Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–207
pieces of hardware that they could use together, rather than each one staying with their own little
electron microscope or e-beam writer or whatever. We wanted a combined facility that’s up to
date, competitive with everybody else, and with a strategy for replacing these things. Because,
again, if you have a bunch of new equipment, in five years it’s a bunch of old equipment. It’s
not competitive anymore. How do we set it up? Tirrell and I were not entirely popular, because
we eliminated the entitlement aspects—paying salaries, having seminars, and stuff like that. We
basically said, “Look. Buy equipment. We will have a certain number of years for which you
have service contracts and technicians to run these things. At that point, you better figure out
how to support it, because it’s not clear it’s going to carry through to the next fund-raising
drive.” We got roughly $25 million from the Moore Foundation, I think, and $7.5 million from
the Kavli Foundation.
So we have a lot of money to begin with. And we started with Mike [Michael L.] Roukes
[Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering] as the director—but with a
plan that the directorship would rotate and that a council would choose the next director. The
next director was [Axel] Scherer. And at the moment Roukes and Scherer are co-directors.
Scherer is a genius with the equipment, knowing what to do, how to keep it running, how to look
to the future. Roukes is Mr. Outside, who knows how to go out there and sell it. I think it turns
out to be a good combination—Roukes was in at the right time at the beginning, and Scherer
came in at the right time when you try to build it up, and now we have put the two of them
together. Now they have gotten some more money from the Moore Foundation, and I think they
may get more from the Kavli Foundation. And basically the cash-flow situation with users is
quite good. If they’re not paying their whole operating expenses, I think they’re very, very close
to doing it. It was a very good model, and I think David Tirrell and I deserve the credit for
establishing a credible model that not only got this thing for them but gave them a path by which
it would be self-sustaining and would go on forever, one hopes.
Another thing I did was that JPL was interested in hiring scientists. I said to Elachi—he
became JPL director in 2001—“Let’s do an experiment. You want scientists. I’ve got scientists.
You’re going to need a standard of comparison when you starting hiring your own scientists, and
you don’t have that now because you don’t have any scientists.” I said, “I will propose that we
put some joint appointments in of people who are really good. They will give you a scientific
baseline. And anytime somebody wants to hire someone, you can say, ‘Anybody we hire has got
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