FRONTIERS Leading Salk science Into the future

Leading with vision and collaboration

When Rusty Gage, the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease, assumed the presidency of Salk in 2018, he had decades of pioneering neuroscience papers to his credit. Since then, he has balanced two equally demanding full-time jobs: president of an elite, world-renowned institution that conducts innovative science, and leader of a distinguished neuroscience laboratory.

Gage is one of the world’s preeminent neuroscientists, known for overturning longstanding scientific dogma that the brain does not make new neurons, with a 1998 study revealing that “neurogenesis” does, in fact, occur in select areas of the brain.

Since 2014, he has consistently been named one of science’s most highly cited researchers by Clarivate, indicating that his work has been repeatedly judged by his peers to be notable for its significance and usefulness. And his lab, one of Salk’s largest, routinely delivers cutting-edge methodologies and ground-breaking discoveries to find better ways to understand and treat conditions of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s, depression, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Raised in a military family stationed abroad, Gage went to high school in Italy before attending college at the University of Florida and graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. He married his high school sweetheart and the couple moved to Sweden, where Gage completed a Fulbright fellowship and held a faculty position at Lund University. He joined the faculty at UC San Diego in 1985, and the family settled in San Diego, where his mother was raised and went to college. A dedicated mentor, he delights in the Gage lab reunions held every few years for alumni who travel back to Salk from around the world to share their research with their former colleagues and their former advisor.

As President of Salk, Gage brings a scientific approach to leading: much like gathering data to test a hypothesis, he seeks input from a diverse group of stakeholders and synthesizes it into a coherent picture to help guide the Institute. Gage—who arrived at Salk while founder and polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk was still present—brings a deep respect for the Salk ethos of fostering collaboration between disciplines to encourage new discoveries. Thus, with the concurrence in 2020 of Gage’s 25th year at Salk with the Institute’s 60th anniversary and the heightened interest in scientific research catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we felt it was a fitting time to take a deeper look at his vision for the future of science at Salk. (Inside Salk’s summer issue covered how the Institute is responding to the pandemic, including launching almost two dozen new research projects devoted to tackling COVID-19.)

Looking Ahead

“The way science is done is changing,” Gage says. “The traditional way scientists conducted life-science research was to base their scientific inquiries around what skill sets they had. So, scientists formulated experiments that they could address in their labs. Then they looked at whatever results they got and, again, tried to solve the next question in terms of their own experience.”

Now, Gage explains, biological research is undergoing a fundamental shift. The latter part of the 20th century saw the dawn of the information age, and by the turn of the millennium, computing power coincided with the generation of massive amounts of biological data; the era of big data has been launched, when vast quantities of information too unwieldy for human calculation can be manipulated and analyzed for meaningful patterns using computer algorithms (see Inside Salk Winter 2019). The charge for the 21st century, then, is to make sense of these massive quantities of biological data scientists are now able to collect. And this, Gage contends, means conducting life-science research in a whole new way.

“We are beginning to see a new biology that incorporates computation, mathematics and engineering,” says Gage. “In this new paradigm, you aggregate data sets from all over the world and build a theoretical model of the concepts you’re interested in, so you can decide what scientific questions to pursue. Here, the model is helping guide you to where the really critical questions are, and answering those questions is not dependent entirely on your personal experience, skills or equipment. It may involve building a new instrument, for example, so engineering becomes a big part of it. It may point you in a therapeutic direction, so translation may be a part. Additional computation and refining of theoretical models may also be necessary.”

This new way of doing biological research plays to many of Salk’s strengths. The Institute’s emphasis on collaboration is exemplified by the research cores—shared facilities that give Salk scientists access to cutting-edge technologies and staff with expertise that individual labs may not have. Salk has 13 of these cores, including biophotonics (advanced imaging), next generation sequencing and stem cells, to name just a few. Salk’s collaborative ethos means scientists in different areas are accustomed to working across disciplines, not just within the Institute, but also across the world. Many Salk faculty already have national and international collaborations in progress. Locally, Salk’s faculty works closely with the UC San Diego Supercomputer Center, School of Engineering, School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center and other organizations.

A Glimpse of the Future

Gage imagines that, in the near future, the Institute will have new hubs for bioengineering, computation and translation. He envisions an additional research facility, in close proximity to the iconic original campus, to house incoming researchers specializing in these new directions; their work will complement and contribute to established research areas for which the Institute is already known (see Sidebars: Research Areas). The original plans for the Institute envisioned such future buildings, in keeping with Jonas Salk’s understanding that science changes and the needs of science change. To accomplish these ambitious goals for facilities, centers and recruitment, Salk will undertake a campaign next year.

Part of the Institute’s mission is training the next generation of scientists, and Gage is looking forward to adding more early career researchers to the ranks of Salk’s outstanding current junior faculty, who are just as brilliant and driven as their predecessors in asking bold questions about cancer, genetics, metabolism, plant biology and the immune system. Of particular importance to Gage is building on Salk’s culture of respect, diversity and inclusion. Gage firmly believes that the creativity and skills necessary for bold scientific discovery require researchers with a diversity of ideas and experiences. One of his first acts as President in 2018 was to establish an Office of Equity and Inclusion, and Gage continues to champion efforts that advance this strategic goal.

Asked what Jonas Salk might think of this vision, Gage pauses for a long moment before responding. “I think there’s two parts of this vision for the future Jonas would appreciate. One is the cooperation aspect, people of different backgrounds working together on big questions. He had an idea that we should be serving deep scientific knowledge, but with a humanistic perspective. The other is the idea that science is changing all the time, and the building space has to fit the science. I think he would embrace both ideas.”

Like Jonas Salk, who over 60 years ago had a vision for how the world would benefit from an institution devoted to basic scientific research, Gage has a vision in which the future of science—Salk style—will be every bit as exciting as its past.