decided I was going to be a geophysical engineer. I wanted to go off and
explore for oil. This was back in the time when uh there's all sort of
romantic notions about finding oil in Saudi Arabia and so I wanted to be
uh geophysicist. Um I pursued that first at Oxford College, then the
University of Minnesota until I got married in my, I guess it was 3rd Year
After High School. Uh And then my wife and I have had a wonderful life for
Together for 56 years since that time. But one of the first things she
suggested to me that her idea of going off into a desert looking for
petroleum was about the farthest thing away from reality that she could
imagine. So I switched degrees. Uh and at the time I went into mathematics
, didn't enjoy that very much, but I started working and worked for a
plant biologist at the University of Minnesota and fell in love with what
he was doing. It was just fascinating to me and it sort of brought back
the plant biology that I'd grown up with on a farm, but in a different,
quite a different way, much more of a molecular cell biology way of
thinking about things uh being in that environment allowed me to take a
course in electron microscopy. Uh The guy who was teaching the course,
Bill Cunningham became a mentor of mine as much as my advisor. Uh He
introduced the love of ultra structure and seeing small things and cells.
Um And essentially arranged for me to go and do my PhD with his former
mentor at Purdue University. So I did, I completed a bachelor's and
master's at the University of Minnesota, took me about seven years to do
all that. I should add that one year. I wasn't in school because they
kicked me out because my grades were so bad. But that was before I married
my wife, subsequent after marriage, I was a minus student the rest of the
way through. So I just needed a little bit of mental discipline guidance I
guess you'd say. But I went off to Purdue, finished my doctorate there in
about 2.5 years uh and did a postdoctoral study at the Charles Kettering
Institute in Yellow Springs Ohio, which led to a position at the
University of Illinois. My first academic position.
Well let's start then with your academic position of the University of
Illinois and kind of trace your career path. But what you did between the
time you or at the University of Illinois and ended up in the desert at A
S. U. My career path has been a long and tortuous one. So bear with me.
But I started the University of Illinois teaching introductory botany. Um
It was interesting for me because I'd really never had a good course in
introductory introductory botany. So I studied in the evenings and stayed
uh chapter ahead of the students for the first year. Um But anyway did
well at it. They raided me well as a teacher. Uh I was gradually moved up
in the ranks at the University of Illinois. But after five years I was on
a committee that worked with the U. S. Department of Agriculture at that
point in time. In the mid seventies, USDA was under intense scrutiny by
the general community of saying you don't do enough basic research. Uh And
the head administrators in our Illinois area agreed and they came into my
office one day and said we'd like to offer you a position with the U. S. D.
A. And in a nutshell, the offer was simple. My salary would increase. I
get some guaranteed research funding and I could stay in the same office
in the same laboratory at the University of Illinois and it was a no
brainer to me. I said yes I'll be happy to do it. Um So I was five years
with the university in the university and then five years at Illinois with
U. S. D. A. At the end of that period. I had gotten to full professor, I
would say one thing about Illinois, I never realized how good the
university of Illinois was as a broad ranging school as a, you know,
narrow focused assistant and working my way up professor, I never looked
around to see what a great school was, but I looked back those years, I
started at Illinois were wonderful. Um I had been supported quite well by
the department of Energy that this was the basic research section and they
were interested in solar energy conversion. So I was well funded through
their grants and a position came open at Michigan State University. It was
called the A. E. C. Plant Research Laboratory. Atomic Energy Commission
which soon became the Department of Energy uh plant research lab. The
director of that was retiring and they asked me if I'd be interested in
moving up there. Kathie, my wife and I went up took a look at the area.
Michigan state is beautiful campus. Um And so we moved to michigan State
University. I was at Michigan State University uh expanding my research
career but no longer teaching because I was now responsible for this
department of Energy lab. It was the only D. O. E. Labs in the country
that's focused on plant biology. So we had a lot of attention and sort of
a lot of demands. And I really thought I was going to be staying there for
a long time. But all of a sudden because of the research we were doing the
Dupont company became interested and I got a call and said would you mind
coming in and giving us a seminar in Wilmington Delaware. And while there
I was invited to go in and talk with Ed Jefferson the ceo of this whole
vast company and he explained to me that he was trying to diversify Dupont
, They were strictly a chemical company. He had a big study done and the
one of the areas they thought they should get into his biotechnology and
skipping all the details I happen to be doing things that were related to
plant improvement, crop improvement. And so they heard me as a director of
a new division. I moved after four years of Michigan State move to Dupont.
