Five months after placing the orders, the cameras finally arrive. Biophysicist Gary Brouhard tears open the cardboard boxes, tosses the packaging aside, and gently places the two $47,000 cameras onto the cluttered lab bench, inconspicuously nestled between sheets of pink bubble wrap, unopened equipment boxes, and the week's growing heap of recyclables. "I don't break the boxes down as quickly as they come, so it's sort of a mess," Brouhard admits. Cleaning might not be Brouhard's forté, but he is crafty about setting up his lab on the cheap.
Brouhard, who studies single-molecule dynamics of the microtubule cytoskeleton, joined the faculty of Montreal's McGill University in August 2008. Nine months on, his lab was still very much a work in progress. Unlike most US institutions, which award new hires with generous start-up packages, Canadian universities provide little support to cover infrastructure costs. The government provides a boost, but the $750,000 ...
