| 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. Then Kraut heard from a colleague in Singapore. Kraut and Papan's son was born on the island during a temporary job there in 1996. They had fond memories of their visit, but never expected to return. "Do you know anybody who wants to work here?" the Singaporean asked. "Us," Kraut quickly thought. The couple accepted posts as principal investigators, heading labs at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. With a full-time nanny, family pressure eased. They now plan to move their elderly parents here in a few months. Support for Research U.S. research is dominated by relentless competition for funding � a rat race even at top U.S. institutions. Two years ago, Mark Seielstad was a frustrated genetic epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. "They gave you a little bit of space and said, 'Go get your grants,' " he said. The Genomic Institute of Singapore, headed by fellow American Edison Liu, wooed him with guaranteed research support. "The environment � was better here. So I severed the link with Harvard," Seielstad said. Davis Ng, a Pennsylvania State University cell biologist, and three of his staff recently accepted posts at Singapore's Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory. "I'll have better funding, better equipment and better facilities than I have here, without writing grants," said Ng, who will move to Singapore in January. Salaries in Singapore are comparable to the United States', but living costs here are lower and Western researchers with children often receive subsidies for elite private schools. Even with full-time domestic help, they save more money than would be possible back home. Singaporean institutes are organized much like internal research units of U.S. National Institutes of Health. Executives allocate funds, but principle investigators, who head labs of five to 15 researchers, manage their own projects. Success is measured, as in the United States, by peer-reviewed publications, inventions and patents. Papan studies metabolic byproducts as a way to diagnose disease. Across the hall from his lab, he showed off a $600,000 confocal microscope, which uses lasers and fluorescent markers to detect proteins and metabolites. Papan can use it whenever he wants, a rare luxury for junior researchers in the United States. He and Kraut spent the first six weeks on the job shopping like kids in a candy store. They scoured supply catalogs for glassware, specialized computers and reagents. Papan ordered a $400,000 nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, another tool to measure metabolites with uncanny precision. "The money is always an issue in research � except here," he said. "If you can justify it, you can buy it." Singapore has become more alluring in the wake of policy arguments inside the United States. The Bush administration has angered parts of the scientific community with a federal ban on funding for some stem cell research � a field richly supported by Singapore � and sweeping new lab security rules and biodefense programs. Post-Sept. 11 visa policies have sealed off American science to thousands of Asian experts and trainees. Singapore has welcomed them with open arms and wallets. Philip Yeo, the head of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research, said America's fixation on security had opened "a small window" of opportunity for Singapore. "We are moving as fast as we can," he said. (continued page 3 ) |
| Genetics Clubs @ Santa Monica High School |