Hispanic Heritage

Lydia Villa-Komaroff

Born August 7, 1947
Molecular Biologist

For molecular biologist Lydia Villa-Komaroff, the secret to success was in the genes. In a 1995 interview for the book Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constraints (JWSE), Villa-Komaroff said, "I am interested in the question of development: how you get from a single cell the fertilized egg to a person, where all of the stissues are in the right place and each organ knows what to do and when to do it." Villa-Komaroff spent more than 20 years studying genes, mainly concentrating on protein synthesis, cell development, and growth mutations. She gained international recognition in 1978 as one of the pioneers in the emerging field of cloning. From 1985 to 1995, the award-winning scientist was on the faculty at Harvard University Medical School.

Villa-Komaroff now serves as the vice president for research and graduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. "I haven't left science," she said of her new job in a 1998 telephone interview, "I've just left the bench." In a school publication from that same year, she summed up her office's primary function: "Research occurs in every corner of the university, and we're here to expedite all of it."

Credits Strong Family History for Success

Villa-Komaroff partially credits her own genetic makeup for her personal development and professional success, both as a manager and a scientist. Her family history includes many tales of victory over adversity. Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene recounts one such family legend: While trying to escape the Mexican Revolution, her grandfather, Encarnación Villa, came face-to-face with the revolutionaries. The rebels had captured his northbound getaway train and ordered all passengers to disembark. They were given three choices: join the fight, donate valuables to the cause, or be shot. The young Encarnación stood firm, refusing to abandon his family yet holding nothing of value. Just then the revolutionary leader Pancho Villa rode up. When he heard the prisoner's surname, the general freed Encarnación and ordered him: "Have many sons with that name."

Villa-Komaroff was born on August 7, 1947, and grew up in Sante Fe, New Mexico. As the eldest of six children, she developed teamwork- and consensus-building skills out of necessity; these skills would later serve her well in the lab and the workplace. Taking cues from those above her, Villa-Komaroff had many relatives who served as strong role models. Her mother worked as a teacher and social worker. Villa-Komaroff's paternal grandmother had been a curandera, or a healer, and her maternal grandmother, a lone breadwinner with three children, had sold chemical toilets on horseback up in the mountains. Villa-Komaroff's parents encouraged their offspring to follow their dreams. In JWSE, Villa-Komaroff spoke at length of her father, a schoolteacher and musician: "I remember when I was five he brought home the World Book Encyclopedia, and he said that everything I wanted to know was in those books. I was very excited by that notion. He bought the books and my mother read to us — that's one of my earliest and warmest childhood memories."

Discovers Career Path at Early Age

Villa-Komaroff knew by age nine that she wanted to be a scientist. While still in high school, she won a minority scholarship from the National Science Foundation to attend a summer lab program at a college in Texas. "There is not a child in the world, I don't think, who doesn't begin as a scientist," said Villa-Komaroff in a 1995 speech for a National Science Foundation conference. In 1965, she enrolled as a chemistry major at the University of Washington in Seattle. After an advisor told Villa-Komaroff that women did not belong in chemistry, she switched majors, finally settling on biology. Commenting on her parents' whole-hearted backing of her budding resolve, Villa-Komaroff noted in JWSE, "In the Mexican American family, what papa says goes, so it's clear that his support made a difference in my life. What's also amazing is that my parents fully accepted and supported my decision to go far away to college.... In the southwestern Chicano culture that I came from, many parents, consciously or unconsciously, discourage children from pursuing higher education because they are afraid that education will change their children or that the children will be lost to them. I think it's incumbent on people like me to convince parents that they won't lose their child to education, but that it will enrich the child and thus the family."

When her boyfriend, a 26-year old medical student named Anthony Komaroff, moved to Washington, D.C., for his internship in 1967, Villa-Komaroff followed. She was eager to get her degree, but since her first choice, Johns Hopkins University, was not accepting female students, Villa-Komaroff applied to its sister school, Goucher College in Maryland, and was admitted as a junior. In 1970, she married Komaroff and moved with him to Boston.

In Boston, Villa-Komaroff went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate work under Nobel Laureate David Baltimore. She recalled her mindset in JSWE: "I wanted to do research in developmental biology, but the people who were doing it were not the people with whom I wanted to work. So I decided I should learn more about the field of molecular biology, and I found that the best work in molecular biology was being done using viruses." In the spring of 1972, Villa-Komaroff started her dissertation on the polio virus.

While she seemingly faced little discrimination as an Hispanic, Villa-Komaroff did encounter gender inequality in the pursuit of higher education. Women made up only one-third of her small graduate class at MIT. In JWSE, Villa-Komaroff said of her MIT experience, "There were some people who didn't think women belonged, but the other women graduate students and I simply avoided them. I must say that I was pretty oblivious to the attitudes of others about my being a woman in science. I guess that was a blessing because I never felt I didn't belong or shouldn't be pursuing something that I loved. I learned early on that it's a very good ploy to act confident even when you're not because then people perceive you as confident, and that makes a big difference." Villa-Komaroff earned her Ph.D. in cell biology from MIT in 1975, only the third Mexican American woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in the sciences.

