| Thu Dec 9, 7:55 AM ET Top Stories - Los Angeles Times By Charles Piller Times Staff Writer SINGAPORE � Last summer, Rachel Kraut and Cyrus Papan were senior postdoctoral researchers at Caltech, yet they were worried about their future. With four young children, they wanted jobs heading their own laboratories in the same city � a chancy prospect in today's job market, even for experts from an elite university. They found salvation half a world away in Singapore, where each now enjoys a competitive salary, a cutting-edge lab and an occasional view of balmy Sumatra across the Singapore Strait. Kraut and Papan joined an intellectual reverse migration away from the United States � the world's biomedical superpower � to Asia's fast-rising life science tigers. Despite Singapore's autocratic image, built on such laws as its ban on gum spitting and the 1994 caning of an American teenager for vandalism, Western scientists here say they have found an open scientific environment flowing with funds. "It's like a dream come true," Papan said from his home in a gated community that looks like any upscale American apartment complex, except for the jungle trees. The compound, among scores of high-rises that replaced swamps and jungles, is 10 minutes from his new workplace, the futuristic complex of steel-and-glass research buildings named Biopolis. The nation has invested billions of dollars in bioscience. It has recruited American Nobel Prize winner Sydney Brenner of San Diego's Salk Institute; Edison Liu, former division chief at the National Cancer Institute (news - web sites); and Britain's Alan Colman, who cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996. A host of other scientific stars have joined the island's race to become a world leader in the study of embryonic stem cells, cancer genes and advanced medical techniques. Singapore's rise coincides with a tumultuous period in U.S. science, brought on by security-linked visa curbs on foreign scholars, federal limits on stem cell research and a bioscience funding squeeze. "The U.S. may not be able to lead all areas of biosciences anymore," said Yongmin Kim, chair of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, which collaborates with Singaporean institutes. "It may be Japan, the U.K., China or even Singapore." Welcomed by Neighbors Inside Papan and Kraut's Singapore home, the dining room wall is papered over with worksheets of Chinese characters. The children are learning Mandarin, although English is one of the nation's official languages. They have been welcomed by neighbors and classmates, a social embrace that gave Papan, 39, a rush of relief. A native of Germany, he felt out of place in the United States. Racial tension in some Los Angeles-area public schools also contributed to a sense of unease shared by his wife. Singapore has calmed ethnic relations among the dominant Chinese, minority Malays and Indians, and Westerners since race riots of the 1960s, imposing controls on speech, assembly and the press in the process. Every Sunday night in Little India, thousands of young Tamil men pack the sidewalks, bunched in groups, chatting and smoking. Many are construction workers, imported by Singapore to build its high-rise skyline. The crowd is sprinkled with Chinese and Caucasians out for a stroll and a quick curry and naan. Papan and Kraut felt comfortable, at ease in a city largely free of homelessness, crime and corruption. At Caltech, Papan studied biomedical imaging and his wife was a postdoctoral student in nerve-cell biology. They had two demanding careers but modest incomes. Their family had grown large � Leon, the eldest, now 8; 7 year-old twins Magdalena and Ellen; and Sonja, 5. "Child-care costs were sapping a whole salary," said Kraut, 41, a native of La Jolla. Last year, the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) budget, the chief source of U.S. biological research funds, flattened. "All of a sudden, everything collapsed. We didn't really have a future unless some golden box opened up," Papan said. (continued next page) |
| Genetics Club @ Santa Monica High School |