Um I was uh in the first two years there I recruited 57 new scientists to
start building a division uh that was affiliated with but not part of
their agricultural division. And anyway, it was a marvelous period of time
for me. I learned multidisciplinary research, I learned organism, you know
, corporate organization of research. I learned how big teams of people
can work together and the problems of how you try to get people to work
together and cooperate. I learned about intellectual property and
patenting and Dupont for me was like getting a master's degree or an MBA
on steroids. It was a wonderful place to be. Um and then Ed Jefferson
retired. We've got a new ceo uh he raised big questions of whether or not
the company really had a future in biotechnology and I could understand we
didn't have any medical division, we didn't have any seed division that
would deliver improved crops. And uh I looked around at the time and by
happenstance, a colleague of mine from texas a and M. University called up
and he said, I'd like to fly up and just chat with you about what, what's
happening at texas A and M, skip all the details. They offered me a
position as Deputy chancellor for agriculture at texas A and M. Uh it was
an uncertain time at Dupont. I didn't know if there was ever going to be a
future for me there, which was a mistake. Two years later they bought high
pioneer hybrid corn should have stuck with him, although I then I would
have moved to Iowa and uh anyway, it, it ended up at texas A and M. Uh
Again for me, one of the best things was a responsibility for me was to
set up an institute in the medical center in Houston. And the idea was to
bridge the animal science programs, the veterinary medicine programs of
texas A and M. With the medical research community in this huge complex in
Houston, it was great fun. We, I worked with the architects designed, I
think it was a nine or 10 story building right in the middle of the
medical center. And again when that building was finally finished, I
transitioned, moved set up a lab in that facility and was in there for
about three years. And then again I got another call this time from the
Boyce, Thompson Institute at Cornell. Boyce, Thompson was a philanthropist
, started an institute in Yonkers new york, which he transitioned out to
Cornell. It's a private
not for profit organization They had at the time about a $65 million
dollar endowment. But the endowment as I discovered when I got there was
struggling a bit. Uh I I spent five years at the boys Thompson. I loved
Cornell University and I loved that institute uh and had to go through
some hard decisions but it taught me some new things how to phase out
programs. Uh Set up an early retirement program. I think eight people took
early retirement transition it all around started fundraising and built
their endowment up almost doubled their endowment before I left. So I left
them in a healthy state but I did leave and that relates to A. S. U. In
that period of time when I was up there I came down and did a program
review down here at A. S. U. I've gotten to know the campus, I certainly
knew the community because my mother and father, it was a photosynthesis
program at A. S. U. That was scattered between chemistry at the time. The
botany department, microbiology. There were departments at the time and uh
it was a very strong program and it was supported well by milk click the
provost and others. Uh And and they were looking to expand and if I
remember correctly at the end of this review I was offered a position to
come down and join them as a faculty member. But I was having too much fun
at Cornell. It didn't seem like a good time to be thinking of moving,
although I was impressed with the program they had now but I was familiar
with this area because my father and mother in law, Cathy's parents lived
in Mesa Arizona and so we would come down, not surprisingly we'd come down
this christmas and and easter and when the weather was nice and well, I
love the desserts as did Kathy. So after being at Boyce Thompson five
years I was eligible for a sabbatical. And so I asked them for a
sabbatical and I called people down here at A. S. U. And said could you
find me space? I've got some grants, I'll move my money down there and
bring some people along and spend a year with you guys. Uh and I came down
to sort of firm up the things and somebody, I think it was the chairman of
the botany or plant biology department ken, huber who set up a meeting
with milk click and remember the details but it went something like milk
