Commercial research institutions throughout the industrialized world have suffered cutbacks both in the number of working R&D scientists and engineers and in funding from their parent companies. No longer the ivory towers of the past 40 years, industrial laboratories of the '90s are fast paced, market driven, and highly competitive. Below, Bellcore scientist Gail Lalk joins the fray as she works on a Sonet interface circuit for an experimental 2.5-Gb/s network.