Carnegie Institution for Science Career Opportunities

DEPARTMENT OF EMBRYOLOGY AND "CARNEGIE-STYLE SCIENCE"

"Carnegie-Style Science"
Our Department is based on the premise that scientific leadership requires exceptional individuals with the insight, resources and courage to investigate the margins of what is feasible and respectable. We make every effort to hire the most creative and skilled researchers but pay relatively little attention to their area of current interest. We then strive to encourage bold ventures by providing stimulating intellectual and material resources, and trust that each faculty member's interests will evolve. Scientific creativity is bolstered by several other factors. There is no tenure system. Instead, all faculty are evaluated at five-year intervals. The originality and long-term significance of a research program is emphasized rather than its funding level or professional visibility. Communication within the department is extensive and is fostered in several ways. A steady flow of new associates, fellows, students and visitors is encouraged. Research groups are kept small (less than 10) to facilitate communication between faculty and lab members and to make it easier for faculty to remain experimentally engaged.

Facilities
The Carnegie style motivates us to use our laboratory space in ways that are not typical of other leading biology research laboratories. Each regular faculty member has only about 800 sq ft of personal laboratory space with an attached office. However, research groups larger than 4 or 5 house some of their members in common shared laboratories located nearby. Thus, for many, the researcher across the bench works in a different research group. For everyone, whether based in a main or shared lab, a great deal of research activity takes place in other common departmental space. These rooms contain all major research instruments such as advanced microscopes, biochemical instrumentation, sequencing and computational facilities. Facilities to house and care for research animals are separate, though located strategically relative to their major users. In addition, the department maintains core facilities and stockrooms that are open and used by all. Consequently, researchers feel like part of a department rather than citizens of a single group.

Interactions
Major rites of the Carnegie style take place each week at regular scientific meetings of the entire department. The most important meeting is a department-wide progress report where a different researcher each week presents the results of their recent investigations. Questions occur throughout the course of the presentation and may continue for a considerable time afterwards. A common sense of intellectual standards is developed at these meetings and they make it relatively easy to learn what each person they are likely to run into is working on and interested in. Conversations, ideas and novel research directions are often born from this combination.