saying, well why do you want to come down here and why only for a year,
why don't we just give you a job and you can stay here which was milk
Glick ish sort of behavior. It will just come right to the point and
anyway they offered me a presidential endowed chair, I guess that was
really laddie cours decision But between the two of them laddie and Milk
black. They they spelled out the details of an endowed chair. I've never
had one sounded wonderful. There was some guaranteed funding that came
with it every year for exploratory research. And uh and I asked my wife
how would you feel about moving down to Arizona and it took her about 15
milliseconds to say let's go. Uh frankly she didn't enjoy the winters up
in uh Ithaca new york and was delighted that I would leave. Uh And it's
another place I have been in several places where I really thought I want
to spend the rest of my life here, I loved Cornell, I love the area. But
then a s. You came along and uh no at this point in my career I'm not
moving again and I know I wouldn't get my wife to budge so. Well I I see
from your credentials here that you've spent more time at a. S. U. Than
any other one spot in your career path that says something about how much
I like something right here. Yes. Well tell me about Milk and Laddie and
Proposition 301. Well 1st of all I had instant feeling of harmony or
something with milt and and uh I mean I didn't interact with laddie nearly
as much but when I did I I thought he was so impressive. Just a delightful
individual, so articulate and I like milk because he came to the point,
there's no messing around, let's let's get to the point and get something
done. I like the way both of them work. And in my case, I I really wanted
to come down, I had a very active research program going and this is in uh
1999. 2. Came down here in 2000. It was well funded. I just really thought
, gosh, this is a time for me to focus on research. And then we got here,
the november elections came along and Proposition 301 was on the ballot.
And I started looking at a little more and discovered that I guess it was
the latter in particular and Milton and the administration at A. S. U.
That had been in a leadership role of getting this proposition to support
expanded education in the state of Arizona sales tax increase with money
going to the school system, The K through 12 school system. And then a
portion I think I remember it like 15% of the total money would come to
the three universities, University of Arizona, A S. U and N. Au. So anyway
, that was happening and it passed and I don't know the next steps. But
somehow, when I I'm quite good at figuring out where money is going and
that's I've had enough experience with multiple jobs and managing budgets
and all that. And uh some somehow or other. I was able to make a proposal
to latvian milk and say let's use this money and create a new biomedical
institute. And you probably will recall laddie at the time had expressed
interest in having a medical school at A S. U. And in a sense I think he
saw that this idea of a biomedical institute was a step towards that or
something. Anyway, he liked the idea And so they took a substantial amount
of the new money which came in in 2001 and put it towards the Arizona
biomedical institute. Or as bio in my license plate on my car still says Z
bile because I came in as the founding director to get this off the ground.
I spent the first year in laying out a plan for what Az bio might be at A
S. U. And and Cathy you'd probably remember this was at the time that this
university was very department centric, everything happened in the
departmental organizing organizing units. And I propose that we look at
institutes like the sock or uh in the institute at M. I. T. And and other
institutes that were parallel to but not part of the university
departmental structure. We should set up a freestanding institute and laid
out the idea that we would have our own building and uh and and a separate
organizational structure. And for the first year I went around to the
campus. I don't know how many departmental stops I made making this
telling this story about how this was going to expand the influence of s
you create a new way of bringing in grants support, etcetera, etcetera.
And I would say I met about 95% skepticism, or worse, it was. Most
departments said, we've got brilliant people here, why don't we just take
this new money divided up among all the departments and will do great
things with etcetera, etcetera? And both Milt and laddie knew that that
was not the way they wanted this to happen. It was to start something new.
