Why university research matters

Though I serve as Wake Forest’s President today, my life and career are profoundly shaped by my work as a scientist. Building from my first lab experience as an undergraduate student to decades of running complex experiments with my graduate students and fellows as a faculty member, I will always identify personally as a scientist. 

And the work of many scientists, researchers and scholars across the nation’s tapestry of higher education institutions, including right here at Wake Forest, has in turn profoundly shaped the world: through life-saving discoveries, breakthrough technologies, and solutions to complex global problems. 

The research environment fostered in American higher education – and the funding support from both government and private sources that undergirds it – is the envy of the world. It is why students from every corner of the country and globe apply to attend our universities at the undergraduate and graduate levels; why scholars want to teach and research here. 

It’s also why I felt it was critical to tell the stories of research impact and discovery here at Wake Forest in my Walk with Wente video series, which highlights excellence in faculty research and scholarship. 

Federal research funding has long enabled American universities to push beyond pragmatic problem solving into the realm of undiscovered possibilities — true experimentation that expands the boundaries of knowledge. 

I’ll give you just one example from my own experience of what is possible in just this sort of research environment – well-funded, well-supported, and reinforced by deep institutional commitments. 

For the first 15 years of my faculty career running my biochemistry and cell biology research program, I focused on identifying key machinery necessary for moving proteins and RNAs in and out of the nucleus during normal cellular function. The graduate students and fellows training in my laboratory were critical partners in discovery, analysis, and publication; which in turn, built the foundations of their own careers. 

One day, I was reading in my office when several of my students and fellows burst in and said “We have a disease!!!” 

Naturally, my response was of concern: “Does someone have the flu?!” 

But no, what they meant was they had connected our research to the network of research happening globally. Based on human genome sequencing analysis of affected families, a group of Finnish researchers reported a rare and fatal disease was linked to a gene under study in my lab. We had developed true expertise in the normal cellular function of the protein Gle1 encoded by this gene. 

If we had tried to predict a disease linked to the protein Gle1, it would have been like trying to find a needle in a haystack; or even a star in a galaxy! But because of the deep interconnectedness of research being produced around the world, my research team made critical discoveries for how defects in Gle1 cause the lethal human disease called LCCS1 (Lethal Congenital Contracture Syndrome-1). In the years that followed, we leveraged these insights even further, gaining new insights into organ development and neurological diseases – all completely dependent on an essential partnership of funding: grants from the National Institutes of Health and direct investments by the universities where my lab was based.

This is why the research that universities do matters – not for our own sake, but because the outcomes we produce have global implications for all human beings. And if the infrastructure to support those outcomes erodes or crumbles, the effects will be felt not only here in the U.S. but by people all around the world. 

Modern universities are THE most impactful research and economic engines in our society — and support both our stature in the world and the impacts we have on our local communities, regions and states. 

We do this sort of work every day at Wake Forest – impactful research that is of tremendous good and has both local and global implications. We are committed to continuing this work, and we need committed partnerships for it to have the greatest positive impact, for humanity.