Europe’s new research agency – Year One

Britain has the most popular scientific institutions, with Switzerland and the Netherlands close behind. Personal interviews help when awarding research grants to young scientists. There’s no lack of exciting science going on in Europe.

Such are among the preliminary lessons of one of the world’s hottest experiments in scientific funding: the European Research Council. In a recent interview with Science|Business, ERC Secretary-General Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker looked back over the new EU agency’s first year, which saw it choose about about 300 young researchers to receive a first round of about €290 million in grants. Among his conclusions: “The science was wonderful. We probably could have funded 350. People have entered what I call complex science – that goes beyond reductionism and tries to understand entire systems.”

The ERC has a total, seven-year budget of €7.5 billion – moderate compared to, say, the US National Science Foundation’s budget of about €4 billion every year. But the ERC’s creation is something new in Brussels: the start of a scientific agency, to be insulated from the normal round of political deal-making, to award research grants solely on the recommendations of scientific peer-review panels. Merit, not connections or expediency, are supposed to be its grant criteria. In the process, its open grant competitions are intended to introduce a pan-EU marketplace for top-class science.

In its first year, the ERC’s new management took office – Winnacker, former president of the German Research Council, and its chairman, Professor Fotis Kafatos of Imperial College London. It hired staff (110 so far), set up offices near Commission headquarters in Brussels, and issued its first two calls for grants. The first, “starting grants” aimed at young scientists who got their PhDs within the past two to nine years, drew an avalanche of 9,167 applications; and ended with about 300 winners. The second, “advanced grants” aimed at experienced scientists, may draw even more applicants.

“We don’t know what to expect” from the volume of applicants for advanced-grants, said Winnacker. “Is it 5,000 or is it 40,000? I accept your bets.”

But the ERC’s real test, the political one, is just beginning in 2008. Can European leaders really live with the idea that a Brussels agency can hand out money with no political considerations? The stereotypical EU programmes work on the principle of “juste retour” – every member state expects to get about as much money out of Brussels as it pays in. With 19 per cent of the first-round grants going to researchers at UK institutions, 13 per cent to French and only 11 per cent to Germany – and Poland and Austria hardly any – that principle of political independence will be sorely tested in the year ahead.

Herewith, Winnacker’s views about the ERC’s first year.

So what lessons have you learnt?

We have learnt that there is no juste retour. There is a rather uneven distribution of the origin of the people (applying for and winning grants.) People like to go to Britain because of the language and the good institutions. The same is true for Switzerland, the Netherlands and Israel. But that’s not unexpected. Their institutions are very attractive. The Dutch reorganised their university system in the ‘90s. The Swiss have the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which is really attractive. They spend €45,000 per student per year. The best German universities: €9,000. A (difference) factor of five, almost. Sweden was present (in the awards) but nothing spectacular. Germany: not spectacular. Of course, the final numbers aren’t known (pending contract completion.) We lost two people because they died (during the grants process.) Very tragic. Another is in a coma. That’s surprising, because they are all relatively young.

So did the competition show which are the best institutions?

Some member states must ask themselves – for instance, Austria, why do we only have about four candidates? That’s a good question, and there’s no answer. At the beginning, you can relate it to the quality of the host institutions. But also, not everybody knew about the ERC. There will be some time necessary to build up our reputation. And the countries funding research below 1.75 per cent of gross national product are likely to be less attractive. If you have little money, you give it to the institutions that already exist and not to young scientists.

Other lessons?

One lesson is that the Commission (political officials) did not at all interfere in the process. Another lesson is that the scientific community participated in the peer-review panels (20 panels of 12 to 15 members each, representing different scientific disciplines, were recruited to review the applications.) We also learned that interviews are extremely helpful. It was expensive to invite 550 (finalist) candidates to Brussels. They were all invited in the course of four weeks – October through the first week of November. Each interview was 30 to 45 minutes. I listened to 10 to 12 of them. They presented their work. They (the panelists) asked them questions about their work. With young scientists, you don’t have a track record; they can only tell you where they were born, went to university. You have to get personal impressions of the people.

What about the paperwork? The ERC promised a simple process.

A lot of university administrators complain about paperwork. DG Research says it’s impossible, it can’t be simpler. I am not an administrator; but it will be done as simply as possible. That was the view of the [ERC] Council and myself, and we’ll see what happens. [As for post-award reporting,] the scientist only has to report on the progress of his work or her work. And completely independent of this, the host institution has to keep its books.  And we have a redress procedure – about 250 complaints [arrived from frustrated applicants in the first round]. In the end, there was only one serious case: somebody confused his application with somebody else’s application – which can happen with 9,000 applications.

The paperwork for reviewers is being simplified. If you go to the Cordis Web site [for some other EU programmes] you have to write your CV and so forth – it’s too complicated. We’ll do it in a way they don’t have to do much themselves, and the registration lasts for sthe entire duration of Framework 7. But it’s not easy. It has to do with certain regulations here. Some of them I understand. You have to be sure the people exist. And there is a lot of lobbyism around. You have to develop a system of verification and of recognition of conflict of interest.

What about the science?

The science was most interesting. I got excited by applications in astrophysics and exo-planets. If I was young, I probably would have chosen that, as well. I also got quite a bit excited about research on the human brain, in particular research on memory. And I found the cancer people interesting. For instance, the stratification of tumours: in breast cancer, 80 per cent of the women survive, and 20 per cent die within the next five years. They can now stratify that into groups on the basis of their genome among patients who are responding to chemotherapy and those who aren’t – and those aren’t responding, you don’t have to treat them with these really aggressive chemotherapeutics. The young people are not shy of anything.