Science chief recommends 'riskier research' in Europe 

Professor Bertil Andersson, currently chief executive of the European Science Foundation (ESF ) and a member of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB ) is about to leave Europe to join "the enemies in the east", and become the director of Singapore Technical University (NTU ). 

With some three weeks left in Europe before he leaves, Andersson explains to EurActiv.com his vision of the benefits and main challenges of conducting pan-European research. He also gives his view of the current state of the European Research Area and proposes directions for change. 

Can you give me examples of the main achievements of 'European research' so far?

There are lot of projects and various programmes together, which is good. The European Science Foundation's European Young Investigator scheme has also been fantastic value – a kind of pre-European Research Council (ERC) exercise. It has been important to have true, open competition at EU level. 

Have research project results affected policies? 

This is of course what they should do but I cannot give you any specific example at the moment. 

What is so special about the Young Investigator Scheme or the European Research Council?

National research is under-critical in a global sense. It is easy for big countries such as Germany, the UK, France or Italy. In the UK, you have critical research, but if we look at for example Sweden and its eight million people, it can well spend the most in the world on research but it will never have the critical mass to compete with countries such as the United States, the UK, China or Japan. In small targeted areas this can of course be done, but not as a general thing. 

Therefore, it is important to understand the difference between pan-European research versus national research for the UK and pan-European research versus national research for Norway, Iceland, Sweden or Poland. This is something I have really learned.

Pan-European research, going either through pan-European systems like ESF or the European Commission, is really important only for the smaller countries. And Europe is really a congregation of small countries, if you forget about the four big ones.

What is the main challenge/barrier for conducting pan-European research?

It is about tradition. Research has been traditionally very national. The main limitation is that we think national, even in the small countries. This can be illustrated by the history of the Nobel Prize - when Alfred Nobel put in his will that all people from all over the world could receive the Nobel Prize, the Swedish king was very angry, because he thought Nobel should have given the money only to Swedes. 

I can say that not much has changed in the past 110 years, because the political level still thinks about research from a national perspective. Swedish taxpayers' money should fund a Swedish person working for a Swedish project at a Swedish university connected to a Swedish invention and leading to Swedish employment. 

This is, in its simplicity, how things still are in Europe and I think this is the philosophical barrier to more pan-European research in a sense. We should, however, remember that creation of knowledge is not nationally based. 

So, discussing building the European Research Area (ERA) is thus only a politically correct gesture?

Yes, and this is even perceived at national level. Only scientists think global. Their partners can be wherever in the world and they still conduct research. However, when it comes to funding, even scientists are very national.

What can be done to change this? 

I think it is already being done. Things are changing slowly. It also depends on the disciplines. If you take particle physics for example – you just can't have a Hubble telescope for each country. So, this pan-European thinking is very different in different disciplines. It is hard to take an aggregated view.

How do you perceive the value-added of EU funded research and the EU R&D framework programmes? 

The aim of EU research is to increase competitiveness and influence policies. However, we have to remember that the framework programmes (FPs) only represent some 5-10% of all European research money, and the remaining 90-95% is national. 

Lot of bad things have been said about FPs – that they are top-down, bureaucratic – and this is probably right. But they have been instrumental in creating European thinking and common projects and they may also have been good in bridging private-public partnerships. Whether this has been cost-effective, is hard to tell.

What should be the top priority for Europe in the field of research? 

Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik is about to launch a debate about the new European Research Area and it will be very important. I call it "ERA for real", or a "real ERA". So far, ERA has been more a concept. We have not had it for real. Going to that direction is very important.

There is still too much fragmentation between different research programmes at European and national level - between Commission and ESF programmes and programmes where national organisations collaborate, such as private-research programmes. We can talk about 'multi-dimension-fragmentation'. 

In general, we need to have more risk in research. We must be braver on the European scene, put money towards more risky research and take risks in research. We often hear talk about accountability and so on and of course this is important as we are spending taxpayers' money. However, compared with European research, the American system is very good in putting money into new, risky projects, based perhaps only on a hypothetical idea. And still they do it, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), private foundations or university endowments. It is easier for them to finance risky projects.

One limitation with the EU's FPs is that they put money into too-safe projects. And if I relate back to my work at the Nobel Foundation, that is one of the reasons why Americans receive many more Nobel Prizes, because the prize is about discovery. And if you are going to make a discovery you have to take a certain amount of risk in research and in research funding.

In Europe, the funding systems do not promote risk. Promoting risk is about allowing a scientist to "fail". In the United States, they have greater flexibility on this. Even a scientist can "fail".

I would like the new ERA to find a formula that would allow, in a European framework, to actually have higher risk in the research funding. 

Perhaps the European Research Council will take more risks, as it is independent, run by scientists?

I hope. And I hope that within the excellence it is said to promote and fund, the word excellence will include this risk element. Of course research still needs to be high quality and scientifically based. There's a balance to be found here. 

What is your personal opinion of the European Institute of Technology?

Personally, I think this may not be the best way to promote innovation in Europe. I think that creating more dynamic European research depends a lot on giving the universities more freedom to work with innovation. In many countries, universities are still too controlled and have a completely different entrepreneurial tradition compared, for example, with the American universities.

But then again, there is a lot of diversity in Europe. And perhaps because I’m Swedish I say this - but I think that in Scandinavia the universities are more entrepreneurial and less regulated.