The Legacy of Patrick J. McGovern - McGovern Institute for Brain

mcgovern institute
for brain research at mit
Braın SCAN
spring 2014
Issue no. 31
The Legacy of
Patrick J. McGovern
FROM THE
DIRECTOR
This issue is dedicated to the memory
of Pat McGovern, the co-founder of our
institute and a man whom I considered
to be my friend and mentor. Pat started
his computer publishing business in the
early 1960s with a vision of spreading
knowledge of computers around the
world. The dream came true, and he
often spoke with satisfaction about his
role in helping people on every continent
to prosper and benefit from the new
technology revolution.
Pat was often asked how this lifelong
enthusiasm for computers led him to
the brain. For him, it was a natural
progression, and his eyes always lit up
when he said that the brain was the most
incredible computer in the universe. He
was passionate in his belief that brain
research would benefit the hundreds
of millions of people worldwide who
are affected by brain disorders. But I
believe that his bigger dream was that
understanding the brain would lift up
mankind in the future, just as computers
had done in his own lifetime.
Beyond the loss of a great visionary, I
personally struggle with the loss of Pat as
a human being. Shortly before his death
I mentioned to Lore that I looked up to
him almost as a father. She replied that
many people had recently said the same
thing to her. Pat had that kind of impact
on people. He is greatly, greatly missed.
Bob Desimone, Director
Doris and Don Berkey Professor
of Neuroscience
On the cover:
Patrick J. McGovern, co-founder of the
McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Photo: Kent Dayton
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Photo: Jason Grow
After the passing of Pat McGovern, the
McGovern Institute contemplates its past,
present and future.
The year was 1957. Sputnik had launched
into orbit, raising fears that the US had
fallen behind in science. In response,
President Eisenhower tapped MIT
president James Killian to become the
first Presidential Science Advisor.
At the time, Patrick J. McGovern was an
MIT undergraduate and a reporter for the
campus newspaper. When he heard that
Killian was to give a press conference, he
rushed across campus, his Minox camera
in hand, to record the event. It made
front-page news, with Pat appearing
in the photograph alongside Killian.
Friends said, “Wow, you’ve made it
big,” Pat laughingly told interviewer
John Hockenberry in a conversation
recorded more than 50 years later for
MIT’s 150th anniversary.
The Legacy of Pat McGovern
Remembering our co-founder, who died
on March 19
Not quite yet. But what Pat had
presciently recognized was that science
had suddenly become important, so
investing in its advancement mattered.
Later, when Pat really had made it big,
he devoted his philanthropic energy to
the advancement of science. He became
a life member of the MIT Corporation,
and in 2000, he and his wife Lore
Harp McGovern made a $350 million
commitment over 20 years, one of the
largest ever to higher education, to
found the McGovern Institute for
Brain Research.
Mind and Hand… and Brain
Pat’s interest in science and engineering
began at a young age. As a boy in
Philadelphia, he would ride his bicycle to
the Franklin Institute, a science museum
named for the city’s most famous
resident, Benjamin Franklin. Pat often
cited Franklin as a role model for his
own career as a scientist, publisher and
entrepreneur. He was a keen observer,
recalling over 60 years later the electricity
and chemistry exhibits he’d seen as a boy.
He also built galvanometers, voltmeters
and cloud chambers with his father, a
construction worker.
That same active curiosity ensnared Pat
into what would become a lifelong interest
in the brain. As a teen, he cycled to the
Free Library where he happened upon a
book called “Giant Brains: or Machines
That Think.” The author suggested that
computers, which were very new at the
time of its publication in 1949, could
expand the capacity and productivity of
the brain, as the telephone had done for
the ear and the television for the eye.
At once, Pat envisioned the power of this
idea. “[The brain] is the one organ that
separates us from all the living creatures,
is the superior intellectual capability that
we have,” Pat told Hockenberry. “The
more we can amplify that, the more we’re
able to give a better quality of life.”
Always a visionary, but also practical,
Pat took the money he’d earned from
his paper route to the hardware store
Pat McGovern’s photo from the 1959 MIT yearbook.
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experience would later give Pat and
Lore the intuition to recognize how
dramatically the field had advanced.
By the 1990’s they began to contemplate
an investment in neuroscience.
