Phil Needleman relishes his new role as Interim President and CBO of the Saint Louis Science Center.
“What’s good about an interim president is that it means change,” he exults. “It is the death of ‘the way we’ve always done it.'”
Having just finished another stint as interim head of an institution—nearly two years at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center– he knows whereof he speaks.
According to Sam Fiorello, COO of the Danforth Center, he left that research institute in better shape than when he came.
Photo courtesy of Saint Louis Science Center
Needleman has lost none of his gusto for anything to do with science since he first came to St. Louis in 1964 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at Washington University Medical School. His enthusiasm—always conveyed with a wide smile and his St. Louis-tempered Brooklyn accent—has shaped the environment of in all of his workplaces.
He spent 25 years at Washington U, leaving his position as Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology to become Chief Scientist at Monsanto. The move to industry was prompted by what he felt was a unique opportunity to follow his research all the way from basic science through development and eventual marketing of a drug.
Needleman had discovered an enzyme called COX-2 that the body makes only in certain inflammatory conditions. He hypothesized that blocking this enzyme would treat the inflammation without the gastric side effects that anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen can cause. He proved his hypothesis in the university laboratory, but developing and testing a drug needs industrial facilities and expertise. The drug was Celebrex, used to treat arthritis and colon cancer. He remained with Monsanto’s pharmaceutical partners until 2003, when he retired from his position as Senior Executive Vice President of the Pharmacia Corporation.
Bringing Scientists Together
When describing his career, Needleman always brings up his pride in the workplace culture that he has fostered. As chair of Pharmacology, he instituted a system of three lunchtime seminars per week. In these meetings, faculty members, post-docs, and grad students had to present not only their own work, but report on interesting work outside their narrow fields.
Photo courtesy of Saint Louis Science Center
He has pushed communication and exploration wherever he has been. At the Danforth Center he instituted the weekly brown bag lunch with presentations by one investigator per week—a way of team building and networking, and a forum for direct communication. “He moved us all from our comfort zones while promoting interactions,” says Fiorello, “and I loved working with him every one of those days he was in charge.”
At the Science Center, where Needleman had already served on the 8-person governing Board of Commissioners for several years, he hit the ground running. Immediately, he initiated an in-depth analysis of where it is and where it wants to be.
“I wasn’t born with the fearful gene,” he claims. “I can do anything I want in my life now. It’s got to be interesting, I’ve got to learn something, and it’s got to be damn important.
“I love science. And Obama is right; this is a Sputnik moment. Science is an urgent deficiency in this country and in our schools. We don’t have a literate public that can deal with either the technology of our time or the complexity of the questions that face us. So how do you really make a difference in science literacy?”
The answer from the mission analysis listed three focus areas
- Building a 21st century museum
- Making the Science Center into a Center for Science
- Creating a science education program built around the Youth Exploring Science (YES) program
Building a 21st Century Museum
A modern science museum will replace static placards of printed words with multimedia, interactive exhibits as much as possible, says Needleman. Exhibits need to be dynamic and searchable in this day of the internet.
He gives the example of an exhibit from the recent Darwin show. In a case, one of Darwin’s notebooks was opened to a small drawing. This first drawing of an evolutionary tree was one of the two most important life science drawings in 200 years, according to Needleman (The other was the double helix.) But people just passed it by.
In the 21st century museum such an important exhibit will be accompanied by iPad programs and interactive screens. In other words , what’s in front of your eyes will be just the beginning of the available information.
One of Needleman’s first acts as Science Center president was to commission a detailed assessment of every computer in the center, from office PC’s to the computers at the ticket desk. He plans to upgrade them all. He wants to put in such innovations as an interactive kiosk, where visitors can map out an itinerary that fits both their personal interests and the amount of time they have to spend.
He has always embraced technology. In the late 1960’s, he used funds from one of his first grants to purchase a typewriter-sized calculator for his laboratory. When the news of this amazing machine spread around the Pharmacology Department, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who had been making their calculations on slide rules and paper stood in line to use this timesaver.
Making the Science Center into a Center for Science
An institution like the Saint Louis Science Center should become a Center for Science, according to the analysis. It should be the place where people go for answers when news breaks. The public should be able to find information from museum sources on tsunami’s and tectonic plates within an hour of the disaster.
