After Baldomero Olivera finished his post-doctorate work in the United States, he returned to his native Philippines to carry out research.
He was a molecular biologist and had worked with DNA. But back in the Pacific, he discovered his lab had no sophisticated equipment.
"I was forced to try to find a different research topic, when I had a lab that had no equipment at all," he said. He began studying the venom of the sea snails that are plentiful in parts of the Pacific. Cone snails shoot tiny harpoons of venom into prey, which paralyzes them and allows the snail to eat the victim, whether fish or other snails.
That humble beginning eventually resulted in Olivera's worldwide fame as a top researcher into the neurotoxins produced by sea snails. The material has the potential for many medical applications, including painkillers.
"You know, I was pretty lucky that I did that," he said.
Last week, Olivera — now a member of the University of Utah faculty — was named one of 20 new "million-dollar professors" by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Olivera was granted a $1 million award, to be used over four years, to inspire a new generation of students, according to a press release from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
"The scientists whom we have selected are true pioneers — not only in their research, but in their creative approaches and dedication to teaching," said Thomas R. Cech, the institute's president, quoted in the release.
Olivera said he intends to go two directions with the grant. "One is to try to develop an undergraduate neuroscience program," he said. The program, based at the U., will attempt to attract students from varying backgrounds, "to explore whether they might become interested in neuroscience."
The other direction is to educate youngsters about biodiversity, concentrating on residents of the Pacific.
He intends to work through small colleges, mostly in U.S. territories. He may be involved in projects on Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, possibly the Marshall Islands.
He hopes to "develop some materials that teachers can use for college students in those colleges. And then the hope is we'll have the college students then interact with elementary school kids."
Youngsters in the first and second grade could learn about the biodiversity of their own regions. The goal is to "really make people in the communities . . . aware of the uniqueness of what's around them," he said.
If a student learns that an animal found on the local coral reef is unique to that island, the youngster will be proud of it and that could lead to conservation. This is "a work in progress," he said, and he wants to be "very pragmatic about what works and what doesn't."
In some area of the Pacific, reefs are under unprecedented assault. Coral structures are dynamited for fish that manage to survive the blasts, which are then netted and sent to aquarium-fish dealers.
With better understanding about the importance of biodiversity, Olivera hopes, improvements may happen. For example, there could be "a portion of the seashore set aside as a reserve." That, he said, "can make a very big difference."
In a way, Olivera, says, he is trying to pay back the ocean for all it has done for him.
Remembering the time when he researched cone snails because he had no lab equipment, he hopes to inspire young people of the Pacific region to also become scientists. "That's the ultimate goal."
E-mail: bau@desnews.com