Merilyn Sleigh on Joe Sambrook
  Merilyn Sleigh     Biography    
Recorded: 17 Jan 2003

Oh, Joe was always incredibly competitive. And of course he worked with Phil Sharp previously so they had a kind of natural competitive relationship anyway. Although I think they actually got along extremely well. So his competitiveness came to the fore and he was, you know, keen that Sharp shouldn’t get there first so I think that that was an extra stimulus to some of the discussions and reviewing of the data that went on. So of course all of Cold Spring Harbor was very competitive both internally and externally and that was one of the features of the place and a feature of working there as well which I’ll come to perhaps later on.

Merilyn Sleigh is a pharmacologist, molecular biologist and dean in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of New South Wales. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Sydney in pharmacology and another PhD in molecular biology at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), she came to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to work under Joe Sambrook as a postdoctoral fellow researching the protein production of SV40. She returned to CSIRO, establishing one of the first laboratories in Australia using genetic engineering approaches to study influenza virus structure, evolution and gene regulation. She has become involved in developing the biotechnological industry in Australia. Sleigh is founding director of the Australian Biotechnology Association and is currently Chief Executive of EvoGenix, a start-up biotechnology company located in Australia.