‘Full steam ahead’: Yale research as engine of innovation

Research at Yale doesn’t take the summer off to hike in the Alps or sit by the pool reading a good book.

Rather, it is a perpetual engine of innovation and discovery. Yale chemists, engineers, biologists, physicists, physicians, anthropologists, psychologists, computer scientists, and a host of other researchers on campus continue their exploration of new knowledge. There are experiments to tend, databases to sift, and discoveries to unfold.

Perhaps no one at Yale has a better view of this overall enterprise than Michael C. Crair, the university’s vice provost for research.

Crair, an international leader in systems neuroscience, with training in both physics and neuroscience, joined the Yale faculty in 2007. He is the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science. In 2020, he was named vice provost for research and helped the university safely and effectively continue its research programs during the COVID-19 crisis.

Yale News recently caught up with Crair to talk about Yale’s ongoing research enterprise, its approach to nurturing nascent technologies and fields of study, and the role of federal funding for basic research. The interview has been edited and condensed.

Scholarly and scientific research is a year-round activity at Yale, even when classes aren’t in session. What has summer looked like for Yale’s research community?

Michael C. Crair: It’s been full steam ahead. In fact, many researchers double down on their work over the summer. The cyclic Yale calendar and the academic year does impact faculty and students who are engaged in teaching, coursework, and research. However, summer is often when they can dedicate their minds completely to their research, whether they are in the lab or out doing field work.

Like many senior Yale leaders, you’re also a professor, and you maintain an active research lab. How does your experience as a working scientist inform your university-wide role as vice provost for research?

Crair: Having a lab, being a faculty member, and understanding the pinch points — the trials and struggles that student and faculty researchers face, including uncertain federal funding challenges — helps me a great deal as an academic administrator to ensure that we provide the structural and administrative support so that our faculty can do their best research. Somebody who has never been in the lab or run an academic research program might have a harder time gaining this perspective.

I’m in the lab today, as a matter of fact. We’re submitting a grant shortly to the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. I still have students, postdocs, still publish papers — one was just accepted two weeks ago. So, I have some street credibility, I hope.

The number of pressing and interesting questions worthy of scholarly attention is boundless. What are some of the key factors and principles, in addition to individual scholars’ expertise and interests, that drive research at Yale?

Crair: The science priorities that the University Science Strategy Committee identified in 2018 are where I continue to focus my efforts. Leveraging Yale’s compact footprint for team science and interdisciplinary research is also very important. For instance, Yale School of Medicine is physically close to Yale College, with new buildings like 100 College and 101 College knitting the university even closer together, which makes it easier to pursue collaborative research and offers a way we can differentiate ourselves and be more productive as a research institution.

Data science is another example area where we can make use of our collaborative culture and compact footprint. Data science and approaches common in AI are generally disciplinarily agnostic, with applications in many different academic domains, which can be refocused even semester by semester or year by year. Assisting data scientists to apply new methods and new approaches to a variety of disciplines in collaboration with domain experts across our research community can elevate research and scholarship in all academic areas.

Are there other emerging research areas on campus that have your attention these days?

Crair: We’re making huge investments into our infrastructure for quantum research, primarily with the new Physical Sciences and Engineering Building that will continue to transform Science Hill. We are also making significant investments for new and renovated buildings on lower Hillhouse Avenue for Yale Engineering [Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science], in the medical school, and other areas of campus.

It is important to note that Yale’s investments in these research buildings and core facilities are funded directly by philanthropy, both new gifts and past gifts from our endowment. The federal government and the state do not pay for construction of them, but they are essential for recruiting the brightest minds to Yale. Without modern physical infrastructure, cutting edge experimentation is impossible, and we can’t recruit the best students and faculty to Yale, and they are the keys to discovery and innovation.

In a sense, in quantum science and engineering, we’re trying to catch lightning in a bottle a second time, as we did in biotech, which is having a great positive impact on society. In biotech, we’ve translated brilliant discoveries by Yale faculty into a number of very successful startup companies, like Arvinas and Biohaven. New Haven now has a thriving, growing biotech ecosystem, which is attractive to both students and faculty. We want to do the same thing with quantum technologies. In quantum, we have some of the best faculty, like physicists Rob Schoelkopf and Steve Girvin, who want to be able to translate their new discoveries and train the next generation of students to enable the development of useful new technologies for society, such as quantum computers. We’re trying to help by building a quantum technology ecosystem in Connecticut.

