Ashley Dunn on The Future of CSHL
  Ashley Dunn     Biography    
Recorded: 15 Jan 2003

Well, I think Cold Spring Harbor will continue to exist, it must. It is—I always regarded Cold Spring Harbor as the hub. That is, the centerpiece of the wheel of science. Certainly in the mid ‘70s Cold Spring Harbor was that. I believe it still can claim to be to this day. There would be other contenders for that geographical position, but I see no reason to think that Cold Spring Harbor will not remain as the hub. Its meetings are renowned, it is a magnet for people to go there not only to work but to go there and present their stuff. And I doubt very much that there’d be too many people that were invited to a Cold Spring Harbor meeting that would say it’s not worth my time and I can’t be bothered to go.

So I think in fifty years time Cold Spring Harbor will at least play the central role that it plays now. And I see no reason to doubt that for a second.

Ashley Dunn is currently a Senior Consulting Scientist and member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Cryptome Pharmaceuticals Ltd., an Australian biotech company. He also serves on Australia’s Gene Technology Advisory Committee. He is the former Head of Molecular Biology in the Melbourne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.

He came to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1976 to work with Joe Sambrook as a postdoctoral fellow and eventually became a junior faculty member.

His research has been concentrated on mammalian growth factors and the regulators responsible for the production of white blood cells in mice and men. He co-invented a mammalian blood cell regulator (GM-CSF), and his lab was the one of the first to establish gene targeting in the development of human diseases such as cancer.