When William Brody decided to step down as president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, earlier this year, the 64-year-old was looking forward to some downtime. But just as he was about to publicly announce his retirement, the Salk Institute came calling. “I asked if they were tapping my phone,” says Brody, who will start as Salk's president next March. See CV

Brody had assumed Salk was looking for an active molecular biologist. But Salk didn't want someone brought from the bench to manage fellow scientists. The small institute, often described as talent-rich but resource-poor, wanted a big name that could bolster its small endowment. Salk also wanted some stability; in the past two decades most of its presidents have stayed for only a year or two.

Brody fits the bill. Trained as a PhD-MD, he was Hopkins's president for 12 years and says he has made a five-year commitment to Salk. He will bring the connections that helped him complete a US$3.2-billion fundraising campaign at Hopkins. But the Salk Institute is no Hopkins, which spends $1.5 billion a year on research and development — the most in the United States — and has some 44,000 researchers. Salk has 870 researchers, and acquires most of its $113-million budget from federal, state and philanthropic grants. “Clearly we have to build up the resource base — which is going to be much harder in this economic environment,” Brody says.

It will be a sort of homecoming for Brody, who grew up in Stockton, California. After pursuing electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he earned his PhD-MD from Stanford University in California. He put those skills to use in the field of radiology, developed several patents, and co-founded three medical-device companies. At Hopkins, he was one of the best-paid university presidents, making $1.9 million in 2005–06, according to a 2007 Chronicle of Higher Education report. At Salk, he says, “it'll be a whole lot less”.

Salk will get an excellent president and fundraiser for a bargain price, says Ruth Faden, director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins. Faden recalls a meeting between Brody — a renowned pianist — and benefactor Phoebe Berman, when she was contemplating a multimillion-dollar gift to found the institute. “I want to make sure you're everything you claim. Can you play?” Faden recalls Berman saying. “Bill didn't bat an eyelash, and sat down and played,” says Faden. “She said, 'Okay, you got it'.”