Q1. Who inspired you to become a scientist?

As a child I was curious about how things worked so I took them apart. Clocks, radios, then critters like frogs and fish. Creating stuff (or blowing it up) with my chemistry set or growing flowers and tomatoes in our home garden stoked my interests, as did cautious family encouragement and, eventually, teachers and classmates at the Bronx High School of Science. Most important was the realization in the mid 1960s that grad school provided me with a draft deferment.

Q2. What drives your research interest?

My interests haven’t changed. I still want to know how things work, but my focus has evolved to understanding biology at the molecular level. A maturation of that interest, acquired as I co-founded two biotech companies, is how such molecular understandings might help patients suffering from rare diseases.

Q3. What is your current research focus?

We discovered the yeast NMD pathway in 1991 and have been trying to understand its detailed mechanism and regulatory consequences ever since. We know that Upf1 promotes decapping of nonsense-containing mRNAs by binding two specific sites on Dcp2 and are now trying to clarify an upstream Upf1 function that is ribosome-associated and independent of decapping. Having elucidated Upf1’s role in NMD-based decapping, we’re also addressing how conventional decapping activators promote decay of wild-type mRNAs.

Q4. Who are your current scientific influences?

My current influences include my UMass Chan colleagues Feng He and Andrei Korostelev, the yeast translational control experts Alan Hinnebusch, Rachel Green, and Tom Dever, and my good friends Rob Singer and Larry Gold. I also need to acknowledge the never-fading influence of two fathers of molecular genetics, Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick.

Q5. If you hadn’t become a scientist, what would your dream job be?

As a teenager I built my first two cars so my dream job might have involved automotive racing: designing, building, owning, or driving race cars.

Q6. What are your hobbies?

I love to cook, garden, travel, spend time on or in water, and read. Cooking is just like working in the lab except you get to eat the results. Gardening, from seeds to veggies and flowers, is still amazing biology, yields yummy and beautiful plants, and rewards hard work. Travel is always fascinating whether to new places or old favorites. Boating of all kinds lets me still have adventures, and swimming is my go-to exercise. My reading: nonfiction or humor.

Q7. What books influenced you the most?

First and foremost: the original (1965) edition of Watson’s Molecular Biology of the Gene. My Queens College biology classes, including genetics, did not address anything molecular. I found this book in the school library and it blew my mind. In a completely different genre books addressing numerous aspects of WWII have been at the top of my list undoubtedly because my parents escaped from Germany in 1938.

Q8. What are your favourite movies?

My initial favorites were the cheesy sci-fi movies of the 1950s, e.g., Tarantula, Rodan, Them, The Blob, Godzilla, etc. From there, my tastes improved to Blade Runner, Alien, Terminator, the early Star Wars movies, Time Bandits, and Jaws, and then essentially all of the Woody Allen movies.

Q9. What advice would you give your 18-year old self?

Get out of NYC! Head west to the Rockies or California, or east to Europe, ASAP!

Q10. What, in your opinion, is the “next big thing” in the field of scientific research?

My idea of “big” is VERY big: the definitive identification of existing or former life on other planets. I rate such a discovery so highly because it will help bring an end to centuries of earth-centric ideas about life.