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When the Goeddel Family Technology Sandbox opens its doors on the UC San Diego campus on August 29, the cutting-edge facility will immediately take its place as a unique world-class resource for science, education and training. A gathering point for top-flight scientific instruments, the Technology Sandbox also is a nexus for partnerships with the life sciences industry, including Thermo Fisher Scientific and Nikon Instruments.
The inaugural faculty member charged with leading the new facility comes to UC San Diego with an extraordinary background. School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Uri Manor’s journey to the Goeddel Family Technology Sandbox is a winding path filled with challenges, including a hearing disability that sometimes led to bullying, social neglect and educational hurdles. Now he has flipped the script. It’s his turn to invite others to join him in the Sandbox to play with science’s most advanced “toys.”
Did you always know you were going to be a scientist?
I definitely did not know. I was born with severe-to-profound hearing loss. As there was not routine newborn hearing tests performed at that time, my family did not know I was hearing impaired until I was almost two years old. Growing up, I was horrified that my disability meant I was perceived as “abnormal,” so I made every effort to deny my disability. Because I often didn’t understand what was said in conversations or in the classroom, I was mocked and perceived as less intelligent by many of my classmates. I just never felt like I fit in. I wasn’t really invited to hang out with anyone and in many cases I was bullied because I was so different from most of my classmates — I wore hearing aids, I had a strange name, much darker skin, etc.