Realizing a Vision
Photo: Bob Desimone
After graduating from MIT, Pat founded
a small market research company in
1964. The company, which he named
International Data Corporation, grew
rapidly into an international media and
market research firm that today publishes
hundreds of magazines, web sites and
other media channels. Pat traveled
extensively to expand his business, making
over 100 trips to China and, in true global
spirit, even visiting the South Pole to
launch “Computerworld Antarctica.”
Pat and Lore at the McGovern Institute’s
2006 Halloween party, with Pat dressed
as Ben Franklin.
and bought copper wire, aluminum strips
and plywood boards. Using the book as
a guide, he built a computer that played
tic-tac-toe. Pat’s computer won a prize at
a science fair and caught the attention
of MIT’s local alumni association, which
contacted him and encouraged him
to consider MIT. He applied, and was
admitted with a full scholarship.
At MIT, Pat’s fascination with computers
and the brain continued. He thought that
in order to build a computerized brain to
extend the capacity of the human mind, he
first had to understand how the brain works.
So Pat enrolled in Course 7, Quantitative
Biology, a combination of biophysics,
biochemistry and early molecular
biology. He studied frogs, using a glass
micropipette to record electrical activity
in their nervous systems. With the tools
available at that time, understanding
the brain was a remote goal, but the
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mcgovern.mit.edu
As Pat’s business was flourishing, the field
of neuroscience was also entering a period
of extraordinary growth. The term itself
first gained currency with the launch of
Francis Schmitt’s neuroscience research
program at MIT in 1962. The Society
for Neuroscience, founded in 1969, grew
to 40,000 members, with an explosion
of new knowledge and techniques. As
science began to unlock the mysteries
of the mind, public awareness of brain
disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease,
depression and autism, also increased.
apart, allowing it to engage researchers
from across the university regardless of
departmental affiliations.
It was also decided that the McGovern
Institute would span all of brain research:
from perception to cognition to the control
of actions; from molecules to cells to
systems; and from worms to mice and
humans. In addition to experimental
neuroscience there would also be a strong
emphasis on computational modeling,
reflecting the growing connection between
brain research and computer science that
Pat had foreseen years earlier. Its size
would be sufficient to cover a broad range
of expertise yet small enough to preserve
a strong sense of community. Famed
architect Charles Correa was chosen
to design a new building that is now a
landmark on the MIT campus, distinctive
for its openness and natural lighting, and
for the railroad that runs through its center.
A board of governors was established
with representation from MIT and from
the McGovern family. Pat chaired the
group until his death, with Lore and Pat’s
daughter Elizabeth also continuing to
serve as members.
Phillip Sharp, a Nobel laureate and
Institute Professor, was appointed as
the founding director, with a mandate
Recognizing both the challenge and the
opportunity, Pat and Lore decided that
the time was right to act. They convened
an advisory committee of Nobel laureates
and other leading experts to help shape
their plans. The committee recommended
a university-based center that would
continually be refreshed by student
researchers and that would benefit from
contact with experts in many fields. This
resonated with Pat, whose own interests
and experiences had ranged across so
many disciplines, and with Lore, a serial
entrepreneur and high-tech investor.
Pat and Lore contacted a number of
leading universities to discuss their
vision, and MIT impressed them with
its openness to a cross-disciplinary
arrangement. The president at the time,
Charles Vest, agreed that the new institute
should not be subsumed into an existing
department but should instead stand
Pat became interested in computers as a boy after
reading Edmund Berkeley’s 1949 book, which
anticipated the rise of personal computing.
The building was completed in 2005, and
Sharp was succeeded by Robert Desimone,
who was recruited from the National
Institute of Mental Health where he had
been director of intramural research.
Desimone’s vision, which meshed with
that of the McGoverns, emphasized basic
science with a purpose, in this case to fill
a need for a better understanding, and in
turn better treatments, for brain disorders.
“Focusing on the fundamentals has really
proven to be the best approach,” says
Desimone. “Only after you lay this
foundation of basic knowledge can you
proceed on to translational studies and
to the development of new treatments.”
McGovern Institute Today
Photo: Justin Knight
Today, the McGovern Institute has
grown to 19 faculty members, along with
core facilities that provide researchers
throughout MIT with access to technologies
such as brain imaging, microscopy and
Pat and Lore at the tenth anniversary of the
McGovern Institute in 2010.
