It is an honor to be here today for the LABEST Bioscience Conference. LABEST has evolved into the premier event in our Los Angeles ecosystem of innovation and we are pleased to host it here at UCLA. So many brilliant minds are transforming medicine and health technology across the LA region. And many are in this room today. I welcome you.
I would like to acknowledge Arie Belldegrun, who has inspired and supported this conference, and of course, thanks to the UCLA Technology Development Group, led by Amir Naiberg, and to all of you — for your belief in the power of science and technology to improve and save lives.
We meet at a moment when the research enterprise in the U.S. is facing its greatest challenge in eight decades. Yet it is also its moment of greatest promise. How we navigate this unique moment will determine whether we succumb to the challenge or fulfill the promise. In this complex, evolving context, I am fundamentally optimistic about our capacity to improve the world through innovation.
My academic and professional journey has been structured around a unifying conviction: that knowledge is the most powerful force for enlightened social transformation. This idea articulates a collective vision of academia and its interaction with society. I would like to start by sharing my view of what comprehensive universities are all about.
Knowledge is our single product, but it is a very powerful product — the most powerful force of enlightened social transformation. We are engaged in what I call a circle of knowledge. It starts with the creation of new knowledge, which we easily do with research, with scholarship, and also with artistic creation — because art is a form of knowing and providing meaning to the reality we live in.
We then move into the re-creation of knowledge, and that is what we do through education. Education is not just about transmitting knowledge. It is about re-creating knowledge through the minds of the next generation. Many people in academia have traditionally thought that this is the mission of a university: to create and re-create knowledge, but I belong to a school of thought — which I believe now is in the majority — that as essential as those two phases are, they are not our only duties to society.
We, as universities, have the responsibility to take the next step: to translate knowledge. There are two types of translation: Into technologies, which is what we are going to talk about here today. And into evidence, which can be used to guide decision-making at every level. At the household level, a mother deciding to vaccinate her children — a very important decision. At the professional level, medical practice and nursing practice driven by scientific evidence and, hopefully, public policy. We can then utilize knowledge — in this context, through the delivery of healthcare. When we utilize knowledge, we transform reality. Individual patients. Whole communities. Societies. And then we restart the circle all over again.
This is the way to combine two fundamental values of academia — excellence and relevance. They are often presented as antagonistic values, but they are actually mutually reinforcing. We pursue excellence — the highest standards of truth, discovery, and education — and we take this knowledge and make it relevant to the society where we live. Good universities, like UCLA, are present throughout the entire circle. And every phase of the circle is receptive to innovation. Research. Education. Translation — we must innovate the way we innovate.
We are in the process of creating a new social compact about how we undertake the first phase of the circle of knowledge: the research enterprise. At the same time, we need to innovate in education. Education is the pipeline that keeps the circle of knowledge moving.
We are at the right place to talk about education and innovation in bioscience. More than 10,000 students are now enrolled in the life sciences at UCLA. Last year alone, we awarded more than 3,000 life science degrees — the most ever for UCLA — and our numbers keep growing. Greater Los Angeles is a pipeline for future talent in biotech. The region produces more graduates in the life sciences than anywhere else in the country. Thanks not only to us but also our partner universities, like Caltech and USC.
Researchers at UCLA have a long history of turning innovation into benefits for society — including life-saving therapies for cancer. Now scientists can make this kind of real-world impact — what I’m calling relevance — even faster because of new discoveries and technologies. Advances in AI and machine learning, quantum computing, gene editing, and synthetic biology are changing our research landscape through a grand convergence of scientific and technological revolutions. This convergence is expanding the scope of the questions that researchers can ask and how quickly they can answer them.
What was once impossible is now possible — and this is driving strong biotech growth in Los Angeles. From 2019 to 2023, the number of biotech companies in our region doubled. Biotech accounted for $66.9 billion in economic output and created nearly 100,000 jobs.
Clusters of bioscience and biotech companies have grown around UCLA on the Westside, Caltech in Pasadena, and Amgen in Ventura County. Startups like A2 Biotherapeutics and Capsida Biotherapeutics are putting down roots in LA.
Events and initiatives like LABEST, BioscienceLA, and Biocom are galvanizing this community – connecting researchers with private-sector investors to drive innovation into the marketplace enriching the soil for entrepreneurship and keeping our life sciences graduates here through career opportunities.
