Ari Patrinos is ending his stint as associate director of science for biological and environmental research at the Department of Energy to head up Synthetic Genomics, Inc, a linkurl:J. Craig Venter venture;http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/1/1/38/1/ launched this past summer. Having spent ten years leading the DOE?s often budget-crunched biology efforts, I couldn?t help but wonder why he was leaving prior to a huge influx of government money as mentioned in George Bush?s linkurl:State of the Union;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23032/ address. But Patrinos tells me that his father, once a famous soccer player in Egypt, had told him ?The time to walk away is when you?re on the top.? But the top is hard to define for someone with a record like Patrinos?. During his DOE tenure, Patrinos was an important player in the efforts to sequence the human genome, garnering much public support and smoothening relations between the public funded project and the Celera push headed...
Interested in reading more?
Become a Member of
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!
