Talent

Although he has been in the United States only six years, Moscow native Vadim Gurvich of KU had no trouble identifying what he saw as Kansas City’s essential challenge, namely "to make Kansas City attractive to biotech talent." Bill Duncan who runs the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute made the same point emphatically, "It’s about attracting talent." Duncan cited the example of San Diego. "The most important thing" San Diego did to promote eco-nomic development was to establish 100 endowed professorships over the last 20 years.

Sandra Willsie of the University of Health Sciences elaborated that what makes talent particularly attractive is that they tend to come "with the funding to do the research."

Although the major mission of the Mid America Heart Institute is patient care, Ben McAllister faces the same challenge. "Our primary problem," he observes, "is the recruitment of clinicians and researchers," especially those who have protected time and fully funded positions.

Tom Krol of Cydex defined the issue a little more broadly. He sees the area’s basic challenge as "giving talented people a reason to be here in Kansas City." Getting them here isn’t enough, agreed Jim Guikema of Kansas State, "We also have to keep them." And that is a problem for all institutions.

Tom Krol sees North Carolina’s Research Triangle as a useful model for attracting and retaining talent. Such an environment includes ample funding, a range of successful companies as well as a lot of start-ups, and great collegiality.

One way to recruit and retain personnel, affirmed Karel Schubert of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, was to "create an environment that sup-ports entrepreneurism." Bill Osborne of UMKC added, "We haven’t figured out how to move this stuff from the research lab to the marketplace where real wealth is created."

Joan Hunt argued for patience and the funding necessary to make patience possible. "Researchers are discoverers," she insisted. "They like to learn something that no one else knows, and learning takes time." For Hunt, discovery research comes first. "Until we have something to transfer," she noted wryly, "we can’t go very far."

Mike Chippendale of the University of Missouri-Columbia agreed that the area’s number one challenge is "drawing all the talent pool we need to be successful." He believes, however, that the talent may already be here in the greater Columbia to Manhattan region. What has to be done, he suggested, is "bring it together."

"We do have outstanding people," Ron Trewyn affirmed but added, "We’re thin in many of these [key] areas."

Bio-Terrorism

There is likely no darker cloud than bio-terrorism, but this too has something of a silver lining. "There are huge dollars available through NIAID," said Joan Hunt. Better still, she believes, the organization is well disposed to supporting Kansas City. The area, however, is not as well prepared with BL-3 facilities as it might be. "We need a city-wide initia- tive to think of bio-terrorism," argued Hunt.

Steve Lufkin questioned whether citizens would respond to this need the way they might, say, a new sports stadium. The problem, as he sees it, is that from an economic development standpoint it is hard to answer the simple question about biotechnology, "What do I get."

On the positive side, Lufkin continued, homeland security "is all new money." There are no real incumbents. It is a lot easier to get projects that have never been given to anyone before, if, Lufkin noted, "We are willing to collaborate and focus on the objectives rather than on the money."

Sandra Willsie agreed that the response to bio-terrorism provided "an excellent opportunity to work together."

She cautioned, however, that we "need to look at barriers to collaboration."

Michael Helmstetter suggested another possible limitation and that was the military’s lack of interest in basic research. The brass is apparently looking only for technology that is ready to be adapted. "if you can’t apply it," said Helmstetter in a Johnny Cochrane-like moment, "They won’t buy it."

Bill Duncan affirmed that suspicion. He and Ron Trewyn attended a Kansas homeland defense meeting, and he was asked by no fewer than ten people, "What are you guys doing here?" Duncan could see that they were not making the connection between basic and applied research.