Conducts Groundbreaking Research

As part of a prestigious fellowship, she spent three years of postdoctoral training at Harvard, focusing on recombinant DNA technology. Unfortunately, Cambridge banned such experiments in 1976, citing concerns about public safety. Villa-Komaroff explained in JWSE, "The fear some people had was that if we took genes from one organism (a human) and put them into bacteria, we might somehow create a supergerm, a new disease." So Villa-Komaroff temporarily moved to a Long Island lab run by DNA discoverer James Watson. At the Cold Harbor Springs Lab, she tried to isolate, study, and clone the genes that form a silkworm's eggshell. She described that year as a frustrating and lonely time, packed with scientific failure.

In 1977, Cambridge lifted its ban but placed strict controls on gene splicers. That year Villa-Komaroff returned to join an insulin cloning team headed by Nobel Laureate Walter Gilbert. In compliance with the new rules, MIT sequestered the team in an isolated wing, hanging a Day-Glo-orange biohazard symbol outside the antechamber to offer warning of the potentially dangerous experiments. Before entering the lab, Villa-Komaroff had to slip on blue plastic shoe covers, milky translucent gloves, and a yellow gown. Nothing was permitted to leave the lab alive, save the researchers. Every scrap of refuse produced in the lab was put in bags which were then decontaminated and put in cans; the cans were put in autoclaves; and after the refuse had been pressure-cooked at high temperature, the garbage was tossed out. The irrepressible Villa-Komaroff steadfastly continued her work with a rat gene. "I was much more comfortable working with this recombinant DNA stuff than I would have been working in, say, a microbiology lab, where they're taking cultures from people who are sick," she said. Villa-Komaroff played a key role in the team's speedy success. In early 1978, she generated great excitement by showing that bacteria could be persuaded to make insulin, the first time a human hormone had been synthesized in bacteria.

Teaching and Managing Workload Consumes Time

Late in 1978, the rising young star landed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS). For six years, a heavy teaching and committee workload consumed Villa-Komaroff, leaving her little time to write scientific papers based on her current research, which was funded largely through grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society, and the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. She cites her reluctance to submit a paper until it was "just right" as another factor that curbed her output, according to a 1995 article in The Scientist. In the "publish or perish" world of academia, the lapse threatened the assistant professor's nomination for tenure. She fought hard and won tenure in 1984 despite her acknowledged "mistake."

The following year Villa-Komaroff left UMMS for Harvard, taking a non-tenured position that carried a lighter teaching load and greater research and managerial responsibilities. Working twelve-hour days for ten years, the neurology professor accumulated more than sixty publishing credits. Her interest, expanding to many areas of molecular biology, finally focused on growth factors in brain development. Villa-Komaroff served on numerous high-profile committees and chaired reviews for the first studies to transplant cells into human brains. Furthering her notoriety, public television highlighted Villa-Komaroff and her work on mapping mouse genes in a television documentary called "DNA Detective," which first aired in 1995. The segment ran as part of a six-part series on women in science, under the umbrella title Discovering Women.

A Satisfying Life

In 1996, Northwestern University appointed Villa-Komaroff to a top administrative position, as well as making her professor of neurology in its medical school. After two promotions, she is now in charge of the university's entire research budget ($181 million in 1997). Villa-Komaroff has herself become a strong role model. As a founding member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (established in 1973), she has opened up opportunities for minority youths in her lab and spoken to diverse groups about the challenges they face and the achievements others have made. In JWSE, Villa-Komaroff said, "I've been lucky to have had options in my life. That, combined with hard work, has paid off enormously for me and resulted in an exciting and completely satisfying life."

FURTHER READING

Books
Ambrose, Susan A, et al. Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constraints. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997.
Hall, Stephen S. Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.

Periodicals
Finn, Robert. "Study Finds Gender Disparity Even Among High Achievers in Science." The Scientist, November 13, 1995, p. 3.
Holden, Constance. "Public TV to Air Series on Women Scientists." Science, October 15, 1993, p. 336. "New Leadership for Research and Graduate Studies." The Catalyst, Winter 1998, pp. 1-3.
Villa-Komaroff, Lydia. "Opening Night Celebration: Reaching into the Future." National Science Foundation Women & Science Conference, December 13, 1995.
Worhach, Denise. Telephone conversation with Lydia Villa-Komaroff, April 16, 1998.

Source: Notable Hispanic American Women, Book II, Gale, 1998. Biography Resource Center, Gale, 1999.

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