Part 2

Science 21 November 2008:
Vol. 322. no. 5905, pp. 1184 - 1185
DOI: 10.1126/science.322.5905.1184

News Focus

SCIENCE IN ROMANIA:
At Home in Bucharest, for Better and for Worse

Martin Enserink

Family affair. Maya Simionescu, with husband, Nicolae, and Nobelist George Palade (center) in the 1970s--and today, with a bust of her husband at the institute they founded. CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): M. ENSERINK/SCIENCE; ICBP

In the late 1980s, one of the darkest periods in Romania's history, the future of one of the country's flagship research centers hung by a thread. In downtown Bucharest, communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu was erecting his "House of the People," a gigantic government building for which a large part of the historic city had been flattened. To expand a park surrounding the building, Ceauşescu had also set his sights on demolishing the Institute of Cellular Biology and Pathology (ICBP), a modern research facility run by Nicolae and Maya Simionescu, a scientist couple that had previously worked at top labs in the United States.

Then came the Christmas revolution of 1989. Ceauşescu didn't survive; ICBP did. Today, its top floors offer an excellent view of the dictator's Hollywood-esque creation.

The story could be emblematic for Maya Simionescu, who colleagues say is a survivor herself. She replaced her husband as ICBP director when he died in 1995, and today, at 71, she is a heroine and an icon of Romanian science, says Marilena Lupu, who took a job at the institute in 2007 after completing a postdoc in the United States. The lab has remained one of a few "islands of excellence" in a sea of rather mediocre research, says cell biologist Octavian Voiculescu of University College London. But not everyone is a fan; Simionescu's tough leadership style has driven some lab members away, and some see her as stifling reforms in Romanian science.

During a recent meeting at her institute, Simionescu took some time out in her giant office to discuss her scientific adventure, which spans almost half a century. She and her husband--she was his student in Bucharest first--spent the 1970s working at Rockefeller University in New York City and at Yale University with Romanian Nobel laureate George Palade, who died last month at age 95. "We loved life in the U.S., and the working conditions were great," Simionescu recalls after lighting a long, thin cigarette and ordering coffee. "But we always felt we could make a bigger contribution here." So they persuaded the Romanian government to build a brand-new lab for them. ICBP opened in 1979.

Just how well-connected the Simionescus were at the time is under dispute. Some assert that Ceauşescu was personally interested in repatriating the high-profile couple, and Nicanor Moldovan, who worked at the lab for 13 years and is now at Ohio State University, Columbus, says they seemed to have "some form of access to the higher political hierarchy," up to Ceauşescu and his chemist wife, Elena. But Simionescu says she and her husband remained "apolitical" and insists that a reception at the Romanian embassy in Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s was the only time she met Ceauşescu. Other officials, such as the health minister, championed their cause, she says, as did Palade.

Whatever the backstory, it didn't take the Simionescus long to create "a unique place in Eastern Europe," Moldovan says. Focusing on the cardiovascular system--in particular the cell biology and biochemistry of the vascular endothelium--they introduced to Romania new techniques, such as electron microscopy, and new habits, such as working long hours and publishing in international journals; they obtained Fulbright scholarships and visas to send young scientists to the West and flew in Palade and other top scientists to discuss research in Bucharest. "Working with the Simionescus was a passport to the best labs and scientists in the world," Moldovan says.

In the 1980s, however, Ceauşescu's economic policies plunged the country into hardship. Funding for the lab dried up, the government ordered the lights out after 5 p.m. to save electricity, and there was often no heating during the winter. It also became increasingly difficult to get visas to go abroad, says Simionescu. Grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health--a rare honor for a foreign institute--kept the lab afloat.

The 1989 revolution ended the immediate threat to ICBP, but it also triggered the departure of more than a third of the staff, many of them looking for a better life outside Romania. Lingering tensions over the Simionescus' controlling management style may have hastened the exodus, some researchers say. The duo had little patience for dissent and created a personality cult, says one former ICBP scientist who asked not to be identified because he worries it might hurt his career. "People wrote songs and poetry about the Simionescus," the researcher says. Moldovan confirms that the lab was run "like an autocracy" --although to him, it felt more like a family at the time.

For Maya Simionescu, the post-revolution defection was a blow. "I had trained so many of those people, taught them everything--they were like my children," she says. The revolution did offer new opportunities, however, such as a chance to hire fresh, young people with new skills--computers had just begun to alter how biology research was done--engage in collaborations with foreign labs, and receive E.U. funds.

After her husband didn't wake up one Monday morning in 1995--a heart attack--she named the institute after him and took on the directorship. "I wasn't sure I could do it. We had always done everything together," she says. Opinions on her tenure since then are divided. Moldovan says he "has nothing but the greatest admiration." But Mircea Miclea, a former science minister, says Simionescu has become a conservative force herself, for instance, by blocking his attempts to reform the Romanian Academy of Sciences, of which she was the vice president for 8 years.

Simionescu has no plans to leave. She recently received some €14 million in E.U. "structural funds" to renovate ICBP's aging building and buy new equipment. She is moving into stem cells. "Maybe in a couple of years," she says, "I will find a new director, and I will become honorary director, if that is helpful." Then she pulls a rose from a nearby vase, lays it gently on the pedestal of a large bronze bust of her husband, and walks back to her meeting.