Gary S. McDowell, PhD is the CEO and Founder of Lightoller LLC.

Gary grew up in Belfast, N. Ireland and Elgin, Scotland. He received a BA and MSci in Natural Sciences (Chemistry) and a PhD in Oncology at the University of Cambridge. He spent 2 years as a postdoc at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and then a further 2 years as a postdoc at Tufts University.

During his time at Tufts, Gary began expanding his interest in studying the scientific enterprise itself. He was a co-organizer of the first Future of Research Symposium in Boston and an author of the resulting white paper, Shaping the Future of Research: a perspective from junior scientists. He co-founded the Future of Research non-profit and was Executive Director from 2016 to 2019.

While leading Future of Research, he was involved in numerous efforts to effect systematic change across the scientific enterprise. He co-chaired workshops at national summits to identify and implement action items addressing issues adversely affecting the people who do science. He collaborated with organizations such as the U.S. Census Bureau to draw attention to the realities of the early career researcher population. He was appointed to the Next Generation Researchers Initiative, mandated by the U.S. Congress under the 21st Century Cures Act, and convened by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, to examine the policy and programmatic steps the nation should undertake to ensure the successful launch and sustainability of careers among the next generation of researchers in the biomedical and behavioral sciences in the U.S.

Over time, it became clear to Gary that gathering evidence to fill the gaps in data, and proposing evidence-based policies, will not convince the scientific enterprise as a whole that it should stop squandering its talent and start focusing on the people within its system. Instead, as long as the academy continues to succeed by focusing on creating research products and generating funding, it will be resistant to change. People trained in this system are byproducts of this process, rather than an intentional product, simply because it is cheaper to staff research through trainees and contingent staff.

This revelation led to the creation of Lightoller LLC. The name is inspired by Officer Charles Lightoller, a member of the crew on the Titanic (a boat built in Belfast in the shipyard Gary’s ancestors worked in). He prioritized placing women and children into the lifeboats, during the evacuation of the sinking ship. Much like the Titanic, the academic enterprise has become a large, unwieldy structure carried forward by its own momentum and prioritizing financial goals over the people it carries.

Lightoller LLC aims to help people effect change. Using experience and strategic analysis of how to effect change, Lightoller helps early career researchers to direct their efforts more effectively. Lightoller also works to help researchers make the transition out of this toxic system and the environments it contains, and find new and supportive environments in which to thrive, to the benefit of both the hiring organization, and themselves.

To do all this, Lightoller works with early career researcher-led groups to think about how to effect change, and with research organizations (publishers, companies, and academic institutions diverging from the mainstream mindset) to transform them into inclusive environments using evidence-based policies, and help them ensure they can recruit - and retain - a talented workforce.