"Indefatigable" could have been coined to describe microbiologist Rita Colwell, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and President Clinton's choice to head the National Science Foundation. She continually amazes her colleagues with a endless supply of energy for a limitless number of scientific activities.

As one scientist puts it, "Rita has more projects going simultaneously than most people accomplish over the entire course of their careers." Colwell was earlier nominated as deputy director of the NSF, and she received the nod for the top spot when the president appointed current NSF director Neal Lane to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As NSF director, Colwell becomes one of the first life scientists to occupy the top position at the agency and the administration's most senior female scientist.

The choice of Colwell is being well received within the scientific community. Lane notes that "Dr. Colwell will bring both the research and management experience necessary to guide NSF. As a former member of the National Science Board, she will also bring a special understanding of NSF to the job."

Scientific colleagues also acknowledge that Colwell's considerable political savvy will serve her well at the agency. "She is strong and speaks out, but she's not strident," says one. "She has an appropriate sense of how to be politically effective."

Stanley Falkow, current president of the American Society for Microbiology, has known Colwell since the early days of her career. "She is a scientist who understands both the bench and the policy makers. She is a facilitator in the best sense of the word," he says. "She can be quiet and thoughtful, but she takes action and brings a real intensity to whatever she does. She has strength, character, and the capacity for hard work, and a daunting ability to take on daunting tasks."

Colwell herself says, "It is especially exciting to be joining NSF at such a crucial time. President Clinton's recently announced FY 1999 budget would provide a 10% increase for the NSF, the largest dollar increase in the agency's history."

The NSF appointment can be considered the capstone of an almost four-decade scientific career, in which Colwell has achieved worldwide renown in disciplines encompassing microbial biodiversity, marine and estuarine microbial ecology, marine microbiology, and biotechnology. She has been awarded honorary degrees by universities from China to Chile, and she has at one time or another been president of the nation's major scientific societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (and chairman of the board), Sigma Xi, and the American Society for Microbiology, as well as the International Union of Microbiological Sciences and the Washington Academy of Sciences.

She is especially passionate about her scientific collaborations in the international arena. "I have a keen interest in international science," she says. "Scientists throughout the world share the same enthusiasm and excitement about discoveries." She generally maintains a globetrotting travel schedule that could put most frequent flyers to shame, whether the destination be Beijing, Lake Baikal, or Bangladesh. She is considered an expert on cholera, and is frequently called on to consult with governments around the world in preventing and eradicating outbreaks.

"My research in the late 1960s led me to propose that Vibrio cholerae actually exists in coastal waters," she says. "Previously it was thought the disease was transmitted only by person-to-person contact. We showed in the late 1970s that it could be detected in such waters by antibodies and, subsequently, by the polymerase chain reaction."

From Colwell's cholera research also sprang the often controversial concept of viable but nonculturable bacteria. In the early 1980s she and her coworkers reported that Vibrio cholerae incubated in artificial seawater lost the ability to form colonies when cultured but remained viable. This idea was not easily accepted in the microbiological community. The nonbelievers would deliver refuting papers at scientific meetings with pithy, to-the-point titles such as "Nonculturable bacteria are dead."

Nevertheless, Colwell's persistence is paying off. The phenomenon is being found in an increasing number of microorganisms, and other investigators are beginning to propose physiologic mechanisms that could account for this otherwise puzzling bacterial behavior.

She was also instrumental in developing a field test for cholera and in initiating prevention projects in endemic areas such as Bangladesh. She views the cholera work as one of the high points of her career. "I feel really proud of my work on cholera, and I hope that the filtration projects we've started will save lives."

Colwell's cholera research led her to take an even broader perspective In examining the interrelationships between climate change and microbial life:

Colwell is currently at work coauthoring a book on case histories of outbreaks of malaria, dengue, and cholera as illustrative of climate-related epidemiology.

"I'm very excited about the global view of infectious diseases because there's a lot more to human health and infectious disease than we're currently aware of," she says.

In one respect, Colwell's career could be subtitled "English Major Makes Good." She arrived at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana) as an undergraduate focused on a joint major in literature - writing plays and short stories - along with chemistry.

To her surprise, she uncovered a strong interest in life sciences through associating with close friends who were life-science majors. Purdue had a very strong bacteriology department, and the mentorship of Dorothy Powelson, a bacteriology professor, mapped out the course of Colwell's subsequent career. Her devotion to the sciences was further cemented by meeting and marrying Jack Colwell, a graduate student in chemistry at Purdue. Searching for a spot where they could both work on advanced degrees, they settled at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The Seattle experience gave birth to Colwell's lifelong interest in marine microbiology, nurtured by marine microbiologist John Liston from Scotland, "whose mentorship and friendship has continued all these years," she notes. At that time, she explains, very little was known about marine microbiology:

While this approach is commonplace today, in the early 1960s Colwell was traversing uncharted territory. "The computer was housed in the attic of the chemistry building. It filled the whole room and probably had less computing power than one of today's hand calculators," she says. "I had to hardwire the boards and program in numeric code." She also persisted despite detractors. "I remember distinctly a dinner in which one of the field's leading microbiologists said to me, 'Young lady, you cannot use computers to identify bacteria. You must use the human eye and brain to see and characterize them.' Well, I've been iconoclastic ever since in developing computer approaches." Colwell's approach, according to ASM president Falkow, indeed made significant contributions to the field of microbial taxonomy.

Colwell's career has included professorships in microbiology at Georgetown University and, since 1973, an association with the University of Maryland, beginning as a professor of microbiology. She served a six-year term as director of the University of Maryland Sea Grant College and since 1987 has headed the university's Biotechnology Institute, which she established.

"In 1983, as vice president of academic affairs, I brought together a task force to examine scientific directions the university and the state of Maryland should be taking. We saw the future for Maryland, especially economically, in biotechnology and information technology, buoyed by the presence of many federal labs in Maryland."

Colwell got the funding and in 1987 established the Institute, which today consists of four centers encompassing approximately 700 scientists, staff, and students in computational biotechnology, marine biotechnology, molecular medicine, and agricultural biotechnology.

As she has moved from microbiology lab to biotechnology institute, Colwell's research interests have expanded similarly. Her focus on marine microbiology has segued into a bigger picture view of the relationship between climate and microorganisms, beginning with her early 1970s work on seasonality in Vibrio.

"I continue to be impressed with the enormous microbial diversity that's out there," she says. "This started to become obvious when I was doing studies of bacteria associated with marine life. For example, from studies of coral reefs in the South Pacific following atomic testing, we found that changes in bacterial composition and populations could be an early warning system of biological change. This is certainly the case, and a recent paper in Science notes how microbial diversity contributes to the earth's ecosystem stability." [1]

As might befit a marine microbiologist, Colwell is an avid sailor and Regrets that her schedule doesn't allow more time on the water. "I'm married to a championship sailor, and for 20 years we campaigned all over the country as a dinghy racing team. We've got a wall full of trophies, but those are due to his prowess, not mine," she avers.

For the present, Colwell says, her suitcases are remaining unpacked, and she's staying put as she makes the transition to NSF. Always adept at juggling administrative responsibilities and scientific research, however, she is keeping her laboratory at the University of Maryland, and she will continue to have a hand in its various research projects.

"It has been an interesting career, and I've kept on doing research to prove my points and my hypotheses," she reflects.