What a Concept!

Soon I must decide on whether I will retire. What a concept! I never thought I would not have a lab to go to every day and play with instruments,ideas and my little Leishmania buggers. But the time comes for anyone and I do feel an obligation to young researchers not to hog limited resources for too long. What will I do, I ask myself. Well, I do enjoy taking astroimages at night with my backyard telescope, playing the violin, working with computers and programs, taking on line courses on history, science, art and music, hiking in the mountains or by the ocean, playing with my dogs, reading voraciously and traveling (although traveling these days is a chore not a pleasure anymore). And most of all I enjoy thinking and writing. But is that enough? Time will tell. And in the large view of things, this is so unmomentous. I doubt Argentina will cry for me and also not even Brazil. But last year a funny thing happened – I got really interested in a new research project and decided to try to pursue it for a little longer. Ahha, but research needs money and researchers and my 41 year old NIH grant is finally expiring in April. So I guess it comes down to whether my renewal gets funded or not. Times are tough and NIH money is really limited so I am not very optimistic. But I will try and perhaps can continue playing with instruments, ideas and my little buggers for a little longer.

December 31, 2010 - Grant update: Well my NIH grant was funded for three more years. My lab is really small now with just two postdocs and I have stopped accepting  graduate students. It's actually more cozy this way.  It will be fun to try to solve the structure of the editing complex at a high enough resolution to be able to learn something about the mechanism.