More Funding and More Variety!

I feel that the time is ripe for scientific research in Iceland to  make the next quantum leap, and enter the "big league" in selected research areas. In order to achieve this aim, as eloquently argued by several of my fellow bloggers in newspaper articles, the scientific policy makers in the country should take steps that will make it attractive for high class foreign scientists, ranging from doctoral students to professors, to spend some of their careers in the country, and contribute to its research environment.

How can Iceland entice top notch scientists? The country can already offer a high quality of life, but it should also offer scientists a good environment and strong support for their research.  The level of research funding for universities should be increased, and some (controversial) steps have been taken in this direction. However, to the best of my knowledge, so far these steps have not been followed up by a comparable increase in the level of funding available to Rannis (The Icelandic Fund for Research), which is the prime, if not the only, source of financing for basic research in Iceland. The active researchers in Iceland are fighting every year for the small funds that are available, and I suspect that many good projects by young scientists cannot be funded because of lack of resources. Moreover, the only type of funding that is available relates to projects. There is no funding that is available to set up, and help run, research centres and international PhD schools. There is no fund that I know of, be it private or public, that rewards excellence in research by allowing the best scientists in the country to devote themselves to their work for some period of time, say five years, without having to go through the time consuming and unreliable process of applying for funding year in year out. 

Given the level of available funding, how likely is it that a world class scientist will relocate to Iceland?  Discuss by posting comments! (My personal answer is: very unlikely.)

Einar Steingrímsson and others have suggested that Rannis should be given about 2 billion ISK each year to hand out to the best researchers in the country. I agree with these colleagues. In the current economic climate, Iceland can afford this level of funding, and will benefit enormously from it. I also suggest that the available competitive funding become more varied.

 

By way of example, look at what The Netherlands have been doing for years. The Veni, Vidi, Vici programme is directed at individual researchers at various stages of their careers. It includes three forms of grant: Veni (for researchers who have recently completed their doctorates), Vidi (for experienced researchers) and Vici (for researchers of professorial quality). These schemes reward excellence at different stages of a researcher's academic career, and help scientists build research groups around them. A young researcher with a Veni grant will be welcomed with open arms by any department in the country, and is essentially guaranteed a permanent position to boot. 

The NWO/Spinoza Prize is instead a personal award for top researchers with international reputation.  A maximum of four prizes are awarded annually. The winners each receive 1.5 million euro to spend on research of their own choice for five years. The Spinoza Prize is a honorary award, but above all an incentive to promote research. The award was instituted to exempt researchers, for a time, from administrative tasks such as applying for funds. Researchers are called to account, but afterwards rather than beforehand. 

Results? The Netherlands have 91 ISI Highly Cited researchers.  By way of comparison, a country like Italy, which has a proud scientific tradition, has only 71, despite being four times larger. (This breaks my heart ) France has 151, and Spain has 18 highly cited researchers. For the record, Iceland has none.

The OECD recommended that Iceland support research centres of excellence. My understanding is that Rannis won't consider this suggestion. Why? This might be a  reasonable decision to take given the available funding, but I hope that this will change. Research centres of international quality can hugely increase the visibility of a country in the research world, and turn it into a hotbed of high class research. Look at what happened to Danish research when the Danish National Research Foundation created its centres of excellence. I had the good fortune of working in Denmark during the lifetime of BRICS, and of its international PhD school (also funded by the Foundation),  and I can tell you that Danish computer science is now able to attract much more foreign talent than before. However, one cannot build BRICS and an international PhD school with project funding. One needs at least five years of substantial funding---an investment that will repay the country many times over. (In the case of BRICS, the funding continued for 14 years, and the centre is still in existence.)

To sum up, we need more funding going to Rannis, which will then be able to provide more varied types of awards, ranging from project funding to individual awards, and strong support for top quality research centres. Moreover, financial support should go to those individual researchers, research centres and laboratories where high quality academic research has been performed consistently, irrespective of the university where they are located. Allocation of resources should be made based on merit, as established by fair and objective peer review. Centuries of scientific work have shown that this is the best, if not the only, way to ensure that whatever support is available be used in the best possible way.

Applying these basic principles will help make Iceland an attractive working place for high quality researchers, thus benefiting the country and its knowledge society. It is not enough to pay lip service to scientific research. It is time for deeds, not words, and the contributors to this blog are offering some food for thought to whoever wants to listen. Is there any life out there?

 

Athugasemdir

[Mohammad (IP-tala skráð) 30.1.2007 kl. 10:33]

United States has a similar award as VENI called CAREER award ((http://www.nsf.gov/career) which guarantees tenure for young researchers. I think this system is very effective in injecting fresh blood into the academic system.