Well, it's official -- TIGR is no more. We had an "all hands meeting" today and Craig informed us that the TIGR name has been officially retired (as has that of the lesser known TCAG, or The Center for the Advancement of Genomics, which had been the "traditional" J, Craig Venter Institute). We are all now employees of the J. Craig Venter Institute. Even our e-mail will be at jcvi.org and not tigr.org. Personally, I don't understand the rationale behind Craig's reasoning -- TIGR means something to the scientific community, and with the possible exception of the recent Global Ocean Survey, the J. Craig Venter Institute is an unknown quantity. But hey, what do I know? In other news, the much rumored "flat organization" that would bring faculty and staff scientists to equality turned out to be just that -- a rumor. I had mixed feelings about that one, anyway. As a staff scientist, I of course would like to move up in the social scale, but I realize that many faculty would be alienated by such a move. TIGR (er, the JCVI) is hemorrhaging enough faculty as it is.
5 comments:
what is there to say? hubris?
btw: why is it spelled hubris, but we don't say "a hubrid car"???
Did he say why the TIGR name was being dropped?
Well, he said the reason we needed one name was to unite the institutions, which makes sense (basically the JCVI/TCAG guys never talked to the TIGR people even after TIGR became a subdivision of the JCVI last October), but no he didn't really explain why the TIGR name and not the JCVI name was dropped.
Didn't take long to reflect the changes at the website.
Well, what's in a name. So long as you and the other genomics wizards can keep doing good work.
interesting question: "hubris" vs "hybrid".
as it turns out, the word 'hybrid' was originally used as a description of the progeny of domestic sows with wild boars. the progeny were not very useful (small and not much fat) and exceedingly misbehaved. so... the boars just thought they were as good as the domestic variety! btw.. recall that the early hybrids were considered to be infertile (at least until we were all educated by the corn-breeders!)
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