News & Views item - October 2006

 

 

Australian Research Council Funding for 2007 Discovery and Linkage Grants Announced. (October 11, 2006)

    The Australian Research Council (ARC) today awarded $365,069,342 in its grants for 2007.

The 1,154 grants (24% of the 4,834 applications) were awarded for its two major schemes - Discovery Projects and Linkage Projects - and three smaller schemes, Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development; Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities; and Linkage International.

The ARC defines its competitive grants schemes as follows:

Discovery Projects: supports fundamental research by individuals and teams, and expands Australia’s knowledge base and research capability.

Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development: assists Indigenous Australian researchers to develop their research expertise to a level which is competitive under mainstream schemes.

Linkage Projects: encourages and develops long-term strategic research alliances between higher education organisations and industry in order to apply advanced knowledge to problems to obtain economic and social benefits. Linkage Projects also targets funding to research of benefit to regional and rural Australian communities.

Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities: encourages universities and other organisations to collaborate in developing research facilities and acquiring research equipment.

Linkage International: builds strong ongoing collaborations between researchers, research teams and centres of excellence in Australia and oversea

According to the ARC among the successful projects are research programs that will:

  • study the role that participation in organised extracurricular activities may play in the healthy development of Australia's youth (Murdoch University)

  • develop micro-robots that will be powered to 'swim' through the vascular and digestive systems of the human body to perform medical tasks via remote control and, in many cases, avoid invasive major surgery (Monash University)

  • investigate previously unmapped venom systems for divergent, bioactive proteins with practical implications for the treatment of envenomations (from sources such as snakes, spiders, mosquitoes and jellyfish), which is a recognised problem in Australia, as well as drug discovery and other commercial applications (The University of Melbourne)

  • develop service delivery systems in the criminal justice system to better meet the needs of victims and witnesses (Monash University and Victoria Police).

There will be 380 organisations partnering ARC-funded researchers in the Linkage Scheme, which have pledged a total of $105,481,215 in cash and in-kind to the successful projects, representing $1.77 for each dollar provided by the Government.

In this round, average funding for Discovery Projects equals $334,267 per project, while average Linkage Projects funding is $285,745 per project.

The projects are funded under the ARC's National Competitive Grants Program, a component of the Government's 10-year $8.3 billion additional commitment to innovation under Backing Australia's Ability.

SUMMARY OF FUNDING BY SCHEME

Discovery Projects

  • 822 successful projects

  • Total funding of $274,767,586

Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development

  • 15 successful projects

  • Total funding of $1,038,114

Linkage Projects (Round 1)

  • 208 successful projects

  • Total funding of $59,434,944

Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities

  • 73 successful projects

  • Total funding of $27,647,917

Linkage International Awards (Round 2)

  • 14 successful projects

  • Total funding of $416,200

Linkage International Fellowships (Round 1)

  • 22 successful projects

  • Total funding of $1,764,581

A fuller breakdown of the funding statistics can be found here.

A statement by the President of the Australian Academy of Science, Kurt Lambeck following release of the awards is disquieting. He points out that despite the fact that an overwhelming number of Australian Research Council Discovery Project grants were deemed suitable, in fact only 49 applications were deemed ineligible, there were 3,137 potentially solid, viable research proposals out in the cold. The situation for Australian research becomes even worse when you consider that the success rate has dropped by 4.1% compared to last year's ARC grants.

 

Professor Lambeck went on to say, "The Academy is not advocating smaller allocations to more projects. This is a wonderful scheme which the Academy fully supports. But we do need a recognition by Government at federal and state levels as well as business and industry that pure and applied scientific research across all disciplines brings benefits to all Australians - and a consequent boost in funding from the Federal Government for the ARC grants.... Think of the huge additional benefit to all Australians if even another 20 per cent of the unsuccessful projects had received funding."

 

He also decried the paucity of QEII Fellowships, "This is a major concern for mid-career scientific researchers, who have to engage in ferocious competition for this, one of the few sources of major funding available to them, [b]ut out of 175 fellowships in all categories for this round, only 50 went to QEII grant applicants - and these researchers are among the cream of our future scientific crop. A number of our best people are increasingly being lured overseas.  If the funding situation does not improve, what's now a fast-flowing trickle will become a flood."