I connected with Golub for an interview with Zoom from his home in Newton. It was his first interview since taking office. Our conversation has been edited for a long time.
How did you find out that Eric Lander was appointed White House scientific advisor?
It all happened quickly, as things work in government. I think it’s really great for the country and Eric is the person who does it. He has that vision and ability to do things.
Was it a previous conclusion that you would replace it?
It was a debate the board had to have first. But yes, as a co-founder of Broad, having been there since its inception, being the chief scientist and executive management team, it wasn’t surprising when I was nominated for the role.
What changes the research agenda and work you plan for in the post-Lander era?
It’s worth taking a step back and having a little perspective of where we’re coming from, because I think that informs us where we’re going. The early days of Broad were deeply grounded in genomics, the technical aspects of creating maps of the human genome, because that was the work that was really needed to lay the groundwork for the field.
For the past 16 years, there has been a step toward deepening biology and connections to medicine and hospitals. We will double these directions: deepen our connections with our local hospitals, deepen our commitment to work in therapeutics, bring new approaches to biology and chemistry on drug discovery, and deepen our connections with industry in this regard. Much of the work that needs to be done will go to the intersection of academia with the private sector, where we take on really important issues together.
How did you take part in the COVID-19 tests on Broad?
I see COVID testing as a great example of Broad’s philosophy that it should address the most important challenges we face, and it should be organized and have a culture that allows it to be agile, so that it can respond to those most important challenges. Years ago, the most important challenge was “Let’s figure out how to sequence the human genome” and when there is new sequencing technology available on Monday, you should be able to respond on Tuesday. COVID is another example. Our culture and organization allowed us to adapt quickly. What was needed was a very high production yield, available and ideally low cost. We were perfectly prepared to be able to do that.
Looks like you’re working from home. Do you have a regular entry schedule to the building?
Like many Broadies, I spend a lot of time working from home. My current schedule will be two days a week. I still spend a lot of that time in Zoom, even though I’m in the building. But it’s good to be on Broad and see how high school comes back to life. Our labs are now fully functional, everyone is back, the pace of work is back and the energy is back, even though many offices are still empty. People who are not in the [lab] the benches are largely at home, as they should be. We have been deliberately conservative, but data-driven, in our return to work. We started with groups that used a shift program to keep the density as low as possible and gradually increased. Having not observed any cases of virus transmission in Broad, we are confident that our security procedures are adequate. If you don’t need to be in the bank, our focus for now is that you’re still at home.
Are there periodic tests for asymptomatic employees?
Yes, for people entering the site, we have a periodic testing program.
There are a lot of things you do, whether it’s new data platforms, polygenic score for heart attack risk, cancer works. What are the things that are not COVID and that you would like to highlight in the “coming soon” category?
One is the area of drug and therapeutic discovery. Every time we see big and small businesses coming to Broad with interest [in] How could we work together to re-imagine a future around the workings of drug discovery and development.
The Broad will never become a pharmaceutical company; this is not our aspiration. But I hope Broad can be a growing force in drug discovery and development, in collaboration with the industry.
The second area revolves around data and data analysis: machine learning in particular. The biomedical world is exploding with data, and having all the data randomly scattered makes it not particularly useful. The concept behind Earth [a Broad-Microsoft-Verily collaboration] is that having a mechanism for gathering useful data and useful tools reduces the barrier for researchers in the community, not just in Broad, but around the world, to be able to analyze that data and make sure we have the right resources. security and data permissions in place.
And if we have this growing corpus of data organized in a way that can be analyzed, the power of the emerging machine learning methods that are now exploding on the scene become really exciting and important and have real potential.
This is an area where you will see Broad becoming even more active, bringing together the computing community, machine learners and people from biological and medical backgrounds. I see huge potential in machine learning and artificial intelligence methods, but the way to get there is to bring this community of computer scientists to the community of biologists and clinicians and decide together what problems we really have. to solve.
You have recently expanded your campus. Do you think the density and level of activity we saw before the pandemic will return? Are you worried about Kendall Square, post-pandemic? Right now it’s a ghost town.
The success of Broad, and of biotechnology in the region, is absolutely related to this density and this energy. I’m sure he’ll be back, after the pandemic. I think people recognize that there is value in this density and in everything that comes out of it.
At the same time, I think Broad and other organizations will learn from that point on and ask me if we should be more open to thinking about additional ways and more flexible ways of working. I suspect Broad won’t look exactly like it did before the pandemic. There is no doubt that Kendall Square will continue to be a hive of information and energy flow and post-pandemic connections. This will be essential for the future growth and viability of Kendall Square and for the region, even if it doesn’t look exactly like the pre-pandemic.
Pre-pandemic, it would probably have been a difficult fact to say that Broad would have a group leader in Silicon Valley or Seattle or Tel Aviv. Everyone was expected to be in the building. You seem to be saying that something can be re-evaluated.
It is too early to know what our solution will be, but we are definitely re-examining some of these assumptions. [about where people live] so that we are flexible. And yet, I think a significant measure of Broad’s success has been the commitment to having bank-based people and computing people who weren’t in separate departments, but had a space where the two were physically next to each other. of the other.
Can you have rigorous, free scientific debates about Zoom, just like in a conference room?
You can do a decent job, but it’s not a substitute for being face-to-face.
Do you plan to talk and write about the role of science in society, as your predecessor often did? What is your message?
The task of the Broad Institute is not just to make discoveries within the walls of the Broad; is to do so as a horizontal connector to the local Boston community and beyond. I suspect he will hear more from me. At the moment, my plate is pretty full and my top priority is to lead the Broad.
Scott Kirsner can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ScottKirsner.