Photo: Bob Desimone
to appoint the first faculty members and
guide the institute through its launch
phase. Founding faculty members, all
established leaders in the field, included
H. Robert Horvitz (who would later share
the 2002 Nobel Prize), Ann Graybiel,
Nancy Kanwisher, Emilio Bizzi, Tomaso
Poggio and Martha Constantine-Paton.
Pat joined researchers for a boat cruise during the institute’s
2007 retreat.
viral gene delivery. Since its founding,
McGovern Institute investigators have
published almost 700 papers, detailing
discoveries that range from the mapping
of human vision and language in the
brain, to understanding how songbirds
learn to sing and how computers can learn
to recognize objects.
McGovern investigators themselves
have been at the forefront of major
new technologies such as optogenetics
and genome editing, which are already
transforming the field. The institute has
also established many collaborations
within and beyond MIT. Since 2006,
the McGovern Institute Neurotechnology
(MINT) program has supported
collaborative projects with researchers
from other disciplines, taking advantage
of the extraordinary range of expertise
and innovative ideas to be found on and
around the MIT campus.
In recent years there has also been a
growing emphasis on translational work.
John Gabrieli, who was recruited from
Stanford University to head the Martinos
Imaging Center, works with clinical
researchers to apply neuroimaging to
the understanding and eventual
treatment of psychiatric disease. In
addition, Guoping Feng, the Poitras
Professor of Neuroscience, is developing
animal models of complex brain
disorders, including autism, obsessivecompulsive disorder and schizophrenia,
to understand how disrupting brain
function affects behavior. Most recently,
Tomaso Poggio has spearheaded a new
Center for Brains, Minds and Machines,
with the goal of understanding biological
intelligence and replicating it in machines.
“The dream of understanding
the human brain is now
within our grasp, and
we are convinced that
its realization will be the
greatest accomplishment
of the 21st century. We
are proud to play a part
in making this happen.”
— Pat and Lore McGovern
The advances made at the institute were
a source of great pride for Pat, who would
often describe them to visitors with an
enviable degree of accuracy. “This is the
most exciting time in neuroscience,” he
said in a recent video interview.
A Lasting Legacy
While Pat felt that his and Lore’s gift
had been returned in excess, those at
the McGovern Institute will remember
Pat McGovern as someone who never
ceased giving of his time, his enthusiasm
and his curiosity about new discoveries.
That energy remains, driving continued
efforts to understand brains and minds
and to leave a legacy from which future
generations will benefit.
5
institute news
“Huda Zoghbi has been a pioneer in
the study of human genetic disease,”
says Robert Desimone, who chaired
the selection committee. “Her work
has provided fundamental insights
into the mechanisms of hereditary
neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric
diseases, and has pointed the way to
new treatments for these disorders.”
Zoghbi is perhaps best known for her
pioneering work on Rett syndrome, a
genetic neurological disease that affects
young girls. After a 16-year search, she
succeeded in identifying the Rett gene in
1999—a discovery which provided a
definitive genetic diagnosis for the condition
and also opened the door to a biological
understanding and a search for treatment.
Zoghbi’s recent work has focused on
identifying the cell types and brain circuits
that are responsible for autistic-like
behaviors of the mouse Rett model, which
may represent promising targets for future
therapeutic intervention.
MIT Strong Marathon Team
Patent for Genome Technology
On April 21, thirty nine runners of the
MIT Strong marathon team—including
McGovern Investigator Jim DiCarlo and
communications manager Julie Pryor—
represented the Institute at the 2014
Boston Marathon.
The first US patent has been issued for
the engineered CRISPR-Cas9 system,
which allows researchers to edit the
genomes of living cells and organisms.
McGovern Investigator Feng Zhang is the
inventor, and the patent is assigned jointly
to the Broad Institute, where Zhang is a
core member, and to MIT. Zhang recently
co-founded a company, Editas Medicine,
which plans to develop genome editing
for human clinical applications.
The MIT team ran in honor of MIT police
officer Sean Collier, who was killed last
year during the manhunt that followed the
Boston Marathon bombings.
Photo: Dominick Reuter
McGovern Annual
Symposium
The MIT Strong marathon team with President
L. Rafael Reif including Jim DiCarlo (back row,
third from right) and Julie Pryor (front row,
second from right).
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mcgovern.mit.edu
The theme of this year’s symposium
was “Disruptive Innovations in
Neuroscience.” Organized by Feng
Zhang, the event featured 9
speakers, who discussed a wide
range of new technologies that
promise to accelerate the rate of
discovery across the field.
