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The Pakistan Science Foundation has opened a Rs20 million (€109,830) call for proposals for a public-private collaboration in the fields of technology and material development, infection prevention and control, and epidemiology, to fight COVID-19. Application deadline: April 12.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab has launched a $250,000 call for projects related to digitisation in a time of crisis, to boost public service delivery, governance, and financial inclusion, with a focus in sub-Saharan Africa. Proposals could be submitted in partnership with a government, private sector or non-governmental organisation. Application deadline: April 30.
The European Commission said it will “transfer” Stephen Quest, head of its tax and customs directorate-general, to run its Joint Research Centre, the Commission’s in-house scientific labs. He succeeds as Director-General Charlina Vitcheva, who has been acting as JRC boss since the departure last year of Vladimir Sucha who returned to his native Slovakia to get into politics there. Before running the tax unit, Quest was head of the Commission’s internal IT department. Since new Commissioners took office last December, the Commission bureaucracy has built up a big backlog of unfilled and temporary positions.
President of the Sorbonne University, Jean Chambaz, says Mauro Ferrari over-interpreted his role as president of the European Research Council.
“Mauro did not well understand the meaning of the ERC,” said Chambaz, reacting to the Italian-American scientist’s abrupt departure from Brussels. “He wanted to transform it into the ‘NIH for coronavirus’. But he was not the chief scientist of Europe. He was not here to solve all of Europe’s problems. His job was to chair the scientific council and oversee its collective decision.”
“We don’t need messiahs, not even at Easter,” Chambaz said.
Professor of research policy at Sheffield University, James Wilsdon, calls Mauro Ferrari’s bombshell exit from the European Research Council on Tuesday an act of “epic-scale flouncing”.
“Reading between the lines…He seems to misunderstand the structures of EU research funding, and ERC’s role,” Wilsdon wrote on Twitter.
Ferrari yesterday left his presidency post, after only three months in the job, citing disillusionment with the EU’s response to COVID-19.
Wilsdon added: “I’m sure there’s scope for more EU coordination on [Covid-19] R&D (same applies at national level in most countries!) but hard to look at responses to date [and] not see Ferrari’s criticisms as misplaced, attempted distraction, or sour grapes at a failed power-grab.”
Mauro Ferrari’s departure from the European Research Council is “regretful”, Jean Chambaz, chair of the League of European Universities, writes. “But the most important issue is to preserve the ERC as the flagship of European research policy.”
Ferrari stepped down as president Tuesday following a row over research funding for COVID-19. He had argued that the ERC should be re-directing its resources to fight the pandemic.
“Mauro Ferrari tells his own story to justify his resignation. In doing so, he has demonstrated how much he underestimates the significance of independent bottom up research and of the intrinsic commitment of researchers to contribute to society by developing new fundamental insights,” Chambaz, who is also president of Sorbonne University, adds.
The Commission issued a statement confirming Ferrari’s immediate resignation and noting that his contract as ERC president only gave him the legal powers of a “special advisor” to the Commission. Legally, it said, the Scientific Council “defines the scientific funding strategy and methodologies of the ERC.” It went on to thank him “for the strong personal investment” he made in the months leading up to his appointment 1 January.
Mauro Ferrari resigned unexpectedly as president of the European Research Council, triggering a noisy public spat over why and how he left.
Ferrari, an Italian-American expert in nano-medicine, fired off an angry resignation memo – provided first to the Financial Times – castigating the European Commission for “a largely uncoordinated cluster of initiatives.” He said he pushed to have the ERC, which focuses on frontier research, launch a special funding round for COVID-19 research. As a result, he said, “I have lost faith in the system itself” and submitted his resignation on 7 April.
A prescient research project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative has won further funding under the EU’s emergency COVID-19 funding programme. The Zoonotic Anticipation and Preparedness Initiative (ZAPI) was launched in 2015 to set up tools and platforms to be ready to vaccinate domestic animals against viral infections transmitted by wild animals, thus lowering the risk of transmission to humans.
The team of researchers says it may have treatments ready for safety trials by the end of the year.
The Carlos III Health Institute awarded funding to six new projects that will evaluate antiviral treatments, diagnostic tests and the potential for repurposing of drugs approved for other diseases. To date, the fund, launched by the Spanish government, has invested €2.6 million of the €24 million of the total funding available.
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