ERC Secretary General Mas-Colell makes early exit

The management of the ERC is being reorganised as a result of an independent review last year, which recommended recruiting a new director to merge the roles of Secretary General and Director of the executive arm of the organisation. The latter post is currently held on an interim basis by Jack Metthey, who will step aside from this position once the new director is appointed.

It remains unclear when this will be. Speaking after the announcement of Mas-Colell’s resignation, ERC spokeswoman Madeleine Drielsma said a date has not yet been fixed to appoint the new director and declined to give any indication as to when the appointment would take place. It is now six months since the deadline for applications for the post on 5 March 2010.

The new director will be charged with acting as, “chief executive officer, the legal representative and public face of the agency” and ideally be, “a distinguished scientist with robust administrative experience.”

The ERC, created in 2007, has emerged as a high-prestige funder of basic research – with stiff competition across Europe for its grants. The agency is part of the European Union’s flagship R&D effort, Framework Programme 7. While recognising the ERC’s successes in attracting scientists and emerging as a high-prestige funder of basic research, last year’s review panel said change was needed if the ERC was to achieve its goals in a professional and sustainable way.

Mas-Colell himself favoured the idea of merging the two management roles, saying in an interview with Science|Business the day after the panel’s report was published last year that the ERC would benefit from such leadership. “It’s a good feature, totally independent of who is in the position. The report gives a gentle push in the direction of a more professionalised but scientist-run organisation,” he said at the time.

Mas-Colell’s previous posts included professor at the University of California, Berkeley and later at Harvard University. He will now return to his career as Professor of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

“I’m most grateful to the Scientific Council of the ERC and the European Commission for the opportunity to become intensely involved in two of the causes I'm passionate about: Science and Europe,” Mas-Colell said in a statement. “Doing so from the vantage point of the ERC, an institution which is bound to have a remarkable impact on the structure and the competitiveness of European science, has indeed been a privilege.”

Mas-Colell won’t be losing all contact with Brussels as he will continue as Chair of the High-Level Panel on the Measurement of Innovation. The task of the panel, appointed in May by European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, is to look at criteria that could be included in an innovation indicator and decide which would best measure how research investment is spent.