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From Columbia to SFARI
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From Columbia to SFARI
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Views | Duration | |
---|---|---|---|
41. The John Porter Center for Neuroscience | 03:12 | ||
42. Being fired from NIH | 8 | 04:09 | |
43. Moving back to New York City | 2 | 01:55 | |
44. Difficult times at Columbia University | 2 | 03:21 | |
45. Fundraising for the medical school | 02:02 | ||
46. From Columbia to SFARI | 1 | 02:54 | |
47. Mike Wigler | 1 | 04:30 | |
48. Working with Jim and Marilyn Simons | 2 | 03:14 | |
49. Simons Foundation's prominence | 02:49 | ||
50. Understanding autism | 7 | 03:45 |
When I took the job over from Herb Pardes, I was told there was a $20 million deficit in the annual budget. The university told me I have to fix that. It wasn't as though they gave me $20 million for new programs, I had to make it myself. They described many new programs, but they said, 'Gerry, of course you have to raise money for that'. Most of the fundraising at this medical school and every other medical school, is from grateful patients. And they're equally grateful to the hospital as they are to the medical school. In fact, they didn't have much of a sense of what the medical school did.
Indeed, the trustees of the university didn't either. It's not a big board of trustees, it's about 20 people, and none of them had ever been to the medical school, which was at 168th Street, as opposed to 116th. I asked them, gave them the privilege of having a board meeting at the medical school. And the trustees were shocked at the resources and the research going on, they did not understand what was being done at the medical school. That seemed to shift and two or three of the trustees became close advisors and friends.
Gerald Fischbach (b. 1938) is an American neuroscientist and pioneering researcher. He pioneered the use of nerve cell cultures to study the electrophysiology, morphology and biochemistry of developing nerve-muscle and inter-neuronal synapses.
Title: Fundraising for the medical school
Listeners: Christopher Sykes
Christopher Sykes is an independent documentary producer who has made a number of films about science and scientists for BBC TV, Channel Four, and PBS.
Tags: hospital, budget, fundraising, trustees, medical school, deficit
Duration: 2 minutes, 2 seconds
Date story recorded: July 2023
Date story went live: 16 May 2025