Science Spin September 2007

Frank Gannon, Director SFI

Not just 'steady as she goes'

By Sean Duke

SFI is now into its seventh year, and its existence has coincided with a period where unprecedented levels of funding have poured into Irish science. The first Director, William Harris, has returned to his native USA, and now an Irishman, Professor Frank Gannon, formerly director of the National Diagnostics Centre, based at NUI Galway and executive director of EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation) has stepped into his shoes. Prof Gannon describes here his vision for the future role of SFI.

Background

Professor Frank Gannon, though a respected research scientist, has made his career through managing science. His first major management role in Ireland was as Director of the National Diagnostics Centre at NUI Galway. In Galway, his successes include starting the MSc in Biotechnology in 1981, very early days for biotech in Ireland.

From NUI Galway he went on to become the prestigious Executive Director of EMBO, a large Europe-wide research body, and for 13 years he was based in Hiedelberg, Germany.

At EMBO he started a number of well respected initiatives including a programme to help internationalise research in Europe by lowering the barriers for scientists to come here. He also got involved in the women in science issue, namely the lack of women in science, and started a science and society programme at EMBO in 1996 and 1997.

In terms of his research career, Professor Gannon's main research interest is in the expression and functional regulation of the estrogen receptor which is thought to play a major role in breast cancer and osteoporosis. His researches have helped to provide 'leads' towards novel treatments or therapeutic approaches to these and other cancers.

After many successful years at EMBO, Prof Gannon began to think of new horizons, and an opportunity arose to come home and make his mark on a transformed Irish scene, from the one he left "with impeccable timing" in the bad old days of 1994. That opportunity was to take over as Director of SFI.

"I always felt that I should make a last move, and I am extremely hooked into Ireland, some people visit it, but I would live it, and get the paper on a daily basis from the web, and listen to RTE News every morning on satellite," said Prof Gannon. "I'd be at an extreme level of hooked from a distance for 13 or 14 years. The inevitability of bringing what I can do, into an Irish context was particularly attractive to me."

Challenge

The need to underpin what Ireland has achieved, as well as drive Irish science onto the next level, made the job of Director of SFI a very attractive one to Prof Gannon.

"It makes me a little bit edgy that people get complacent, because there is a generation of scientists in Ireland who believe that it was always like this and that it can only get better. You forget the famines very quickly, quite rightly so too."

"I would see an even greater responsibility on the scientific community because a huge trust has been placed in them. They are told you are going to be absolutely important for the future of Ireland's knowledge economy, you are no longer peripheral. What are you doing people. You are key."

"If you don't deliver then Ireland's got a problem, and because of that it puts the job in a context which for me is 'meaty' it is something that is really worthwhile doing, and doing well such that Ireland does get the best out of its investment."

People

Support for excellence in research is a theme that Prof Gannon highlights time and again. The best people must be supported, in whatever area of science they work in. It is not up to SFI to 'prescribe' what areas, such people should be working in, he said.

"I think that our job (at SFI) is to judge the potential of the individual to deliver on what they say," said Prof Gannon. "If they are doing to do something that is mediocre, boring, done already, then it's not excellent."

The old classifications of ICT and biotechnology are breaking down, added Prof Gannon, with scientists working across the old disciplines now on a regular basis, in areas such as nanotechnology and biosensors, for example.

"My philosophy is focus on the individuals, individuals will grow and expand and attract. Areas will then emerge from that, and having got those emerged, they will attract students in, and students will do their job."

Applied

Prof Gannon is keen not to prescribe what the best people are doing, but he does point out that part of SFI's portfolio is to support applied research. In this situation SFI does indeed prescribe what kind of research they want to support.

For instance, Prof Gannon said, under SFI's CSET (Centres for Science Engineering and Technology) programme, there are a number of areas prescribed as being important, and where industry and universities form partnerships. The CSET areas include systems biology, nanotechnology, protein work and gastrointestinal studies.

