DR. RICHARD HOUGHTEN PSL DRILL
Q&A
10
PHOTO BY ROB DOWNEY
Dr. Richard Houghten is the mild-mannered scientist
heading the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular
Studies, who was the chief decision-maker in
bringing the headquarters to Port St. Lucie.
We visited him in Torrey Pines’ temporary quarters in the
FAU Building on the Harbor Branch Oceanographic
Institute site north of Fort Pierce. The permanent facilities in
Florida’s Center for Innovation are being built at Tradition
in Port St. Lucie and will be home to more than 200
researchers within the next year. The 100,000-square-foot
biomedical research center will house $9 million in equipment
and is expected to be a significant economic generator
for our region with great potential for spin-off companies.
By summer 2009, Torrey Pines will move its complete
headquarters to Port St. Lucie.
St. Lucie economic development officials
viewed Torrey Pines as a lynchpin in attracting
other biotech research to the area. Already, the
foundation for a research cluster has been laid,
with the recent wooing of the Mann Research
Center, which starts construction on a $100
million life sciences complex in Tradition
later this year. In January, Houghten and
economic development officials got Oregon
Health and Sciences University’s Vaccine
and Gene Therapy Institute to commit to
building a research center next to Torrey
Pines’ Tradition location.
>>
What’s the update on the Torrey
Pines Institute in Port St. Lucie?
We’re on track for completion in
December 2008 at Tradition.What I’m
trying to do is recruit people who
either have grants or are at that magic
age where they’re ready to get grants.
Recruiting is more of an art than a science,
because you have to pick a person
who has the ability to be selffunding
after awhile. Aplace like
Torrey Pines is a bit like a mall where
you have a candy store, sporting
goods store, clothing store and what
not, and in the end, the scientists are
independent contractors. If they can
keep their little shop funded, we’ll do
the best we can to help them.We recruit
people who fit in with the scientific culture,
social culture, that’s really important,
especially in the beginning. You can put up
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