NIH Cuts Out Soviet Lab In Grant To Emigre Geneticist

WASHINGTON--NIH has balked at what would have been unprecedented funding of the Soviet component of collaborative research with a Soviet émigré now in the United States (The Scientist, April 2, 1990, page 1). But the scientist, geneticist Valery Soyfer, says that he'll be able to carry out most of the work by having his collaborator, molecular biologist Maxim Frank-Kamenet-skii, spend time in Soyfer's new laboratory at George Mason University. Persecuted and penniless in the Soviet Union, Soyfer was a 10-year critic of the politicization of Soviet science who hoped that his fortunes would improve after he arrived in the United States. Two years after he was allowed to emigrate, Soyfer is still a "wanted" man. But this time he has no complaints. Last month, Soyfer learned that NIH wants him to have $121,000 this year as part of a three-year grant to learn more about the triple helix DNA structure. His grant accommodates Frank-Kamenetskii and his colleagues at the Institute of Molecular Genetics laboratory in Moscow, who want to work with Soyfer despite losing out on their request for new technical and computer equipment. And this spring George Mason University wanted him badly enough to use a university-wide endowed chair to lure him to its campus in Fairfax, Va., 20 miles west of the nation's capital. "I will have the best possible experimental conditions," says Soyfer, who was a Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University before accepting his new post earlier this month. "My own financial conditions are also better, and in Washington there will be many more opportunities to invite people from the Soviet Union and build deeper contacts with scientists from all over the world." Asked if he was disappointed that NIH chose not to support Frank-Kamenetskii's lab directly, the 52-year-old Soyfer shrugs. "It's not bad," he says. "They said it was unreasonable to send anything to the Soviet Union. We will have a few problems in the first year, maybe, but then things will get better. We had asked for five years, at $180,000 per year, but since they are only giving me three years, and limiting the research to in vivo investigations, the cuts are manageable." James Cassatt, an administrator within the biophysics program at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, says that the study section that reviewed Soyfer's proposal decided on scientific grounds to eliminate funding for the Soviet component of the project. Although those deliberations are confidential, Cassatt says "there was no conscious effort to cut anything out because it was being done in the Soviet Union: I can tell you that." Had the grant been fully funded, NIH officials say that it would have been the first case of support for truly collaborative research between investigators from the U.S. and the Soviet Union who lack a track record of NIH funding. At George Mason University Soyfer will be a Robinson Professor. His title honors a wealthy benefactor whose bequest has helped the university to create some 20 endowed chairs. The recipients are chosen, says university vice president David Potter, because of their interest in undergraduate education, the cross-disciplinary nature of their research, their national reputation, and their ability "to be institution builders." Soyfer, says Potter, is "not only a distinguished scientist, but someone whose work transcends the lab bench. His background gives him a unique perspective on science in the Soviet Union." Potter says that the university is spending almost $100,000 to outfit Soyfer's lab, and that his salary as a tenured professor will be "somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000." Soyfer says he will have ties to both the biology and history departments, and that in addition to instructing students in molecular genetics he hopes to teach a course on "personality, morality, and success in science." His lab will be small, he says, with Frank-Kamenetskii coming "for three-month visits every year" to maintain the collaboration.

NIH Cuts Out Soviet Lab In Grant To Emigre Geneticist

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