Eventually, the Center will need a television station with two-way capabilities. Live broadcasts could be held from exhibits. Al Wiman, veteran science reporter now on the Science Center staff, already does some of this type of outreach.
Creating a science education program built around the YES program
The Youth Exploring Science (YES) program, begun in 1997, involves inner city students in an intensive four-year program to learn science and related skills. The students, 300 in all, are recruited by community organizations and attend their regular public schools. But on Saturdays during the school year and weekdays in the summer, they are involved in learning science, and in teaching it. They receive a stipend for their time, and breakfast and lunch in the summer.
When “Body Worlds and the Brain” comes to the Science Center this summer, a group of 20 YES students will spend their afternoons taking classes on how the brain works from Washington U. neuroscientists and volunteer premedical students. Then, in the mornings they will be teaching workshops on the brain to the public.
Last year 34 of the 35 students who completed the program went on to higher education.
Needleman and his wife, Sima, got interested in the program early, and have given endowment funds to it. “These kids are our heroes. They are stepping out,” says Needleman.
He considers YES a transferable program for helping the educationally underserved learn science and technology. He is quite pleased that the United States Navy became interested in the program because many of their applicants come from that population. The Navy gave a $2.1 million, 3 year grant to the Science Center to double the program.
The Phil Needleman Saga
One might guess that Needleman feels some identification with the YES students, not because this son of immigrants was underprivileged, but because until he was 17, education was far from a priority for him.
“I never took home a book in high school. I gambled, played football, and was basically interested in the good life.”
Then he met 16 year old Sima, the top student in an accelerated high school.
Everything changed. He had to impress her. He decided to go to college, took home a book, took a test and got an A. He bought a tie, and made a “command decision” not to gamble, even though he usually won because he could memorize a deck of cards.
He was able to get into the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, he says, because they automatically admitted siblings if his mother paid $100. In his junior year, a professor named Rossi inspired him to go to graduate school, a pivotal decision.
Sima was the daughter of a pharmacist and once declared she would never marry one. But she was willing to marry a pharmacologist, and the Needleman’s have been husband and wife for 52 years. He has a rule that he does not spend more than three days and two nights away from Sima.
Their daughter Nina lives in St. Louis, and works in the financial industry, but now devotes much of her time to making a difference in other people’s lives through causes ranging from Women’s health to the United way. Son Larry is a psychologist in Ohio, and has two sons.
Team Needleman
On May 11, the Needleman’s received the prestigious “Search” award from Washington University’s Eliot Society. It was the first time the award has been given to a couple, and recognized the contributions both had made to the University.
Sima has a Master’s degree in social work from Washington U., and has served many leadership roles as an alumnus of that school, including leading a dialogue group on race relations at the Brown School from 2000-2008. Professionally, she specialized in helping women with obstetrical and infertility problems at Jewish Hospital (now Barnes-Jewish), where she worked with the team that pioneered in vitro fertilization there. She has also had a private practice.
Phil is a member of the Washington U. Board of Trustees and the Medical School National Council, the National Academy of Science, and the Institute of Medicine, and a long list of other academic and scientific governing bodies. He chairs the University Research and Development National Council and is Special Advisor to the president of Ben Gurion University in Israel. He has received many prestigious awards, including the John Jacob Abel Award and the Experimental Therapeutics Award of the American Society of Experimental Pharmacology, the Research Achievement Award of the American Heart Association, and the National Academy of Science Award for Industrial Application of Research.
Sima’s activities were the catalyst for bringing Phil and the Science Center together. Through her social work she knew Donald Suggs, publisher of the St. Louis American. She introduced him to Phil. Suggs was on the nominating committee for the Science Center’s Board of Commissioners, and knowing of Needleman’s strong sense of social concern as well as his professional accomplishments, suggested him as the first scientist ever to serve on their governing body.
“Sima and I have had an interesting life. Washington University was a place where anything was possible,” he reminisces. “It’s a great continuum, but I’ve always followed a few good precepts: follow the science, and surround yourself with smart people.”
What’s next? Needleman doesn’t know, but says that good things happen when you keep working.
This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.