This is a time of extraordinary promise for biotech in Greater Los Angeles. And now we have another reason for optimism: the UCLA Research Park. Great universities understand that our positive impact must simultaneously expand the frontiers of knowledge and be put to use in delivering solutions to the most complex problems facing humankind. The old dichotomous division between basic and applied science needs to be superseded.
We pursue excellence and relevance in the same creative process. This is why I talk about the circle of knowledge as an integrated circle. We must intentionally, as an institution, support an ecosystem that continuously feeds fundamental research and take action to support the translation of that knowledge into innovation.
This is the philosophy of the UCLA Research Park. This unique opportunity will create a vibrant innovation ecosystem — through vigorous partnerships with the private sector and philanthropists. There are precedents for this kind of integrated approach. We have them in Northern California. Silicon Valley grew out of the Stanford Research Park. In LA, our epicenter for discovery and commercialization is taking shape only two miles south of us at the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall. This mall was transformed by Google into what was going to be a major headquarters for the company — but then was sold to UCLA with the support of $200 million from the state to convert the mall into a 700,000-square-foot research and innovation space.
This has all been made possible due to a consortium of founders. These include Meyer Luskin, the same Meyer Luskin who made this wonderful space possible Dr. Gary Michelson, Sean Parker, Michael Milken, Dr. Eric Esrailian and of course, Dr. Arie Belldegrun.
The first anchor projects in the UCLA Research Park are: First and foremost, the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. We are also planning the Quantum Innovation Hub — a project of the UCLA College’s Division of Physical Sciences and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and we are planning space for clinical trials and other research from the David Geffen School of Medicine.
Numerous companies and government labs are being invited to collaborate in this space. We anticipate a burst of entrepreneurship at the park — including networking and business planning in an incubator space and the development of joint intellectual property and spin-off companies.
The research park capitalizes on UCLA’s strengths in translational research. We have prolific chemists, biologists, physicists, and engineers. Our physician-researchers are widely known for creating better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Our health system has a large and highly diverse patient base and we have an extensive clinical trials infrastructure. All of this allows for an integrated, seamless path from the creation, re-creation, and translation of knowledge into technologies: a faster path to market for inventions and therapies. When innovation leads to healthy people and a healthy economy, we are delivering on the fundamental mission of UCLA as a public institution: To take the resources derived from society and return them to society with greater value.
The 80-year-old partnership between the federal government and U.S. universities has produced the best research in the world. But right now we are seeing a self-destructive weakening of the foundations of that partnership. The partnership grew directly from World War II. Research carried out at universities was the fundamental factor in encouraging courage and patriotism among the troops who fought there — and in winning the war. President Roosevelt created the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Aside from the Manhattan Project, this effort: Discovered how to scale up production of penicillin, delivered malaria drugs and insecticides and invented radar. These are among the achievements that enabled the Allies to win the war.
Vannevar Bush — in his famous report, Science the Final Frontier — developed the blueprint for the partnership. Government would use the infrastructure of universities to drive a research agenda. It would fund fundamental research to expand the frontiers of knowledge, and industry would pick up the baton afterward. That is the paradigm we now need to switch. We need to bring in partnerships at earlier stages in the circle of knowledge.
That model, which is unique in the developed world, is now under threat. The NIH has cut $2.7 billion in grants since the start of the year. More reductions may follow. And there is a lot of uncertainty. Technological innovation is our best option to diversify sources of financial support so we can keep the engine of fundamental research running. Because that is what kickstarts the whole circle of knowledge.
That is why we are doubling down on investing in technological innovation and in creating new partnerships for the university with the private sector and philanthropy. At this critical moment we must embrace with boldness a new compact for research and innovation. Industry and philanthropists will become increasingly more important partners at increasingly earlier stages of the circle of knowledge. We will stimulate the type of integrative research that simultaneously advances the frontiers of knowledge and addresses the most complex challenges of our time. And we will do that by connecting our faculty, students, staff, and alumni to programs and incentives for entrepreneurship and for the commercialization of discoveries.
The UCLA Research Park symbolizes a new world of partnership among philanthropy, investors, industry, and government. The old paradigms are shifting and we must recommit ourselves to innovation. This is meta-innovation: How do we innovate the innovation ecosystem itself? I believe that the UCLA Research Park, starting with the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, is going to be the lynchpin of this process of innovating how we innovate. So let’s not only be great thinkers — let’s be proactive doers. Let’s be more than observers at this critical moment — let’s be actors. Let’s be more than dreamers — let’s turn our vision into investments that have the potential to change humanity for the better.