So I kept plowing ahead. I worked with the architects, we tried to find a
spot of land to build a new institute. Fortunately it was chosen that it
was going to be right in the corner on the edge of the Tempe campus, right
across the street from the old where the law school used to be. Uh And I
worked with the architects to lay out the first of these buildings and
went with them. We traveled to the Salk Institute, we went up to Monsanto
to see their labs in ST louis and came up with the idea that we build a
building with a core open laboratory concept, which if you go over there
and see it, it's the buildings that are built, have this pattern which was
totally different from departmental structure. If we were bringing a new
assistant professor into one of the traditional departments, he'd get a
cubicle space, maybe, you know 600 square feet of lab with an adjacent
office. And the implication that I was used to in academia was you're
gonna spend the rest of your career in here so get settled and enjoy this
space in these walls define your life. We set up an institute where there
were no walls, it was like a bowling alley and all the lab benches were on
wheels had quick connect of coming down from the ceiling. We could
reconfigure space overnight if we needed to and the offices were in a
across an open hallway along the side of the building with cubicles
outside them for students and postdocs etcetera. But the whole concept was
, anyone coming into this building is renting space, You have to have
grant support and you have to generate. I think we started out with
something around 275 or $300 of grant support per square foot of space
that you were allowed and there was some breathing room. If a grant
stopped but not for long term, if anybody lost their grant, don't worry,
we'll find your space down campus somewhere. But it kept the pressure on.
Um And again this wasn't necessarily a widely
recognized or enthusiastically endorsed thing across campus because a. S.
U. Like most universities at the time was very very traditional and had a
history behind it. But I would say if you jump ahead To today or almost 20
years later, The Bio Design Institute has expanded dramatically. The whole
university now is bringing in over $600 million 2000,
but it was a small fraction of that and it's, this place has changed
dramatically and so I'm proud, I guess is the term that I was involved in
helping define a new strategy for A S. U. That was non departmental. And
we had three goals of the bio or Arizona biomedical institute. One was
that we would do multidisciplinary research. The second was that we would
emphasize program projects, large projects that brought in support from
multiple individuals. And the third point was, we would do things in
collaboration with industry, would emphasize making industry academic
teams that would uh uh preferentially go after projects, It had an outcome
that was good for society or good for the environment or have a practical
purpose to it. And I think those broad goals have stuck since that time
now, I came in and I said to Milt, I want to be a founding director, I
don't want to do this forever. Uh And then Michael Crowe came in 2002. I
started, I got to know Michael very quickly because he wanted to know what
we're doing, where he's spending all this money, da da da da da, Michael
wanted to know what was going on and It took him maybe two months to with
me talking about the Arizona biomedical institute for him to say that name
has to go, we are a global university. Arizona is too restricted,
biomedical is too restricted. We are going to deal with everything from
environmental to whatever this is, this is an institute that's going to
have a broad impact. So he's essentially telling me, don't be so limited
in your thinking. And and and and my question was, well, what do you think
we should call it? Bio design institute was Michael's response and I
that's weird, you know what, what's that mean? It uh but I must say he
gave me a couple of days think about it made sense to me. Nobody else had
a bio design institute. It was used that the idea was to use the
principles of biology to design solutions to practical problems and he
emphasized that we were not just a blue sky institute, we were trying to
expand the economic base of Arizona and the United States and have a
global impact and that uh we should be interested in projects that somehow
had a positive impact for the world at large in Arizona in particular.
I think that you've described Michael very well, uh
speaking of that, you worked with Crow and Glick and you worked with
Laddie and Glick, ah, were there major differences that you observed in
the dynamics between Kroll and Glick and Laddie and Glick and how they
approach things. Well I don't know enough about Laddie and melt working
together. I when I saw them They were approaching me for either recruiting
me or responding to my thoughts about Proposition 301 funding. But they
seem to mesh easily. Um I well I think everyone understands Michael Crowe.
He doesn't intend to just mesh easily with anybody. He challenges people
, he challenges thinking he wants to drive change in a positive way. And
uh you know I never had any direct interaction when he and Mel were
working together. But I I think their styles were complementary. And I am
aware of the fact that Laddie and Mill worked together to nurture
recruiting Michael Crow to this campus say they knew him from earlier
times. And I think Michael Crowe was the handpicked president that latvian
milk um picked out and they knew who they wanted to bring in here. In uh
2000
I was making a transition in my research. Ah I for the last for the last
decade prior to that I had been interested in using plants, particularly
tobacco plants to make protein drugs and especially vaccines.
