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battery, but on Lewis Road, she opened it up, and the little car took off with a roar.
    I just love the old Spanish-style architecture of these buildings, she thought. It gives the campus a kind of romantic look. She recalled reading that the older buildings were erected as a state mental hospital in the 1930s. The hospital closed in 1997 and was converted to a state university. Cal State Channel Islands admitted its first students in 2002. The more recent structures, including the library and the molecular biology institute, had been constructed within the last fifteen years.
    Vera was the first to arrive. She was impressed by the conspicuous signs on the lab door.

 
    BSL-2 LABORATORY
     
    CAUTION
     
                             
    BIOHAZARD AREA               RADIATION AREA
     
    NO SMOKING OR FOOD PERMITTED
     
    No admittance except to authorized personnel
    In case of emergency contact Dr. Noah Chamberlin, Room 506
    Phone: 484-36744 or 388-36748
     
    Vera’s concentration was interrupted by a masculine voice. “Dr. Barnett, isn’t it?”
    She spun around. “Oh. Dr. Chamberlin. You took me by surprise.”
    “Sorry. Where are the others?”
    “They should be … here they come.” The rest of the committee members were heading down the hall.
    The group entered the lab. Vera noticed that everything was literally gleaming—glossy black countertops, vinyl floor, stainless steel, and enameled machines with their scores of dials, LCD screens, switches, and buttons. In a corner near the door she saw a desk covered with notebooks, graphs, and technical books, as well as a small calculator and a laptop computer on whose screen was displayed a slowly rotating DNA molecule. Above the desk was a bulletin board on which were posted a number of technical papers, notes, and science-themed cartoons. A faint chemical odor pervaded the room.
    Noah introduced Alicia Diaz to the visitors. Jaime Leal exchanged a few words in Spanish with the technician. She was running a chromatography column, delicately turning a small stopcock at the bottom.
    Vera walked over to get a closer look. “What are you doing?” she asked.
    Alicia closed the stopcock. “I’m trying to separate and identify proteins found in sera of MEFA cats, but not normals.”
    “Any luck?” asked the vet.
    “I’ll know within the next few days. It looks promising.”
    Noah explained the various pieces of equipment: incubators, PCR analyzers, analytical balance, pH meter, UV spectrophotometer, gel electrophoresis apparatus, and other devices.
    “Must have cost a fortune, all this stuff,” Yousef Yazdani observed.
    “It certainly did,” said Noah. “The institute was funded by a huge grant from Clonigen. The grant paid for constructing and outfitting the building on the condition that our grad students and post-docs focus their research on projects compatible with those of the company.”
    “Wait a minute,” Vera interjected, “I thought the state universities couldn’t offer PhD programs.”
    “Generally, that’s true,” replied Noah. “It’s not an absolute, however. Originally, doctoral programs were confined to the UC schools. However, a state university can offer PhD degrees in conjunction with a University in the UC system. Ours is UC Santa Barbara.”
    “How long have you been on the faculty, Dr. Chamberlin?” asked Anneke Weiss.
    “I came here in 2017, when the Institute of Molecular Biology was formed. In fact, my first job was to design the labs, both the biosafety level-two and -three labs.
    Anneke pointed to the biological safety cabinet with ductwork connected to a port in the wall. “What’s that used for? Radioactive stuff?”
    “Sometimes,” replied Noah, “but mostly that box is used for working with possibly dangerous biological materials. It uses high efficiency particulate air—HEPA filters for short—to keep any potentially harmful microbes out of the environment.” He flipped a switch on the side of the