Harvard’s biology program used to be comparatively stronger because it had fewer competitors, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Catherine Dulac said.

“In the past, there were very few places where there was very good quality life science, and Harvard was one of them,” Dulac said. “Now, there are several very good places.”

The upshot of this shift is that the University has a much harder time recruiting top faculty and students in the life sciences, faculty say.

“Today it’s a much more competitive world in recruiting anyone, because one’s competing not only with the best universities but also with a plethora of medical schools,” McMahon said.

“In its youth, Harvard could go after people and they would come, but now it’s much more competitive,” said Howard C. Berg, professor of molecular and cellular biology and professor of physics.

He added that the University has lacked a commitment to cutting-edge biological facilities in recent years.

“Harvard has not been very aggressive about providing facilities for work in modern biology,” Berg said. “I don’t think the Harvard development office was particularly interested in science—I think more so now.”

As a result, other schools have gained a competitive advantage by constructing innovative facilities, like Stanford’s Bio-X program, Cornell’s $500 million New Life Science Initiative or the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF)’s new Mission Bay life sciences campus.

“Most of the universities that I know have been building buildings left and right,” Berg said. “Nothing like that has happened at Harvard.”

While FAS plans a cutting-edge Northwest life sciences building for Cambridge, groundbreaking is still years away. An FAS official acknowledged that the construction of this crucial new facility has lagged behind.

“I wish that the planning for this lab, which is so important for FAS science faculty recruitment, had started a year or two earlier,” the official said.

Summers said he aims to more closely integrate FAS and medical school life science to improve Harvard’s competitiveness.

“In biology, I think as FAS and the medical school work more closely together, I think our capacity to attract students will only increase,” he said.

THE ALLSTON REMEDY?

The tide in these sciences may be beginning to turn already, with a spate of initiatives underway. The expansion in DEAS has been accompanied by a significant commitment to life sciences projects like the Broad Institute—to which Harvard and MIT committed $100 million apiece for research on clinical uses of the human genome—and the new Harvard Stem Cell Institute.