Being a faculty member and being heavily involved in the biotech world are two very different types of jobs. Even if you find both rewarding, the time may come when you have to leave one or another behind. Glenn Prestwich, a chemistry professor who served as the director of Stony Brook’s Center for Biotechnology for several years during the 1990s, describes the rewards of going over to the “dark side” but also the frustrations. As he puts it:
“I didn’t really like a lot of the suit-wearing and handshaking and schmoozing with business people whose language I didn’t really speak. My life was about discovery, creativity, science, cool stuff, not about how you make more money out of something. That was not my ethic.
I wanted to discover stuff and let other people do the business stuff. My job as director of the center was to facilitate things that I didn’t understand, which was always hard. As a result of that, I was always on the damned Long Island Expressway reciting over and over in my head, ‘Why am I wasting my life on the world’s longest parking lot?'”
In addition to that there was the ‘New York No’. “Anytime I called somebody [at a NYC area institution] trying to set something up, [the answer was] no, I haven’t got time. No, I don’t have a student available. No, I don’t have the bandwidth. No, we don’t have any money for it. No, I don’t think that can happen because I don’t think those two operations can work together. No this, no that. It was just everybody had reasons why what you wanted to accomplish couldn’t be done….So I said, ‘Well, I’ve got to look somewhere else. I’d really much rather be out west because I’m tired of flat. I’m tired of long parking lots that you’re supposed to drive on and I’m tired of the New York No.”