Dreaming of Silicon Valley East

The audience at his installation heard it. Doctors at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center heard it. Donors with deep pockets heard it. Even students as far away as Beijing University got the message.

Throughout this first year of his term, University President Lawrence H. Summers said he thinks the sequencing of the genome and other biological breakthroughs are catalyzing an innovative explosion in the life sciences, and that Harvard must be at the forefront of the coming revolution.

The initiative is necessary, Summers said, both to maintain Harvard’s preeminence and to maximize its contribution to an intellectual effort that promises to save lives and to dramatically increase life expectancy.

“I am convinced that the next Silicon Valley...will happen in the biomedical area, will happen in the technology and in the products that relate to extending and improving the quality of human life,” Summers said in November.

Summers promoted the theme in nearly every speech he gave this year and, at the highest levels of his administration, plans are being made to transform Harvard and the Boston area into what he called a “Silicon Valley East”—the biomedical equivalent of California’s successful tech sector.

Building the Team

At the heart of Summers’ vision are academic initiatives intended to deepen Harvard’s involvement in the life sciences.

There are already thousands of scientists across the University working on problems of biological significance. And the University has in recent years committed itself to focusing attention and resources on the life sciences.

Some of these efforts came to fruition this year. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ (FAS) Bauer Center for Genomics was dedicated. A new joint venture between the Medical School and its affiliated hospitals to further probe genes and their translation got under way. And the Rowland Institute, an independent Cambridge research center, was acquired by Harvard.

But in this, his first year as president, Summers said he wants to take a more systematic approach to expansion of the life sciences. This desire manifested itself in the appointments he made, the processes he put in place and the priorities he set for his deans and the University’s other senior leadership.

In November, Summers chose Steven E. Hyman to be his provost and immediately announced that Hyman would lead his science agenda.

Hyman, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health and formerly a Harvard Medical School (HMS) neurobiologist, combined experience in both science research and administration, Summers said.

Within a few months, Hyman had an assistant provost for science to help him—Kathleen M. Buckley ’74, herself a former HMS researcher, was appointed to his staff in March.

And last month a new Provost’s advisory committee on science, composed of scientists and experts from across the University, met for the first time.

The ultimate goal of the committee and the main thrust of their efforts, Hyman and Buckley said, is to bring together the science being done across the University.

Science is becoming ever more interdisciplinary, Hyman said. As a result, Harvard needs to do more to foster collaboration between departments and between its schools.

“I don’t want to undercut the autonomy of the schools, but I don’t want there to be intellectual silos,” Hyman said in March.

The fact that there are essentially two biochemistry departments, one at HMS and one at FAS, is often cited to underscore the need for greater collaboration.

While Summers and others noted there were few new concrete programs to show as evidence of this heightened focus on life-science research across the University, Summers hinted several initiatives are in the pipeline for next year.

“While I’m not prepared to preview new initiatives at this time, this is clearly an area where we will be taking substantial initiative in the next year or two,” Summers said late last month.

And collaborative enterprises might not be limited to partnerships between Harvard departments and schools, but might include collaborations with other universities, officials said.

The Promised Land

But new collaborations alone won’t ensure that Harvard capitalizes fully on the biomedical revolution, Summers explained.

Science at Harvard, and particularly FAS, needs more space in the immediate future and even more in the long term to accommodate a quickening pace of growth.

Both in his statements and in his actions this year, Summers went beyond past assurances and planned to seek a solution to the University-wide space crunch and make room for science’s enormous long-term needs.

A scenario for the development of University land in Allston that sees the 100-odd acres of unused land as an ideal science campus grew in prominence after Summers’ arrival (see related story, page C-7).

Some administrators said the order to consider science in Allston came straight from Summers’ desk.

Summers spoke more generally about assuring that all options in Allston are explored.

With the pressing need for new “wet labs” and the obstacles posed by Harvard’s wary Cambridge neighbors, it makes sense to at least consider building a new science campus across the river, Summers and his deputies explained.

Summers, and others involved in planning for Allston, said it is too early to say what science on the far side of the Charles would even entail.

Senior Advisor to the President Dennis F. Thompson, who chairs the University committee coordinating plans for Allston, said possibilities range from new interdisciplinary centers housing parts of research groups or labs from various schools, to whole FAS departments moving across the river.

