Neurobiologist Joel Stiles kept working and teaching despite brain tumor
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Joel Stiles, shown with his wife, Helen, died May 20.
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When Joel Stiles, director of the National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing, learned about the aggressive brain tumor called a glioblastoma multiforme in medical school, he said, "Please God, don't ever let me get that," he later told his wife of 23 years, Helen.
His prayer was not answered. Dr. Stiles, 52, of McCandless, died May 20 after 15 months of treatment for that specific type of brain tumor. With both an M.D. and a Ph.D. that led to a career as a neuroscientist within the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Dr. Stiles was all too aware during those months that he was living on borrowed time.
"Having that background in science and medicine and especially in neurobiology gave him such a good understanding of his own disease," Mrs. Stiles said. "People have said, 'How ironic he, of all people, came down with a brain tumor' because of his background. But in some ways it gave him such an understanding of what was going on, but it also made it difficult because he knew he had a pretty slim chance of surviving."
Nevertheless, Dr. Stiles worked nearly to the very end of his life.
Involved in trying to build computer models of various processes of neurology, such as the ways nerve cells send signals to each other, he kept NRBSC projects going by phone or at-home meetings with his associates.
"He really maintained clarity throughout the entire process. He never appeared to lose his ability to be a smart, critical-thinking scientist," said Stephen Meriney, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh who collaborated with Dr. Stiles. "We were focused on trying to understand the molecular mechanisms that explain how neurons in the brain communicate with each other," Dr. Meriney said of their collaborations. The work with NRBSC scientists trained by Dr. Stiles continues, he added.
Dr. Stiles, appointed to the Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources, is known as the co-architect with Tom Bartol, now a senior researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, of a software called MCell, for Monte Carlo Cell. "MCell simulates the random motions of molecules and the way in which molecules combine and interact with each other when they bump into each other," Dr. Bartol said.
First Published June 20, 2011 12:00 am