And I won't bore you with the details. But we had a sort of a cumbersome
way of doing it. But in 2000 I discovered a group of people who were plant
virologists who are using the tools of biotechnology to take a plant virus
pull it apart, Reassemble it to do something else mainly to make a new
protein and I just thought this was fantastic. So when I came here to A S
. U. The beauty of having an endowed chair with flexible money was I could
go out and try some new projects that would have been crazy to the grand
panels at NIH or NSF. And so I was in the plant world, I was able to get a
jump ahead of everybody else because of this endowment funding and I'd
just gotten it. So I hadn't committed it to anything. So it's it's a
perfect time to try something new. So now we had a new tool that we could
use to make therapeutic proteins and it turned out that's both vaccines
and other drugs like monoclonal antibiotics. So it just started on that. I
was called into uh testimony in the senate in october that year and
happened to be in the Senate office building On my testimony was like 9:00
AM as I was leaving the building, fire trucks were coming, ambulances,
sirens all over the place and I was smart enough not to stand around and
look to see what happened. I just got out of there quickly and it turned
out that's when there was a, this anthrax scare envelopes were delivered
into offices in the Senate office building essentially closed it down.
Everyone who was in there was given high dose antibiotics. It was absurd
behavior. But anyway it was to calm people down. Unfortunately I was in a
taxi leaving there. But when I got back home and was talking to a number
of people, the writing was on the wall that mhm the federal government was
going to have to respond to terrorism in general and bioterrorism in
particular. Within a month I had written a multimillion dollar grant
proposal to the U. S. Army. I found a route to submit it in skipping all
the details. It was funded the following spring. Very fast action. Uh and
it was to come up with to molecular tools or new vaccines and drugs to use
in the case of a bioterrorism attack. And we chose to things played for a
vaccine and Ebola for a therapeutic antibody.
Well then uh
Through all this came Zmapp. Now tell us what Zmapp and tobacco have to do
with the world because I really remember newspaper articles about this
highlighting your work. Can you tell us just a little about that? Sure. So
I got this new grant funded and got new funding in 2002 and we teamed up
as was our plan at bio design with a small company in san Diego called map
bio farm biotherapeutics
uh and two guys that I had worked with a long time. We're there. Um
We also teamed up with a group from the military at Fort Dietrich and Fort
Dietrich had already been working on Ebola and other Uh strange diseases
that most of us in the academic community really didn't pay any attention
to. But Ebola had been identified in the 80s as a bio threat. And later we
discovered that the Russians had in fact tried to weaponize Ebola and make
an aerosol that could be spread etcetera. So I almost certainly the
military knew about this. They had a pioneering research program. They
developed a mouse model so that they could mice would normally not suffer
from Ebola. They figured out how to set up a mouse model so they could
test Ebola. And in the process they showed if mice had antibodies against
the virus they could prevent disease. So we used their data in our grand
proposal and particularly I worked with a woman by the name of mary kate
Hart who was a lead science virologist, scientist with Fort Dietrich and
she had a series of antibodies from mice. I won't bore you with details
but we took those antibodies and humanized them made them so that they
would work like a human antibody. And then we better gene for that. Put it
into this new system. We had put it into a plant virus infected the plants.
And now the plant became a manufacturing system and would make massive
amounts of protein. So a tobacco plant would start making more monoclonal
antibody than you and I are could make because that's all this tobacco
plant did over a three week period. Both ultimately would kill the tobacco
plant. But before it did we grind up the plant purify the antibodies.
Zmapp was a cocktail of three different antibodies which were tested first
in mice and then in nonhuman primates at Fort Dietrich um delightful
results because we could prevent Ebola in the rhesus macaques which is the
best human analog in the animal world. They also suffer from death from
Ebola. Anyway, we've got very good results. So all this was Sort of
percolating along. We thought Gosh, maybe we'll get some more funding in
10 years. We could perhaps even do a human clinical trial on this. And all
of a sudden in East Africa, particularly starting in Liberia. The Ebola
epidemic kicked off late in 2000 and 13. By 2000 and 14 essentially the
whole world was worried about it. Quarantining quarantining people that
didn't want to travel from the infected areas into the U. S. And elsewhere.
