This Week: Mark Boguski, Director, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA

Some might say that Mark Boguski has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He landed at the NCBI before the Human Genome Project starting gearing up (see CV), and in Seattle just when Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen was planning a new scientific institute. With hindsight those moves seem savvy. But both were risky at the time. No one now doubts the importance of bioinformatics — whose basic tools Boguski helped to build while at the NCBI. But when he followed his mentor David Lipman to form the NCBI eight months into his postdoc, the term bioinformatics didn't exist, and what little genomic data NCBI generated were distributed quarterly on magnetic tape. Having then moved to Rosetta during the height of human genome fever, Merck's acquisition of the company left him wondering what to do next.

He found it during “what amounted to a sabbatical” at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, to help them develop a bioinformatics and proteomics strategy. At the NCBI, Boguski realized that bioinformatics by itself was not enough to understand the human genome. At Rosetta, he learned how high-throughput wet biology could combine with bioinformatics to aid drug discovery. And he started wondering how such industrial technology could serve basic biology. After being introduced to Paul Allen by James Watson, Boguski started consulting on Allen's projected brain-science centre, and last month took the helm when the plans for the $100-million centre were unveiled (see Nature 425, 226; 200310.1038/425226a).

He imagines some scientists asking: “Why is someone who is not a card-carrying neuroscientist running this project?” He would answer that all the different skills he picked up along the way — including a genomics mindset and biotechnology management experience from his time at Rosetta — along with a willingness to turn to the institute's scientific advisory board, will help him kick-start the new project. “My story shows that going into industry is not the one-way street it used to be,” Boguski says. “You have to be willing to take some risks.”