Nancy Moran and Howard Ochman, married researchers in the UA's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, will head up research in microbial diversity at a new facility at Yale University next year.
It will be a blow to the University of Arizona, colleagues said Tuesday. In addition to being in the top tier of researchers in the world in evolutionary biology and microbial genomics, both are Regents' Professors — a title reserved for exceptional teachers.
"By any measure, it is a huge loss for the university, but bigger than that because they both are just first-rate teachers committed to the university and big supporters of everything that a public university should be," said Michael Nachman, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Ochman's graduate-level courses are famous for allowing students to create publishable papers, and Moran hosts high school students in her lab, in addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, and directing graduate students who routinely publish in prestigious journals.
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The move has been in the works for some time and is not a reflection on the current turmoil caused by budget cuts and restructuring at the university, both Ochman and Moran said.
"That's not to say there aren't problems here," Moran said. "The support for the basic day-to-day life of academics is not as good as it used to be, and that affects you," she said.
And budget cuts are contributing to brain drain. The UA science unit budget was cut 7.2 percent last year, and it faced 1 percent to 2 percent cuts in the previous two years.
When Bio5 Institute founder and biochemist Thomas Baldwin left the UA last year, he cited budget cuts in seven of his nine years at the UA as a factor in his decision to leave. He and his wife, biochemistry lecturer Miriam Ziegler, went to UC-Riverside.
Both Moran and Ochman are known for recruiting and mentoring young faculty members.
Matthew Sullivan said the couple lured him to the UA from MIT.
"They picked me out before I was even on the job market," he said. "I was at the ivory tower of MIT and I thought, 'University of Arizona — who wants to go there?' "
Sullivan said he visited and "fell in love with the tight-knit academic community with incredible strengths. For me, Howard and Nancy are right there at the heart of what I wanted to do. These are two leaders in the field — two of the top five or 10 in the field in the world," Sullivan said.
At Yale, the couple will head up a new institute in microbial diversity, one of five new scientific endeavors to be housed in a 434,000-square-foot laboratory space formerly owned by Bayer HealthCare in West Haven, seven miles from Yale's New Haven, Conn., campus.
"It's going to be an institute that works synergistically," Ochman said, "where we can actually sort of mold or have some foresight into what direction it takes."
Moran said she doesn't plan to raid the faculty at the UA. Most of her young colleagues are happy here, she said. "I don't think they're raidable."
She and Ochman are going to Yale, she said, because "it is a pretty rare opportunity to have a real science-based growth of a new group. That's a really rare thing.
"It certainly didn't have anything to do with money or support. We have a beautiful lab here."
Moran's salary is about $164,000, and Ochman's is about $169,000.
In the past three years, the two have attracted $2 million in grant funding for their research, according to the UA.
Ochman said he and Moran had previously turned down offers to move, including one from Yale a couple of years back. This time, Yale was ready to jump full-bore into their fields, he said.
"People do leave," Moran said. "I've been here 23 years. Clearly, I'm always going to be attached to the place."
The department will survive, Nachman said. "It's one of the best programs in ecology and evolutionary ecology in the country. It's a vibrant program, and we'll go forward."
He said Moran rose "from relative obscurity to a real national and international stage, and she did all of that here. The university should be proud of her as one of its home-grown success stories."
Moran is one of three Arizona women elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1997 and last year received the UA Extraordinary Faculty Award.
Ochman is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as is Moran, and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Moran will leave a legacy at Tucson High Magnet School, too.
Margaret Wilch, a biologist and science teacher at Tucson High, first met Moran while working in her lab in 1995. Later, Moran used a grant to equip a biotechnology lab at the high school and started a biotechnology-themed summer class for high school teachers and students.
Part of Moran's vision was that the Tucson High lab would be "a conduit for high school students to do authentic research and collaborate with university scientists," Wilch said, and it will continue to be.
