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Montclair State University recently chose John Siekierka, a veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, to head the new Margaret and Herman Sokol Institute for Pharmaceutical Life Sciences. Siekierka, who was head of research and development at Johnson & Johnson's Center for Biomaterials and Advanced Technologies before arriving at Montclair, spoke about creating an institute and how he plans to forge relationships between the industry and university.
Q. Can you share your vision for the Sokol Institute?
A. It's brand spanking new, so there are still lots of elements that have to be put together.
What I envision is scientists from diverse fields collaborating on programs that are relevant to human health. Part of my vision is a focus, not totally, but a focus on global health issues, such as HIV, tuberculosis, parasitic diseases, malaria. That is one area I'm very interested in.
One of the things we'll be trying to do is bring people together to do research and studies. Part of the goal of the institute is to establish an advanced degree program.
We're really talking about raising the level of research here and taking advantage of the environment. It's ground zero here (in New Jersey) for the drug industry.
Q. Folks in the pharma and biotech industries have often lamented the lack of strong ties between business and academia in New Jersey. How will the institute help foster that relation ship?
A. The institute will have an external advisory board as well as an internal one.
The external board I've put together has prominent members from industry as well as academia providing direction and advice as to how to approach these interactions.
At the Center for Biomaterials and Advanced Technologies, within Johnson & Johnson, we were working in an area called convergent technologies, which are a variety of technologies brought together in the pharmaceutical realm, including drug de vice combinations, nanotechnology.
It's no longer a matter of just putting together a pill. It's not as simple as that. Now, there's a great diversity of individuals that come to bear on convergent technologies. The Cypher stent collaboration (that he was involved with at J&J) combined drug discovery and engineers with polymer scientists.
By its nature, the process of converging technologies is a massive collaboration to solve health problems. My point is that's a direction the industry is going in. We would like to create that type of environment here at Montclair.
Q. Will you continue doing science in your new role?
A. Yes. One area of interest for me is HIV.