Hyman has stressed that all options remain on the table.

But before preliminary plans can even be drawn up, data will need to be collected on everything from current interdisciplinary collaborations to how far biochemistry concentrators are willing to travel to conduct thesis research, Thompson said.

The first steps in this process are just beginning as a second committee has been appointed to deal with the physical planning aspects of long-range science concerns. The group will report back to Thompson’s overall physical planning committee next January.

Rather than recommending a specific plan for science in Allston, Thompson said, the committee should provide “creative thinking” on the issues as well as some general ideas of what science’s needs may be as far down the road as two decades from now.

Corporate Connection

Summers’ vision of a new Silicon Valley entails more than just new lab space.

The information technology revolution took off in both the institutional and private sectors. Stanford provided 9,000 acres of low-rent land to industry, creating the science park that eventually grew into Silicon Valley.

Industry fed off of Stanford’s critical mass of brain power, while the university benefited from the drawing power and intellectual excitement that the companies provided.

Summers said he wants to replicate the miracle and bring big biotech to the Boston area.

While few specifics were articulated this year, this aspect of Summers’ vision created the most excitement—earning Summers a mention in Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s inaugural address and winning Summers high praise from industry representatives.

Harvard doesn’t have 9,000 acres of land to give away and administrators said it’s far from clear that Harvard will chart a course of closer interaction with private sector biotechnology.

“With only 100 acres [of undeveloped land in Allston] it would be a tough decision to use some for non-Harvard activities,” Hyman wrote in an e-mail.

But a science park either on, or more likely near, Harvard land in Allston is being considered, Thompson and others said.

Discussion of the possibility is on the science advisory committee’s agenda. And the models that the committee will examine for guidance on how to develop new science campuses embrace the need for collaborations with the private sector.

The new Mission Bay science campus of the University of California, San Francisco was built on land donated by a pharmaceutical company and will be surrounded by a “biotechnology and life sciences zone.”

The university hopes the physical proximity will allow for scientist-exchange programs, basic research collaborations and a host of other new relationships.

The anchor for a similar zone on and near Harvard’s land already exists. A Genzyme plant lies on University-owned land at one end of the campus of the future.

Just beyond the other edge of Harvard’s land, real estate developer Cabot, Cabot and Forbes is in the process of adapting a half-built building to provide biotech space.

And the highest density of biotech in the region is already centered in Cambridge near the MIT campus, the result of a decision by MIT a decade ago that some have called analogous to the decision facing Harvard today.

Last month, pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced it would be building a massive new research facility in space leased from MIT.

While Silicon Valley boomed in the 1980s and 1990s, a corridor of high-tech industry that had grown up around Route 128 in Massachusetts petered out.

“If there was going to be a similar boom for biological science, we would want to make sure, within the barriers of the University’s mission, that we do what we can to make sure it happens here,” Hyman said in March.

Valley of Doubt

A year of priming the University for a new focus on the life sciences has now been completed, but whether Summers’ vision will ultimately unfold as he hopes is far from clear .

Interdisciplinary approaches to science are not a new theme. Summers’ predecessor Neil L. Rudenstine tried for a decade to encourage greater collaboration across disciplinary lines, meeting with scattered success.

Summers may find it difficult to prod departments, let alone whole schools, to work more closely together.

Before a science campus could possibly rise in Allston, a good number of minds must be convinced.

Cabot Professor of Biology Richard M. Losick, who is also a member of both science advisory committees, wrote in a March e-mail that he supports Summers’ goal of fostering greater collaboration “but would much prefer that [it] be done in Cambridge than in Allston.”

Other professors explained their aversion to a move in terms of its effects on the unity of FAS science or on undergraduate education.

Hyman said he realizes that professors may enter the planning process “with strong prejudices” but hopes “they can check them at the door.”

Thompson explained that he hopes after considering the opportunities provided by the space in Allston, schools and departments will find themselves competing for the chance to move.

But the most tenuous part of Summers’ vision might be the idea of closer partnerships with the private sector.

“I don’t care very much for [private sector] biotech; intellectually interesting research occurs at the University,” said Tarr Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Markus Meister in March. “I personally wouldn’t be sad if [the next boom] happened on the West Coast.”

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.