Huda Zoghbi received the Scolnick Prize for her
work on the genetic basis of human brain disorders.
Photo: Helen Hill
Huda Y. Zoghbi, of Baylor College of
Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital,
is the winner of the 2014 Edward M.
Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience. The Prize
is awarded annually by the McGovern
Institute to recognize outstanding
advances in the field of neuroscience.
Photo: Baylor College of Medicine
Huda Zoghbi Delivers Scolnick Prize Lecture
The new MGHPCC facility in Holyoke MA.
New Computing Cluster
The Institute recently received an
anonymous gift to establish a new
computing cluster as a shared resource
for the MIT neuroscience community. The
cluster is now installed at the Massachusetts
Green High Performance Computing
Center in Holyoke, MA, and is undergoing
testing. Once fully operational it will
greatly expand the computing power
available to researchers.
McGovern associate member Alan Jasanoff is
developing new technologies for imaging the brain.
Feng Zhang is a coauthor with Phillip
Sharp (who was founding director of the
McGovern Institute from 2000-2004)
on a study examining the molecular
mechanism by which the genome-editing
enzyme Cas9 finds its DNA targets.
Rebecca Saxe and colleagues identified
patterns of brain activity associated with
willingness of group members to harm
individuals from a competing group.
People in such situations show reduced
activation of brain regions implicated in
moral self-scrutiny. In this laboratorybased study the “harm” consisted of
posting unflattering photos, but the
findings may also be applicable to realworld group conflicts.
Alan Jasanoff and colleagues described a
new MRI-based method for imaging gene
expression in the brains of living animals.
The technique is expected to enable new
ways to study brain plasticity and learning,
and it may also have applications in many
other areas of biology.
Daniel Baldauf, a postdoc in Bob Desimone’s
lab, identified a human brain circuit
involved in focusing attention on faces and
other objects. Using magnetoencephalography
(MEG), the researchers showed that a part
of the prefrontal cortex known as the
inferior frontal junction controls visual
processing areas that are tuned to recognize
specific categories of objects.
Image: Daniel Baldauf / MIT News
Photo: Allegra Boverman
r es e arc h n e w s
Screen shots from a video of overlapping
images of faces and houses, shown to
subjects in a MEG scanner.
awar d s a nd h o n ors
Photo: Kent Dayton
Feng Zhang has been named the winner
of this year’s National Science Foundation
(NSF) Alan T. Waterman Award. The award
is NSF’s highest honor for outstanding
researchers under the age of 35, across all
areas of science and engineering.
The Waterman award was presented to
Zhang at a ceremony at the US Department
of State in Washington, DC.
Zhang was also listed by Technology
Review as a key player in the field of
genome editing, one of the magazine’s 10
Breakthrough Technologies for 2014.
McGovern Investigator Feng Zhang receives National
Science Foundation’s highest honor for young researchers.
7
eve nt s
Patrick J. McGovern Memorial Service
On Thursday, May 29, members of the McGovern community
will gather for a memorial service to honor and celebrate the life
of Pat McGovern. The event will be held at the McGovern Institute
(MIT building 46, main atrium) and will begin at 10am.
A memorial page, including a video interview with Pat as
well as tributes from friends and colleagues, may be found
on our website.
Photo: Justin Knight
The family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations
may be made to the McGovern Institute in Pat’s memory.
Please contact Kara Flyg at [email protected] or 617-324-0134.
Pat speaking at the tenth anniversary of the
McGovern Institute in 2010.
Brain scan
Editors: Charles Jennings, Julie Pryor
Writer: Elizabeth Dougherty
Director of Development: Kara Flyg
Design: Sametz Blackstone Associates, Boston
The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT is led by a team of
world-renowned neuroscientists committed to meeting two great challenges
of modern science: understanding how the brain works and discovering
new ways to prevent or treat brain disorders. The McGovern Institute
was established in 2000 by Patrick J. McGovern and Lore Harp McGovern,
with the goal of improving human welfare, communication and
understanding through their support for neuroscience research. The
director is Robert Desimone, who is the Doris and Don Berkey Professor
of Neuroscience at MIT and former head of intramural research at the
National Institute of Mental Health.
Quarterly
Newsletter of
the McGovern
Institute
Further information is available at: http://mcgovern.mit.edu
© Copyright 2014, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
mcgovern institute
for brain research at mit
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue 46-3160
Cambridge, MA 02139