Ashley Dunn on Working with Jim Watson, CSHL
  Ashley Dunn     Biography    
Recorded: 15 Jan 2003

Yes, I interacted with him more because we were geographically close than scientifically close. I had rather few conversations with Jim about scientific matters. But I always used to feel that he used me as a means of, if you like, taking the pulse of the place. It was quite possible probably because of my personality that I tended to know what was going on and Jim when we did speak would often say, “Look, what’s happening out there.” And I think Jim was not always so interested in the scientific gossip, but whether there was anything that perhaps as director he should know that he might not know. And as we all know, Cold Spring Harbor was not only a scientific institution that did science but there were also lots of things going on at Cold Spring Harbor behind the scenes that perhaps Jim realized were happening and wanted to know a little bit more detail from young postdocs.

I was always very, very discrete as you would hope. And a lot of my discretion of course came through Joe Sambrook’s mentorship because he’s one of the most discrete people you’d ever meet. You can believe that or choose not to believe it as you see fit!

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.