September 19, 2024
On September 18, the Division of Biological Sciences announced that Richard Harland would be its new dean following Michael Botchan’s well-deserved retirement. Harland is a professor of molecular and cell biology and the senior associate dean during Botchan’s deanship. Harland previously served two stints as chair of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and head of the Division of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development.
Four decades after arriving at UC Berkeley as a new faculty member, Harland remains fascinated by embryos, evolution, and early developmental biology. There is, of course, a lot of fascinating research at UC Berkeley to keep his interest!
In his first public interview as dean, Harland explained why he came to Berkeley, what it takes to enable top-tier research, how the division serves the state, and what pulled him away from his beloved lab to take on a leadership role.
What drew you to your area of developmental molecular biology?
When I was an undergraduate, I took courses with two amazing developmental biologists. Peter Lawrence worked on developmental genetics with flies. The other was John Gurdon, who won the Nobel Prize for showing how cells can be reprogrammed from a differentiated state back to the naive state.
They both had extraordinarily clear and experiment-based lecturing styles. Rather than trying to load us up with facts, they taught us how all the experiments were done, and this just fascinated me. So I decided to go into the field of developmental biology.
In fact, it was even better than I thought because I found that I loved doing experiments — being in the lab, hanging around smart people, and learning from them. Initially, when I joined the lab, I thought I would be working 9-to-5, but instead I spent long days there because it was so much fun.
I have always loved looking at embryos and how their genes are expressed. It is extraordinarily beautiful to see how that single egg cleaves and generates an embryo. That has continued to captivate me.
I did my thesis on DNA replication control, then went on to a postdoc position in Seattle and continued working with frogs and frog eggs. The recombinant DNA revolution made so many things possible. We could do so much to analyze where genes are expressed, and how their protein products work, but now with CRISPR, one can do all kinds of experiments that one would never have dreamed of to find out how early development works. It's been a real privilege to be involved in that field.
You have served as division head, department chair, senior associate dean, and now dean. What is your approach to leadership?
My role model is Max Perutz, who was the director of the Medical Research Council Lab at Cambridge, where I did my Ph.D. The lab is famous — it was often called a Nobel factory. His formula for success was to hire good people, give them what they need to do their best work, provide an environment where they will interact, and let them get on with it.
My approach has been one of consensus building. I like to have people raise their ideas and discuss them. I don't like to impose. One of the best compliments I had as chair was that I have a light touch. That fits very well with the Berkeley ethos of shared governance. We have terrific faculty and excellent staff; as long as people are working towards some common good, things work out pretty well.
Richard Harland became the dean of biological sciences on July 1, 2024. (Photo by Johnny Gan Chong for UC Berkeley)
Were there any especially challenging or rewarding projects you handled as senior associate dean?
Renovations have been the most challenging projects. They can be very complex. It's easy to get delayed at many stages.
I was involved in a complex project to renovate the basement labs in Weill Hall for increased use of zebrafish, and it was moving very slowly. The faculty and I got involved in the meetings so that the people who were affected by the project were making sure that things moved along and that there were solutions. In collaboration with several offices and committees, we figured out how to rearrange and build those facilities. That's still in progress.
There are always new projects and major renovations, usually when we recruit new faculty. If they're moving into an older lab, then that lab needs to be brought up to standard. Some faculty have special needs, so we need to identify and renovate spaces for them. We have projects to install aquaria for studying corals and their symbiosis with algae for a new recruit.
It was very effective to interact with Capital Projects to identify measures that could save money. For instance, our staff found extra circuits that were not being used so we didn't have to install a new electrical system from the outside. One has to have familiarity with the buildings. Working together like that makes sure we complete necessary projects as quickly as possible.
Richard Harland in his Durant Hall office (Photo by Johnny Gan Chong for UC Berkeley)
What is an exciting field where the division is growing?