and two American missionaries were in Liberia and got in the news because
they were infected with the Ebola virus were very sick and
a whole bunch of details in between. But for reasons of connections with
the U. S. Military. We had the ability to transfer some of these
antibodies. We I'm speaking in general census was now the companies that
we were working with in Fort Dietrich into Liberia. And these two
missionaries who were sick were given the option of accepting The this
therapeutic antibody which had been tested in less than 20 animals for
safety. And they just said it's totally experimental. You guys want to
give this a try. Both of them agreed. Uh And which was amazing. But and
you may have seen it on tv but the first guy to get it. Ah But he said
when he got the injection it's intravenous delivery of these three
antibodies coming out of the tobacco one. He said he started to shake and
for an hour it just was his temperature went up, all sorts of things. It's
no wonder his bloodstream was filled with Ebola virus. We shot in
antibodies which are glomming up all this Ebola virus going through his
system. His liver must have been looking like a mess because it it would
start screening all this stuff out. But within an hour after an hour he
was able to get up and get out of bed and go to the bathroom and he of
course recovered. Days later he was on a plane back to the U. S. And both
of the missionaries were recovered. And unfortunately at the time we only
had a limited supply of this Zmapp but several more people got it. Uh
Anyone who was younger, younger young enough to have a good immune system
uh recovered. Uh We had a couple of cases where an old spanish priest who
was really sick did not recover. But by and large the press said this is
amazing. Uh They called the first report in the new york times said a
secret drug developed by the military? They didn't mention a. S. U. And
there's things uh etcetera. But we had a camera crew from BBC here on
campus for two days, filming everything we had and they did a show which
evolved into a nova when our nova show. And so a s you got an enormous
amount of press coverage in the fall of 2000 and 14. Um I remember in
particular, my wife and I have a summer place up in Pinetop. And when this
news before
the news broke, one of my colleagues over at uh map bio therapeutics sent
me an email in the morning. He said charlie, I don't know if you've heard
the news coming out of Liberia, but it looks like Zmapp has worked. And I
think we should notify the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
because we had a paper in press, he said they might be interested in some
press coverage. Well that was an understatement because that afternoon
every press agency in the world would have picked up on this story. And I
don't know how many interviews I did sitting in our kitchen up in pint up
in front of my ipads. So they could do facetime or whatever. No, I did it
on Skype.
Anyway, it was an exciting time for our whole research group, but also for
the whole press group at at A S. U. That was a very very very exciting
time. What have you been doing since then? Well, you know it was
That was 2014. That was yes that was the fall of 2014. I still had grants
going at the time but it was fortuitous in one way because I knew I wanted
to retire. I hadn't planned to go that long but everything in research was
going. So but what can you do to top producing a drug that saves lives? I
mean there's just no point in sort of chasing after something else. So uh
I did then start the final phase and In 2016 I did the formal retirement,
stepped down as Professor Emeritus School Life Sciences.
Tell me about your serving with Bush on p. Cast. What was that all about
in 2000. Uh well that election in November George Bush came in the
following spring. I was contacted I believe because I was on several
committees that people knew of my research and they asked if I would be on
the presidential council of advisors on science and technology or podcast.
And I would emphasize it's a non political and I think half the people on
the bushes advisory committee were democrats by voting category. But
anyway it was it was a group of people who knew science and were picked to
try to advise what the federal government should be doing In the fall of
2001.
We were going to have our first meeting in Washington. And then it was
going to be late September September 9 11 came along. All hell broke loose
in Washington, you couldn't even fly. Their meeting was called off
etcetera etcetera. We had a series of meetings starting in the spring of
2002. We helped write, I was on the subcommittee that wrote a whole
section On project bioshield, which was included included in the
presidential state of the Union discussion. And led to a new funding, a
$10 million dollar fund, $10 billion funding. There's a big difference
between M's and B's $10 billion new program and bio threat reduction
called project bioshield. And uh I would say that was the biggest new
infusion of money in the biological sciences in a long time. And we were
poised to make use of our system. It had a big impact on us and our
funding at at at a S. U. In the bio design institute ramped up from, you
know, sub million dollar to like 2 to $3 million a year of funding over
the next several years. So it was a very good time for us. And uh through
that period I had the delightful experience of being on the podcast. The
main good thing about it is they would hold meetings four times a year.