However, these applied areas cannot exist without encouraging basic science, Prof Gannon said. Without providing support for basic science, he said, there is no seed crop for the future, people are not trained to do the 'hard things' and that is essential for people to then apply this training to the applied side.

"The basic science of today is the applied of tomorrow, and there is no applied without basic," commented Prof Gannon.

Perception

It is important how SFI, and the Irish research scene are perceived on the international stage, especially if Ireland is to attract in the best researchers.

Prof Gannon believes that SFI is viewed very positively by the international scientific experts that have been brought in to judge on various SFI funding applications.

"They are really are top class people who do this. That is just a fact, and people are surprised at how good the people are who come to do the judging," said Prof Gannon.

These days it is not unusual to meet young researchers from the United States, for example, working in Ireland, something that was very rare not so long ago.

These Americans are willing to come to Ireland, said Prof Gannon, because there is government support for science committed up to 2013, it is a nice place to live, there are good quality students here, and it is not hard to get the equipment that is required.
Ireland is starting to attract in good overseas talent, and the pointers are good in this respect, but there is still not enough of these kinds of people here, Prof Gannon said.

"We are still on the earlier part of the curve, and it's looking as if it is going in the right direction, that's true, but in order to achieve what is really needed we have to have more people, and more years of good funding."

Parallel skills

Prof Gannon said that one of the initiatives he is planning is to 'humanise' scientists, by providing more 'human interest' stories from the scientists that are funded by SFI. This is part of a wider effort to improve the ability of scientists to communicate.

There are already scientists that do this very well, said Prof Gannon, but, it's certainly true that Irish scientists don't have a great tradition of communicating with non-scientists, or recognising what it is that they do that might be of interest to the public.

Prof Gannon said that the SFI annual reports are being read internally by administrative managers, not scientists, to try and identify areas of public interest.

This is the first step in what will be greater efforts to explain more about who SFI scientists are, as human beings, and what they do, and how they do it.

There is also a bigger agenda on the way regarding science communication in Ireland. At the moment Prof Gannon, and his managers at SFI are looking at how science communication can be introduced as a parallel skill for post-doctoral researchers.

The question under consideration right now is whether the science communication training for post-docs should be provided directly by SFI, or by the universities.

"We have to broaden the individual such that they are able to handle the mixed life that they will have," said Prof Gannon. Aside from communication, there will be other parallel skills provided at post-doc level, including business, patents, ethics, lab management.

Vision

In terms of his vision of the role of SFI, Prof Gannon said that it should not just be a 'funder' but a body that helps to create an environment in which things happen. Ireland has made huge strides, but there is a long way to go to reaching our goals.

"You won't build the house of Irish knowledge economy if you don't have a good foundation of knowledge, which means that very often when the payoff comes SFI will have become invisible underneath it. I think that's why SFI was established. Otherwise Enterprise Ireland, and IDA can do the other things, and it's essential that they are done and we are a component in that."

"One thing that we have to be fairly clear about is that we are on a curve, and we are early enough on the curve. We have to get more and more people doing excellent science, such that there is a collective impact, so that from the outside they will say that Ireland is a research-intense location, at the moment it's not a research-intense location".

Prof Gannon highlighted the Netherlands and Switzerland as two countries, of not-too-different size to Ireland, that are research intense and have been for many years. This is due to the fact that they have been at a high level of funding for a long time.

Ireland today, though it aims to move to a knowledge economy, supported by research, is below the European average, in terms of the percentage of GDP spent on research, at 1.6 per cent, against the European average of three per cent. Ireland is behind in Europe, and even more worryingly, Europe is way behind the USA, so where doest that leave us in global terms?

"There was an analysis carried out to see where is Europe today, looking at its metrics, so much money spent, so many PhDs per head of population, so many publications, where is it today relative to the States? The outcome is that we are 23 years behind it."

This is why Prof Gannon says Ireland has no room for complacency and its people have to maintain the highest possible level of ambition to make progress. But, he believes that, though there is much work to be done, this can be achieved in time.