News & Views item - May 2005

 

 

The European Research Council Moves a Step Closer to Reality. (May 12, 2005)

    The concept of a European Research Council (ERC) was born just three years ago. As Science's Gretchen Vogel put it, "Fed up with the large projects that strangled their research in top-down bureaucracy, science leaders began calling for a European body more like the U.S. National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health."

 

On current plans €1.7 billion (A$2.9 billion) a year are sought for the ERC.

 

Now Nature reports that a panel of five academics chaired by Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle universities is in the process of appointing a group of twenty who may become the most influential scientists in European basic research policy in the immediate future. They're to be named next month as the governing council of the ERC.

 

Chris Patten's panel, despite requesting "restraint" from various research bodies such as European national academies, research funding agencies, industry and universities, have received over 200 suggestions.

 

According to Nature, "The final list will be designed to provide maximum credibility and authority, says the panel, and will be broadly representative of disciplines and types of research [and while] [g]ender and geography will also be taken into account, panel members defend their commitment to idealism."

 

Panel member Erwin Neher, 1991 Nobel laureate from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen told Nature, "The ERC is about frontier research and excellence. The council needs to be credible in Europe, so balance is necessary -- but there will be no question of geographical distribution of funds, or juste retour."