Something to think about
Taken from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi
Enrique Arboleda
| Science 5 October 2007: | |
News of the Week
European Science by the Numbers
Gretchen Vogel
The first round of peer-reviewed grants from the European Research Council (ERC) is out, and the agency's analysis of applicants and finalists paints a revealing picture of Europe's scientific landscape. Nearly 9000 applications flooded in this spring (Science, 4 May, p. 672); review panels narrowed these down to just 559 finalists. The ERC will select about 250 young scientists from the list by January 2008 and award each of them roughly €1 million ($1.4 million). This week, the ERC released new figures about where the applicants come from and where they hope to work. Italians far outpaced all other nationalities, submitting more than 1700 applications--a sign, says ERC Vice President Helga Nowotny, of the dire lack of support for young researchers there. Italians were fairly successful, too: 70 made it to the final round, although just fewer than 50 plan to work in Italy. The U.K. has the best "braingain" statistics: More than 100 of the finalists work in the U.K. but just 42 are British. The big surprise, Nowotny notes, is Poland. Just three Polish researchers are finalists, and none plans to work in Poland. Michal Kleiber, president of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a member of the ERC scientific council, sees the results as disappointing; he thinks they reflect the salary caps in Poland that spur top applicants to work elsewhere. He also notes that although Poland has 8% of the E.U. population, its science budget accounts for less than 1% of overall E.U. research spending. More details are available at:
http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/erc
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