By Vivien Marx

Harold Ray "Skip" Garner — an experimental research physicist, a biomedical researcher, and founder of several companies — was named executive director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech in October 2009.

Prior to his appointment at Virginia Tech, he was professor of biochemistry and internal medicine and chaired the developmental biology department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where he was also the founding member of the internal medicine's department division of translational research. Before arriving at UTSW in 1994, Garner had been senior staff scientist and founder of the bioscience division at the defense contractor General Atomics, which works on projects in several areas including nuclear power, aircraft, and sensor technology.

Garner’s research focuses on applied computational biology, advanced instrumentation development, and genetics, genomics, and proteomics research. Garner received his PhD in plasma physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982.

He sits on several corporate advisory boards and advises government agencies and private entities. Garner has founded several biotechnology companies, including Xanapath, that develops cell profiling technology and bioinformatics tools; instrumentation firm BioAutomation; and biotech firm Light Biology, which was acquired by Nimblegen, now Roche Nimblegen, in 2004.

Garner took time to speak with BioInform late last year about his plans for VBI. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

New state, new school, new role. What was your first day like?

I was accustomed to running my own laboratory with 25 to 30 members, worrying about them. I went from that to a place that is an order of magnitude bigger, where I have to learn about and consider the success and health of the institute and all of the individuals and their labs.

How are you going about meeting everyone?

I arrived the day before Halloween and there was a meeting where the interim director introduced me. I got to say how I was honored to be part of VBI and to talk about my potential new initiatives. There was a reception later on in the day and I have to admit I brought my Halloween costume with me. I was Nacho Comacho, a kind of masked Mexican wrestler.

I am a big believer in enjoying work. You are clearly more creative when you are having fun and more excited about coming to work. So there has to be absolute seriousness and drive and at the same time you have to be able to have fun. I wanted to show I had both sides.

Where is VBI headed?

VBI's expertise and primary focus up to now has been largely on infectious disease data, analysis and simulations, understanding the networks of goings-on during infections. Virginia Tech has done some remarkable things in the last years, starting with the very concept of VBI in 2000, acknowledging bioinformatics as a true discipline.

At other institutions, bioinformatics ranges from being something they have to put up with to an inconvenience. Here it is acknowledged as a discipline that should be studied and that is critical to advances in all areas of biomedical science.

What really made this position enticing to me is not only that VBI is this fantastic place, but also the fact that Virginia Tech has invested in and created a new medical school and a new medical research institute. My research is collaborative and very closely aligned with real problems in the clinic.