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Brian Schmidt
Nobel-winning formula
Greater appetite for risk and investment necessary to nurture scientific achievement: Schmidt.
Universities must be prepared to take risks, provide greater long-term employment security and back younger researchers if Australia is to successfully nurture the next generation of Nobel Prize-winners, a higher education conference has been told.
Speaking as part of a panel discussion at the recent Times Higher Education World Academic Summit in Melbourne, Nobel Laureate and Australian National University professor Brian Schmidt said the increased use of short-term contracts for younger researchers made the road to achievements such as his own more difficult.
Schmidt cited the example of fellow Nobel Laureate Barry Marshall, who he noted was just in his early 30s when he famously drank the bacteria that would lead to the discovery for which he went on to receive international acclaim.
Similarly, Schmidt noted, he himself had been just 31 years old when – as part of a research team – he had been able to announce the group’ s work proving that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. That work ultimately led to his own Nobel Prize.
Arguing that many researchers were doing their best work under the age of 50 and in many cases under 40, Schmidt said the current system unfairly“ tortured” younger researchers. Many, he said, were given unrealistic expectations about the possibility of long-term tenure when, in reality, few graduates are able to forge such careers.
Schmidt urged universities to carefully choose a cohort of young researchers and commit to long-term support for them. Such an approach, he said, would allow the next generation of researchers to focus on their work, rather than an unending cycle of contract renewal, and result in more productive and unexpected research outcomes.
The idea was unanimously supported by other members of the panel, including Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings director Wolfgang Huang, University of Queensland senior researcher Jack Clegg and Go8 chief executive Vicki Thomson.
Clegg said that, in addition, governments had to provide greater funding certainty. Too often, he argued, governments failed to look beyond electoral cycles when considering the long-term funding of research. As a result, he said, researcher access to top facilities and equipment was too often not guaranteed and work was being held up or wasted. ■
The( still) missing link
Collaboration between research and industry remains an elusive objective that requires a culture shift and bipartisan aid.
Australia must acknowledge it has failed to properly build collaborative partnerships between industry and researchers in order to achieve the kinds of links needed to benefit society, a leading figure has said.
Addressing delegates at the recent THE summit in Melbourne, deputy vice-chancellor of research and innovation at RMIT University, Calum Drummond, likened Australia’ s plight to that of alcoholics seeking to reform their ways.
“ Like the alcoholic, the first step is admitting we have a problem that needs to be addressed,” Drummond said.“ The conduct of excellent research in Australia is certainly vital but not sufficient. That research needs to be made relevant to society.”
Drummond’ s comments followed the suggestion earlier in the same session from a visiting senior research fellow in global higher education policy at the University of the West of England, Libby Hackett, that OECD figures indicating Australia was lagging in industry and research collaboration painted a picture that was perhaps worse than the real situation.
Hackett responded to Drummond’ s comments by saying that while the OECD figures might be overstating the depth of Australia’ s problem, there remained much work to be done in order to improve links between industry and research in Australia as well as in the UK.
Advancements regarding such links in Hackett’ s native UK, she said, had been possible only through bipartisan political support. UK Government funding had also helped to achieve the cultural shift needed to foster long-term changes.
Despite this, the broader acceptance by many academics that research needed to be relevant to society remained“ a battle to be won”, she said. ■
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