Recently the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, announced at an  ANU Luncheon with Victorian Business Leaders in Melbourne that the government would honour its promise that the Australian Research Council (ARC) fellowships will be progressively opened to greater international competition, including the new Future Fellowships scheme.

The 1,000 Future Fellowships for mid-career researchers will be worth up to $140,000 a year plus $50,000 to help the host organisation meet costs related to the fellow’s research. Senator Carr says the ARC will award Future Fellowships to the very best applicants, irrespective of nationality because: "We want to bring these scholars to Australia. This is how our competitors operate." 

And the senator is right on the mark. To get some idea of just what Australia is competing against when the senator speaks of "attracting the best", the United States is beginning to seriously stir to obtain and retain the "best".

This month the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) will allocate $300 million over 6 years to support researchers it considers promising but who are struggling to obtain their first independent federal (R01) research grant. Hughes aims to fund up to 70 this year.

Thomas Cech, HHMI's president considers the program an emergency effort to help young scientists who have been disproportionately affected by 5 years of flat budgets at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

As Jocelyn Kaiser reports in Science: "Cech and other leaders worry that many new investigators are abandoning academic research. Underscoring the community's concerns, a Senate committee this week held a hearing to look into the Broken Pipeline in life sciences--the title of a report released the same day by a coalition of universities describing the difficulties faced by 12 young investigators."

The contribution by HHMI, which is seen to have been instituted to highlight the problem, is a minor component compared with the challenge NIH perceives. It intends to award on average 1500 R01 grants to new investigators annually, starting last year, up from 1353 in 2006. Science also reports that "other NIH programs have geared up: Pathway to Independence will give out about 170 awards this year for training and research, and New Innovators will award up to 24 5-year grants to new investigators for high-impact research."

As one specific case Ms Kaiser writes: "Young investigators say help is badly needed. Human geneticist Jill Rafael-Fortney of Ohio State University, Columbus, who testified this week before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, is waiting for a renewal of her first R01 or a new grant to study a muscular dystrophy gene that also plays a role in heart failure. The second proposal has gotten 'great scores, and it's just missing the pay line,' or cutoff, for funding, she says. If her R01 applications fail, and a multi-PI grant she's on doesn't come through, it will mean a 50% cut in her salary. 'I'd probably have to leave my job,' she says."

It remains to be seen just what impact the US Senate committee hearing will have on eventual federal funding to mitigate the problems of young talented researchers in realising reasonable career prospects, and not only in medical research.

From the Australian viewpoint there is increasing drive not only in North America and Europe but also India and China to increase the employment prospects of the human capital that forms the basis of their nations' innovative infrastructure. It is all very well for Senator Carr to proclaim the worth of Future Fellowships, but: 1) the milieu in which those fellowships will be utilised will compete with research environments throughout the developed world, i.e. how well will the research environments Australia can offer compare so that they will attract the "best and brightest", and 2) what will be offered to the "Future Fellows" at the end of their fellowship tenure so that they will remain?

What Senator Carr, Julia Gillard, as Minister for Education, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Prime Minister Rudd, have to develop is an overreaching package, otherwise they wind up with a collection of spokes bereft of a wheel.

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web