Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

I was to work in the same laboratory where Hans Krebs, the famous biochemist of the 1950s and 60s, discovered the Krebs cycle.

Formulaic is geek-speak for having a protocol.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for the NIH but they are missing something.

I’m currently working on a fairly large grant application for a company. The company wants me to do research on a subject on which I am very comfortable and knowledgeable. The process of writing and securing a research agreement with a company is much different than with the NIH, NSF or most charitable foundations. I [...]

A well trained scientist with a Ph.D. or similar advanced degree and research experience has been trained to identify a problem, formulate a hypothesis, which is an interrogation of said problem, test the hypothesis and learn from the observations. This process requires open minded thought through and around complicated subjects and to understand cause and [...]

Patients who donate their bodies to science and/or agree to participate in clinical trials are my heroes. I say that with the conviction of a scientist who has directly benefited from their benevolence. To do the research that I do on stroke I have collected hundreds of litres of human Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) from [...]

In science ideas are like a currency and often better than money. A scientist is only as valuable as their NEXT idea. Yes, I said next idea. Once the idea is made public it is no longer novel and loses value. If the idea is not patented it can be taken by anyone and changed [...]

We are in the midst of a lost generation of graduate students. Grad students take 4-7 years to get a degree, but with 4 years of flat funding and now challenge grants’ funding being 1 in 100 there is a perception of no future in science by those students. No one wants to spend their [...]

I was attending a scientific conference recently which consisted of a series of short talks given by renowned scientists. The session was organized by a leading scientist in the field who invited the speakers and directed them to cover the key scientific subjects of the field to form a theme in the session. According to [...]

The NIH needs to solicit and fund a massive effort to reduce, refine and replace the use of antibiotics. This is desperately needed because of the growing problem of drug resistance. Microbes become resistant to antibiotics via a kind of natural selection when the genes of the bacteria mutate and become resistant to our attempts [...]