Shake up in Rochester

The surprise resignation of Jay H. Stein from the post of chief executive officer at the University of Rochester (UR) Medical Center has some wondering whether efforts to renovate the school's research enterprise will suffer. In the wake of Stein's May 16 decision to quit, UR President Thomas Jackson hastened to reassure researchers that nothing would change in the $500 million, 10-year drive to transform a once moribund scientific community into a powerhouse.But others seemed shaken by the change, which appeared as a sudden rift in what had been a close, eight-year alliance between Jackson and the man he put in charge of the medical center, Stein.Among those concerned is Stanford University biochemist and Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg, whose name adorns a new 224,000-square-foot research facility at UR. Asked whether the university's drive to the top ranks of research institutions will survive Stein's departure, Kornberg said, "That's pretty tenuous."Until Stein's departure, he and Jackson were partners in the push to make the UR biomedical research effort into a world-class hive of basic science inquiry and spin-offs. Before Stein took the reins, UR received $75 million to $80 million annually from the National Institutes of Health. This year, grants will top $120 million. Now the school is looking for a replacement for Stein, who did not return calls for comment. "I'm distressed that such a friendly couple has decided on divorce," Kornberg said.A university official blamed the breakup on a difference of opinion over timing in plans to separate the medical center from the university. No total split was contemplated, he said, but both executives agreed on a "decentralization" that would entrust the medical center's board with oversight of the hospitals and research centers, while the university trustees continued to rule the roost on the school's side. "The disagreement that developed was really around pace, how quickly something like this would happen and how broadly the decentralization would apply," said Andrew Deubler, a UR associate vice president. "I believe the fundamental reason Dr. Stein decided to leave is connected to the idea that medical centers move at a faster pace than university settings," he said.Kornberg said that UR's research community was going nowhere before the duo of Jackson and Stein came on the scene. An alumnus who earned his MD from UR in 1941 and a DSc from the school in 1962, Kornberg later went on to head departments at the Washington University School of Medicine and Stanford University School of Medicine. In Rochester, however, Kornberg had to swim against the current. "I thought that I was the victim of various kinds of cultural attitudes and then the mediocrity over the years," he recalled. Research talent thrived at UR in spite of the school, not because of it, he said. All that changed when Jackson brought Stein on the scene, according to Kornberg and others. "At the time Dr. Stein came there was a pressing need to reaffirm a standard of excellence and it had proved difficult to accomplish this on a consensus basis," said Maurice Zauderer, a longtime UR researcher who now heads Vaccinex, one of the start-ups spun out in Stein's revitalization.He believes Jackson's message that Stein's exit will not halt the impetus to improve. "I have no sense of slackening of enthusiasm by the university. There is a strong momentum in the direction of moving forward," Zauderer said.But Kornberg could only say he "hoped" UR continues to improve its research climate, in spite of the rift between Jackson and Stein. Such troubles, he said, are not unheard of at schools with medical centers. "From long experience in medical school affairs and human affairs, I only know money must be involved and authority and the use of the money," he added.

Shake up in Rochester

Future of university's aggressive research expansion in question after chief executive's sudden departure

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