 Sato was recruited as director of The W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center, Lake Placid, New York (1983 to 1992).His vision was to build a research university similar to Rockefeller University in the peaceful setting of the Adirondack Mountains of New York.Instead of the dependence on the labile support of individual government and private grants, the goal was to fund and endow the institute by proceeds from a for-profit biotechnology venture called Upstate Biotechnology, Inc.(UBI) which he established in the early 1980s.