Richard O’Grady is executive director of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, a nonprofit group dedicated to advancing biological research and education for the welfare of society. Before landing at AIBS, O’Grady worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, as well as science editor at Johns Hopkins University Press and the vice president of science publications at Taylor & Francis Press.
How’d you get started?
All through school, I’d certainly been interested in the subject, particularly parasitology — the study of parasitic worms. I was at the Smithsonian in the late ’80s on a postdoc[toral] fellowship working on parasitic worms. At that point, I was a good example of someone who allowed their research to get specialized.
What came next?
From the Smithsonian, I went into scientific publishing at JHU Press and continued parasitic research. Full-time research in any field is a merry-go-round — once you step on it, you can’t get off. Back then, during the pre-Internet days, we would trek to the library and read anything we could get our hands on.
To a layman, what would you say you research?
Model organisms for more general techniques for reconstructing evolutionary [biology]. Studying parasites, which includes roundworm, flatworm and tapeworm — nematodes in tapeworm, which is what you get when you have uncooked pork/meat. Studying a lot of internal biology — the evolutionary history of how they co-evolved with their host. The parasite is a passenger. As the mammals move and evolve, and move around in different parts of the world … the parasites tend to evolve also.
What did you think of President Baracl Obama’s executive order lifting the partial ban on stem cell research?
We’re certainly in support of President Obama’s executive order, with the proper ethical guidelines. [President George W. Bush’s previous executive order] just seemed to be an unnecessary intrusion from the federal government on restricting scientific research. It just didn’t make sense, what was in place before.