We'd come in, we'd be briefed by the secretary of any anything and his
staff and others what they're doing. And a lot of our focus was are the
agency's interacting across the way, how are we going to coordinate things
like bioterrorism? And then it went on into the next phase, which was nano
technology. And anyway it was a wonderful time. I got the administrative
high level policy reviews for free. I didn't have to read it, you could
just be there and and hear what was going on and and try to offer useful
comments on on all this area. One of the things I wanted to ask you, I I
read your list of honors and I was particularly impressed by the fact that
you have received three honorary doctorates, one from uh the Hebrew
University in Israel, You were elected to the National Academy of Sciences
three years after you reach full professorship and then there's this award
which I have to read awarded by Fast Magazine for the most creative person
in business in 2015. Now, which of all of those awards, are you most proud
? Well, first of all, the Fast magazine, I had never even heard of Fast
magazine until they contacted me and told me they wanted to develop this
proposal to have me included in it. I have hold it since, it's really a
very good tech based thing for the tech community etcetera. But of all the
awards I would say the one that uh certainly did my career the most was to
be elected in the National Academy of Sciences was 41 years old when I got
elected. Uh you know, do you ever deserve all these things? Who knows? But
it gave me instant credentials. I don't think they were warranted. But
when you are a member of the National Academy of Sciences, people say oh
this if he must know what he's doing well, whether that's true or not is I
think really in doubt. But it gave me credentials and it did allow me to
um it helped going to Dupont. It certainly helped going to texas A and M.
And cordell etcetera. And I'm sure it helped influence Milton laddie here
in offering a position at sc Do you think A. S. U. has made progress in
the last 20 years? That's a that's not even a question. It's just this
place is exploding with excitement and and and uh for better or worse, uh
Michael Crowe wanted a new american University, a different model of
education. I personally think it's for the better. I think I look at lots
of state universities around the country and worry that there's uh
atrophying on the spot because they aren't evolving their funding from the
state is diminishing and it's just a tough time. A small number of schools
are gonna continue to survive. You know, the University of Illinois's and
and Davis and Berkeley etcetera will survive because they're so good and
they're going to maintain it. But there's somebody that won't, I think ASU
was not at that quite at that tipping point but we could be so much less
today than we are now. It's this is clearly one of the best universities
of the public universities in the United States. I mean all the different
criteria that you use to look at universities as says that I've been in
Illinois was very impressed by Illinois, was at Cornell, wonderful school
and Preston. But being here now at S. U. I'm more proud of a issue than
especially The core margins at Cornell which is it's stuck in one place
and this place is not stuck. It's it's just it's like there are no limits
to what we can do and just everyone just going after all the wonderful
things we do. I love the fact that
as opposed to most universities we have an organizational structure based
on schools and programs now that encourage people to work together. I
talked to you earlier, Kathy about early in relatively early in the middle
of my career when I was at texas A. And M. I stopped essentially taking
graduate students myself. I really started trying to organize my research
program around recruiting non tenured faculty and postdocs people that I
could mentor and teach them how to interact with each other and how to
interact with industry and how to start large programs. So I think we have
such
an excess of graduate students and postdocs who are fighting their way
through the system trying to grab one of the last academic professorial
positions that are out there And they aren't trained well enough to think
of all the other opportunities that exist. And so I've spent really my
last 25 30 years focusing on mentoring people. To think of the whole
universe of things that can be done. And I'm thinking the way I look at A
. S. U. Is that mentality is really in place here. And it's I would say as
opposed to many schools where it's hard to get tenure if you haven't just
published single author papers or you and your graduate students that used
to be used to be the way you would get tenure in a say a biology
department that we know you had to prove that you had done it
independently. That's antiquated today. I I I see tenure committees
although I haven't been on one for 34 years now. But they're starting to
look at how did this individual uh contribute to a team activity and what
would happen without that individual. And that sort of thinking it's
thriving at A. S. U. I think and were unusual in that sense. And because
of it so much better
with all of the
advances that S. U. Has made and your institute has made. And do you think
that this would have happened had Michael Crow not come here Or is a lot
of it due to Michael Crowe? I think that, mm hmm.