A lot of exciting advances in knowledge happen through collaboration among scholars working in different fields — sometimes very different fields. Is there a recent or ongoing Yale project that exemplifies the power and potential of this kind of teamwork?

Crair: A wonderful example of this was highlighted recently in the report from the Yale Task Force on Artificial Intelligence. Scott Shapiro, the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law, and Ruzica Piskac, a professor of computer science, have gotten together to develop an AI-based utility for providing legal advice.

The idea is that people with limited financial resources would be able to avail themselves of useful, timely legal information through a purpose-built generative AI tool that could provide expert legal guidance that might otherwise be unavailable to them. It’s spectacular. Just a classic Yale collaboration.

Some fields are more dependent on equipment and facilities than others. What is Yale’s approach to making the latest technology available to researchers, especially amid rapid technological advancement?

Crair: We try to identify emerging/novel technologies and instrumentation that are not widely available that allow faculty to do experiments on topics or in ways that are otherwise impossible. Sophisticated, aberration-corrected electron microscopes for materials scientists, for example, and cryo-electron microscopes for structural biologists, instruments that are much too expensive for any given faculty member to have in their individual lab, so we facilitate their use by buying the technology, which allows many people at Yale to access it and share it. But the core equipment is expensive. The aberration-corrected microscope we just purchased, for example, is about $8 million. And in addition, you need highly skilled and trained staff scientists who can run the equipment and provide advice on experimental protocols so that students and faculty can take full advantage of the resource. That’s expensive, but it’s essential.

Our provost, Scott Strobel certainly understands this deeply, and has indicated that the university will commit additional resources to structural support for the use of AI in research, such as graphics processing units [GPUs] that are essential to modern applications of machine learning — Yale has only a modest number of them currently, but we’ll be dramatically increasing our on-campus GPU infrastructure given the high faculty and student demand, in addition to the systems and software support needed to run the equipment and train people how to use it productively.

Even for universities like Yale that directly and heavily invest their own resources in research, the federal government remains a key partner in the advancement of knowledge. What’s the outlook for federal support for academic research?

Crair: No question, it’s a long-standing, productive, and vital partnership that offers important benefits for individuals and society. Yale spends more than $1.2 billion a year from external sources, mostly federal grants, on research. Most of that funding supports staff, students, faculty, and supplies that we need to do our day-to-day research; a small share funds utilities, research libraries, and the extensive regulatory compliance program mandated by the government. And although we do get some foundation and industry support, funding from the federal government provides the lion’s share of external funding for all research at Yale — about 80%.

And right now, federal government appropriations for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation [NSF], Yale’s two largest sources of federal funding for research, are flat or even decreasing — it’s a huge problem.

Some areas are more acutely impacted than others, such as medical research. Neuroscience, for example, which had been strongly funded by a program called The Brain Initiative, took a massive hit in appropriations this year at the NIH. Another example is a new NSF program called the TIP [Technology, Innovation and Partnerships] Directorate, started two years ago. It is a significant program, about 10% of the NSF budget. It was an attempt to take fundamental research discoveries by physicists and engineers and help translate them into technologies that can launch new industries and stimulate the nation’s economy. It was supposed to get a couple of billion dollars a year, on top of existing NSF funding, but its programs have barely started because Congress has failed to fully fund it — in fact, Congress reduced total funding for NSF by 5% this year.

In your view, what does society lose when research funding is cut?

Crair: We are built upon an economy that fundamentally leverages the intellectual capacity and ingenuity of our citizens, and society as a whole benefits from this ingenuity. The importance of fundamental and applied research to the health of our country is immense. So many technologies we have come to rely upon, from computers to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, began as university research discoveries. In many cases, important discoveries require decades of dedicated, persistent fundamental research to come to fruition. It’s only after this research groundwork is laid, often over decades, that new technologies, treatments, and applications crop up.

As a nation, we need to keep the long view, sustain our fundamental research funding, and look for additional ways to increase the pace and frequency of translating those discoveries into new products and services that benefit society.

Let’s end this where we started — in the lab. What advice do you typically give the newest members of your own lab?

Crair: The same thing I tell my kids, who are college students — follow your curiosity and passion. I’m blessed to have spent more than 30 years doing science and research because I love the discovery. It’s extremely motivating and satisfying. Take the time to ask yourself, “What am I interested in the most?” “What do I want to do with my precious time?” The answers will lead to good things, both in terms of what you accomplish and the satisfaction you gain personally and professionally from the effort.