From the train

I'm blogging aboard the train from Seattle to Vancouver, where I'm headed for a weekend of playing chamber music. The tracks run along the rim of Puget Sound, fringed with gorse and pussy willow in bloom, with crows and seagulls chasing the train and mallards bobbing on the water. The beaches are grey shingle with tree trunks washed up here and there. Seattle King Street Station is palatial, with carved and polished white marble columns and ceilings, with green and gold tile mosaic inlays on the walls

Today has been fascinating. I met with the head of Discovery to find out what kinds of preclinical research the Foundation funds. We are doing a number of human challenge studies used for vaccine testing, in which healthy volunteers are infected with a safe strain of whatever the disease being studied is, to see if prior vaccination can protect against the infection. Then I met with my Grants and Contracts manager and learned about the way the Foundation ensures compliance in grant making with US tax laws. My third meeting was with a colleague from strategy and program management who told me how the Foundation is working across a number of 'product development partners' whom the Foundation funds to do the drug and vaccine development in the third world, to help build their capabilities and give the access to tools to help them be more effective. It is amazing to see the breadth of work the Foundation is supporting and the ways that systems and processes are continually being improved for more effective grant making.