Well, as I said earlier when I in the first year when I was being the
founding director of this new institute, I went around campus and you know
, describe this vision of a department free independent entity etcetera.
And overwhelming lack of enthusiasm for this idea. Um
but I think that was really driven not by the fact that faculty, the
faculty members at A S. U. It wasn't they were against an institute, but
academics and I are one, as we always said, when we see new money, we want
part of it. It's just it's it's just simple that once the it had been
established that new money coming in was going to go into this matrix of
large projects, interdisciplinary research etcetera.
I think anybody didn't it didn't have to be Michael Krol, anybody who came
in who continued to support this idea would have helped to change the
culture in such a way that an institute would be successful. No, Michael
Crow helped a lot because he pushed it vigorously.
I mean the whole idea of creating schools sustainability institute, all
these sorts of things that are interdisciplinary, not locked into
traditional departmental silos. I think Michael Crowe has clearly pushed
that faster than any other president or provost anywhere in the US and
interact with the Defense department, what part did you play as opposed to
the Defense department? Right, well, in the development of Zmapp Uh we had
a three way partnership Department of Defense. It was really the
department of Army, their research headquarters in Fort Dietrich. Uh This
company in SAn Diego biotherapeutics and A. S. U. Um And so when we wrote
the grant proposal we have stipulations in it about who was responsible
for each each part part of this program A. S. U. By definition we were the
exploratory new technology development arm of it. For one thing we
couldn't do anything in animal testing because we had no facilities to
deal with Ebola. It's very dangerous and all sorts of things. Uh So the
animal testing was all going to be there. And our friends at in san Diego
I knew these two guys who were probably among the very best in the country
in designing antibodies as therapeutics. So their skill set was to take
our basic technology tools and we would write a report to the U. S.
Military every six months about what progress we were making. And this is
at a time that they would read our reports and respond because
bioterrorism was so high up on their interest on on their radar. Uh We got
a lot of interest and as it turned out as we were pointing animal studies
I went into Fort Dietrich quite a few times to reach agreement on how we
were going to do the animal trials, how much material we needed. And and
as part of that is we've got data how we're going to publish our data who
was going to be on authors and publications and things like that. And it
was very collegial interaction. They had to submit all their papers
through the U. S. Military to get approval before publishing but that we
expected we we had set that up in advance so it was a really a collegial
interaction with the group at Fort Dietrich although they were under
pressure to deliver some data more pressure than I think we felt here. But
not that I wasn't interested. It's just I was used to the slow pace pace
of drug development and I Would never have anticipated that we could start
a project on a bench in bio design in 2002 and have that in people By 2014.
Just unheard of. Uh so but part of that was encouraging just ending that
now uh we transitioned out of that project after five years at that point
the funding had been coming from initially from the U. S. Army and then
from DARPA which is the applied research arm of the military but then it
transitioned into Barda which is there, I don't even remember what Barda
stands for but it's their business arm which rights contracts to provide a
supply of material. So today Barda is supporting all research on Zmapp
there is a stockpile. I have no idea how large it is there is ZMApp
available in in africa where it can be used as these new outbreaks. Come
Bart is very interested in seeing it used because it is the only way we're
going to do human clinical trials with live Ebola. And so they have the
responsibility of the humanitarian use of this, of this reserve supply.
And their plan is to make sure we have a supply available in the case that
some crazy start using Ebola as a bioterrorism agent in the United States.
Well thank you very much. Thank you and a pleasure. She was uh what what
what when Kathy was in Milk Glick's office, she regarded her as the key
person to keep me out of trouble. She was my uh if if something came up
and I wasn't accustomed to the CSU politics etcetera and I was you know
chasing after money and trying to set up new things and etcetera. Give
Cathy a call and ask her. It wasn't a fairy godmother. It was something
else. I had a phrase for you. I remember what it was. What was it you
called me, charlie's angels. I think that's what it was. She was the one
who would guide me and tell me no you gotta be careful there said don't do
this or don't don't do that. But sometimes I listen to her too. SoMhm