ESF faces up to research council challenge

The European Science Foundation (ESF) is facing up to the risk of being overshadowed by the European Research Council (ERC). The new funding body is due to begin operations in January 2007 - and comes armed with a budget of €1.5 billion per annum.

Responding to the need to reassert its position and standing before the ERC bandwagon gathers momentum the ESF appointed heavyweight science administrator Ian Halliday, former CEO of the UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), as its president earlier this year.

Then at the Euroscience Open Forum in Munich this week the foundation launched a new strategy aimed at boosting its political influence and reassuring its 78 research council members it is working for their benefit, and for the benefit of European science as a whole.

To emphasise that this is the start of a new era after 32 years, the ESF also unveiled a new logo.

The new strategy will concentrate on three different areas of science strategy, science synergy and science management. But as the ERC juggernaut rolls into town it will take more than a new strategy and a new logo to guarantee the ESF’s future

Same objective…but much smaller budget

It is not only that the ERC’s €1.5 billion budget dwarfs the ESF’s spending of €40 million, but that both bodies have the same objective of improving the quality of research across Europe.

Over the years, the foundation has built a portfolio of tailor-made activities that aim to get European researchers collaborating. Although these schemes have produced some good pan-European research, the ESF’s international reputation remains low-key.

“The ESF is doing a good job but we're not doing a very good job of proving how good we are,” says Halliday.

Indeed, the foundation has done little in the past to publicise the tangible results of its work. For example, it was the ESF that provided the starting point for the 2004 Cassini–Huygens mission. This inspired a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency to send a spaceship into Saturn’s orbit and the successful landing of a probe on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.

During widespread coverage of the mission and landing, the ESF’s voice was not heard. In the past, the foundation has preferred to work with the research community, while keeping a safe distance from Brussels, the EC and from the media, but this stance is untenable if it wants its light to shine through the glare that generated by the ERC.

Jockeying for position

The politicking and jockeying for position this will require may make Halliday nostalgic for his old job. While at PPARC he oversaw two major decisions that transformed the organisation. In 2000 he was a key figure in persuading the UK government to cough up £150 million for the UK to join the European Southern Observatory, and he represented PPARC in getting approval for the International Linear Collider, a global project of between £3 billion and £5 billion.

Halliday also won an increase of £25 million from the UK government in PPARC’s budget in 2005. Changing the attitude of the organisation as a whole was a key part of this achievement he says. “When I started PPARC was a very negative organisation,” he explained. “They had had seven years of budget cuts. Part of my job there was to turn the scientific community around to be much more aggressive and ambitious.”

The core of the ESF’s role to date has been to direct funding via its member organisations, to its collaborative European projects. Now it needs to work out how it can co-exist with the ERC in order to maintain a viable position.

Halliday claims that the Foundation’s independence means it can work even more effectively on the behalf of its members, Europe’s principal science funding agencies.

“I think there’s space for the ESF along with the ERC. Despite the fact that it has a smaller budget, it is uniquely positioned in that it’s owned by its members,” he says.

“Because of this it can play a role in the debate about how the funding is directed. The member organisations represent 95 per cent of research funding in Europe, and the ESF is able to objectively represent the priorities of these members.”

But as Halliday is forced to admit, the key problem he faces is that its members are ESF’s loudest critics.

“There is a feeling out there that the ESF is a bit of a schizophrenic organisation: we have one set of committees for the scientists within ESF, and another set for the scientists who represent the member organisations in each of the different countries.”

“The fact is that the independent scientists in ESF and those in the funding agencies have the same overall aim: better European research.”

Objectives in conflict

This is all very well but the two groups have conflicting objectives: scientists from member organisations are concerned about representing their countries, whilst independent scientists in the ESF are worried about the priorities of their projects.

“The overall goal is the same for both groups, so it could still work well,” says Halliday. “The big challenge now is to turn the rhetoric into reality.”

“We have had some clear successes that show how well this can work. For example, the EURYI [European Young Investigator] Award Scheme was set up because the member organisations expressed their desire to have a high profile scheme to encourage and reward achievement and ambition in research.‚

The scheme was launched in 2004, and early signs are that it has been a big success. The aim was to produce an award scheme comparable in scale to the Nobel Prize. Winners receive up to €1 million over five years in order to establish their own research centres anywhere in Europe. It has encouraged European countries to support their young researchers.

If this sounds familiar that is because the ERC has proposed that its first grant funding scheme, under which it will hand out up to €400 million a year, will give young researchers big grants that they can take to any institution in Europe.

“I think one of the roles for the ESF within Europe, is to allow the ambition of young scientists to grow. That’s why I am a really big supporter of the European Young Investigator Award Scheme. I think it sends a very positive message and allows the release of this energy in research. We should offer an opportunity for ambition to grow.”

A possible problem with this particular scheme is that it is funded in part by the European Commission, which could withdraw this funding in order to hand the award scheme over to the ERC. Halliday is confident that the ESF can work alongside the ERC and not be hampered by the new competition.

Halliday is acutely aware that with the ERC on the horizon, the ESF needs to prove it has a distinctive role and will remain of value to the members who own it. One of his trump cards will be the ESF’s independence from Brussels and the policy makers. This gives the Foundation an opportunity to be objective, making it all the more relevant and influential in shaping science policy.

“The ESF has the resources and the abilities to set up strong, credible committees, which are at arms length from the funding decisions. The plans formulated by these could provide a clear picture to guide and enable the national bodies.”

For this reason, the flagship activity will be the ESF’s Forward Looks. These are large-scale studies that review areas of high priority for European research and provide a route map for future research. A recent example is a study of how different aspects of nanotechnology research should be pulled together to create an integrated framework for nanomedicine.

Halliday views Forward Looks not only as planning devices but also as key weapons in the psychological warfare that is being waged over Europe’s science policy

In future he will take the findings of Forward Looks directly to the policy makers to show that Europe’s science community, under the guidance of the ESF, is working to improve European science.

Victoria Gill was formerly an intern in the ESF’s Communications Department