With the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities to worry about money, the hospital's biggest challenge is recruiting doctors and scientists who can fulfill the plan, said Evans. St. Jude is home to a Nobel Prize winner. Three of its departmental chairmen are members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Two departmental chairmen hold joint appointments as investigators with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a rich and widely recognized scientific institute. The hospital's tentative 2001 budget calls for adding 105 research positions.
Recruitment takes time.
It took nearly three years to hire a new bone marrow transplant program director after Dr. Malcolm Brenner resigned in 1997 to join Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Rupert Handgretinger is scheduled to move from Germany to Memphis this summer to fill the post. Dr. Elaine Tuomanen joined St. Jude in 1997 and is the lone female department chair. Trained as a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, she spent 16 years at New York's Rockefeller University studying pneumococcus bacteria. Today, she maintains her pneumococcus research interest and oversees a department that includes about 120 employees, including a dozen faculty.