New Scientist / November 14, 2012 /
Every other week, biochemist Michelle Arkin sets up a videoconference before her lab’s group meeting. And when the lab meeting starts, she doesn’t only welcome her fellow scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. She also greets their remote collaborators: scientists from Pfizer or Janssen Research & Development, depending on the day. As the group reviews the latest data, everyone helps shape the project’s direction and suggests ways to improve the experiments.
“In my experience, scientists from industry and academia are most often on the same page,” says Arkin. “They have the same spirit and the same goals to advance the research.” Arkin and her colleagues at UCSF’s Small Molecule Discovery Center have made it a goal to collaborate with industry, as well as pursue independent research, since the center’s inception seven years ago. These collaborations – characterised by constant phone calls, FedEx shipments of reagents between the team members and shared group meetings – help keep their science focused on results… Read more at New Scientist.