We have a brand new Department of Neuroscience and a new Division of Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. There has also been amazing progress in evolutionary biology. Several of our own faculty have been studying human migrations by looking at DNA. The insights have been extraordinary in understanding our evolution and the evolution of animals.
One of the highlights of the last year was the work of Daniel Rokhsar, who has spearheaded work on how the arrangements of chromosomes has not changed much in the last 600 million years. You can see stretches of the chromosomes where the same genes are present from anything from a sea anemone to a human. He used that pattern to place some of the most primitive animals on the phylogenetic tree in an authoritative way that was not possible before. DNA has been the clue to all sorts of levels of evolution but in terms of the evolution of vertebrate populations, this is where ancient DNA sequencing will be helpful.
Berkeley will need to build a special lab to handle ancient DNA. We have the expertise to analyze these sequences but not the facilities to generate data. The danger of contamination with the environment is severe, so these have to be very clean labs. I’m putting my attention on finding the right place that doesn't have too much DNA floating around.
How are you supporting cutting-edge research and education?
The model is that we aim to provide the facilities, get the funding for the instrumentation, have an excellent graduate student program, recruit the best people, and provide an environment where great science can be done.
For student education, although one can get a good, insightful worldview from lectures, if you really want to understand how science is done and how we know what we know, you have to understand how to set parameters, design tests, and evaluate results. Many of us want the opportunity for our undergraduates to get that kind of capstone experiment experience with lab research. We have so many talented undergraduates, it's very hard to provide that opportunity — and of course, everything costs money.
I'm particularly proud of the efforts of my lab’s postdocs to establish a mini-course to introduce undergraduates to lab research and take them through live exercises with the potential for discovery. This bootcamp was funded by the department so we could hire undergraduates to help teach the course. I was trying to set up a self-sustaining system where the senior undergrads would train junior undergrads with help from postdocs. It is very important to figure out how we can give that kind of experiment experience and set up a model that other labs can work from.
How is the division maintaining its excellent graduate student program?
We have the built-in advantage of living in a wonderful area. People want to come and live here. Couples can both find work. With that and the excellence of Berkeley, we attract brilliant graduate students.
The other aspect is, of course, funding. The state contributes about 12% of UC Berkeley’s operating budget. However, there are limits on the levers we can pull to fulfill our funding needs. There are requirements to increase class size and constraints on raising tuition. Californians have to actively prioritize higher education through bond measures.
There has been a big change lately with the increase in salaries for graduate students and postdocs, which makes it possible to live in the area. The cost of personnel has far outpaced the amount of grant money that we can get from the federal government, so we tend to operate with smaller labs and a slightly smaller graduate program. It's too small. We have the ability to train excellent people, so this is a puzzle we are actively trying to solve. One of my main priorities is to help to raise money for the graduate program.
What are your other priorities for the 2024-25 academic year?
I want to continue those impressive and effective projects that Mike Botchan initiated. One is to improve the diversity of our faculty and students so that we can serve the state. I believe very strongly that this university exists to serve the state, and I think we do a great job providing an economic engine by training people who go into the workforce and make California what it is.
Previously, as division head and department chair, our major emphasis was to improve the representation of women on faculty. I'm quite proud of the progress we made together. We may not have parity yet, but the sign of our success is that all of our prominent women have been subject to recruitment attempts from peer institutions, and in almost every case, we've managed to retain them.
There's still some distance to go; we need to address the loss of women at the postdoctoral stage of their career. These efforts must apply to other kinds of diversity as well, where we need to seize the opportunities we can to hire people with underrepresented backgrounds.
What originally attracted you to UC Berkeley?
At the simplest level, I was offered a job here. I had the option to go back to England and have a small lab, but I thought the possibilities here were much greater. It's a wonderful environment. I loved meeting the brilliant biologists on the faculty. The students are fantastic. I love this place.
That's one of the reasons I do these administrative jobs. No one's going to be remembered for administration, but if we can help the whole enterprise along, then that's a really satisfying process.
