IRRI Pioneer Interviews--Challenges for IRRI: Susan McCouch
Channel: International Rice Research Institute
Date: 02/09/2009

Susan McCouch, IRRI associate geneticist, 1990-94; currently Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics and of Plant Biology at Cornell University

I think the great challenge is whether IRRI ( http://irri.org ) is going to persist as an institution as weve known it or whether its going to be transformed into something more virtual. That is how I envision the great challenges that lie ahead. The reason I say that is because I think that we have a reason to hold on to much of the infrastructure thats there but part of the infrastructure thats there has given way to other parts of the world and in other institutions to a kind of networking approach to research. Often, were not necessarily able to attract needed expertise we need to a given physical location for the period of time during which we need to interact.  So, I see IRRIs future as becoming more and more that of a network of collaborators rather than a mortar and brick place where you go and you are only IRRI staff because you are there. 

I think that is illustrated, in part, by what I experienced during the last 3 years of my contract with IRRI during which I was a shuttle researcher with a responsibility to IRRI but with a lab here at Cornell. There was a thought process that encompassed a larger perspective on how we could utilize molecular markers effectively in plant breeding. When my contract ended with IRRI and I became a Cornell professor, the fact that my program did not change, and in fact my loyalties never changed, suggest that there are people like me out there for whom an inter-institutional working relationship might be a very productive way to envision the future.

I also believe that we need to hold on to the mortar and the bricks and the seeds that are in the gene bank and that is a precious resource that we really have to have in one place that we can actually access--it's a living resource that we need to be looking after. However, a lot of the computational work, a lot of the electronic communication, even a lot of the networking and scientific efforts that I participate in are done now in a much more virtual way. I think that the Institute is looking forward to a future of increased movement of ideas and resources and also a very different relationship between the public and the private sector as the ways in which funding happens are changing. 

I think we have to reinvent our institutions. Its not just IRRI that will have to reinvent itself. I think that universities in the United States are undergoing an enforced reinvention. I hope that maybe we can come together and think about who we train as university people or people in the international sector and how were training the next generation of scientists. Which problems do we need to come together to address and then use a new institutional framework that includes colleagues in the private sector as well to try to address those needs?
 
So, I think IRRI is not alone in facing these challenges. I think it would be nice to see our institutions get together and come up with something novel that would work and it will engage the worlds most dedicated and brightest people and help work through some of the bottlenecks and some of the backlog that weve been unable to break through due to institutional barriers in the past.